There are good news out there and it looks like my addiction will soon be fed with high quality material again, as Jonathan Franzen is writing a series based on his novel The Corrections in which secondary characters will play important roles and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad is also being turned into a TV series. I am a bit nervous about the latter since I don’t really see Egan’s writing turned into a good script, but Franzen would have made a great Dickens style feuilleton writer so I have a feeling he’ll be fine in this medium.

My top 5 TV series:

1. Rome – I loved those old Roman bastards and their deadly intrigues, too bad it got cancelled before its time. The story and the characters developed organically and they were not one bit strained, plus I loved the idea of looking at real iconic moments and historical figures from the perspective of low class fictional characters.

2. Mad Men – It took a while to get the hang of it because it often looked more like a history/sociology class on the 60, but by the time I got hooked, it had already begun to get stale. I’m not so crazy about Don Draper, he’s more an excuse to get all sorts of sociological case studies of female psychology to bed and into the script, than a real human being.

3. Breaking Bad – Loved the first 2 seasons, but gave up on it later on.

4. Dexter – same problem. Loved the idea, but how many serial killers are there out there?!

5. 30 Rock – Haven’t laughed this hard since Seinfeld, but somehow the characters gradually became caricatures of themselves. Good thing it ended before completely losing it.

But anyway, The Future is probably the best film about the state of this generation that I’ve seen so far. And yet I’m somehow ashamed to admit it. It’s weird, sometimes funny, but mostly sad in a very strange way, not in the heroic tragic way, not in the suicidal way, but in an accepting and very nihilistic way. The image of a couple, each with their own laptop in from of them, physically near to one another, but mentally in parallel worlds, is like looking in a mirror reflecting my own life and its strangeness. The TV as a means of brainwashing is already a cliché, but we are still discovering what it means to spend half of your life in front of a computer, connected to the world. With the TV you had limited access to some channels you could choose from, but with the internet you have access to unlimited information, entertainment, shopping, the lives of others, dating, anything really, it’s like a portal to infinity. This flood of information is the power of the internet both in a positive and in a negative way, it democratizes information but it also causes a paralysis of the spirit and of initiative. It’s easy to see the internet as an immensely positive invention, our access to knowledge is so easy and immediate. Still, whenever my old father asks me how exactly the internet works, I find that I cannot explain, which creeps me out somehow as it shows me that unlimited access to information creates a lot more guilt with regard to the things that you do not know, or as Miranda July’s character says in the film, one day you realize that you are so far behind with the news that it makes no sense even trying to keep up.

Then there is our generation’s relationship to time. I found myself often talking to my friends recently about how time seems to just speed by us and that strange feeling of seeing days, months, years go by without even noticing and what’s worse without really doing anything, growing up, creating something, becoming wiser in any way. The other big elephant in the room is the strange uniformization of the bullshit-apple-”think different” generation, which made us all believe we are unique and special and potentially great artists of some kind. And what happened with the internet is that you realize there are billions of people just as special as you are.

If you want to kill a great idea that passed through your mind, well all you have to do is google it and realize it’s out there already. Someone said that this is a generation of designers, not of artists and somehow consumer culture is bringing art into our mundane life in a way that kills its aura. You get a Picasso printed table cloth and everyone is writing their life stories on blogs, everyone’s a photographer, a singer, or an artist of some sort and if they put it up on the internet they get an audience. A panda sneezing got millions of views and that’s not even the worst thing out there, heck, I might have been responsible for at least 5 of those views.

I was always against elitism in art, but lately I find myself craving those old elitist days, when art was something you felt privileged to have access to, not something you can download in 30 seconds and then forget all about in the next 30 seconds, and when you had to find more elaborate ways to express your opinions about someone’s creation than a thumb up or down. There’s something about this new power of the masses that makes me feel powerless. The same as the character in the movie that sets herself the task of creating 30 dances in 30 days, but ends up paralyzed in front of her laptop watching youtube videos of other women doing the same thing. Well, she’s the artsy contemporary ballet type and they’re more the pole dancing, hip-hop types, but the distinction becomes irrelevant when they are competing for views on youtube.

But the film is not just about these cultural issues; there are also the essential questions about what it means to be human, the constraints, but also the comforts of civilization, human relationships and the point of it all, living while being conscious that we are gliding away towards death every day, the things we put ourselves through in order to fulfill our idea of ourselves only to be bitterly disappointed, the numbness of daily routine and the trap of thinking we can escape it, the desire to feel alive and important, living in a time when we know we are at the end of our rope in so many ways, living with no higher outer guidance and this vague dictum of fulfilling ourselves. All these big questions are raised through the most mundane scenes possible, with nothing noble or dramatic about them. In fact it’s all anti-dramatic. Just like life, perhaps even a bit more ridiculous.  And that cat talking so poetically about time, entrapment, civilization, love and death is the clearest example of the ridiculousness of her genius; we’re all that cat: taken from the wild put in our cages where it’s nice and warm and it’s no longer all about survival, we can rejoice, we get love, but also a hightened self awareness and a tragic sense of the passage of time.

Aside from the nostalgia and the all encompassing theme of the past’s shadows over the present, there is little else of the self-absorbed proustian streak. It’s a novel about no one in particular, but about many characters whose paths cross more or less delicately: a kleptomaniac redhead, a punk-rock producer, a bunch of punk teenagers, children, spouses and lovers of other characters, friends, a late blooming, recluse guitar-player, a middle-aged art professor, a suicidal unrequited lover, a PR specialist with a ruined reputation and so on. The time frame is scrambled and ranging from sometime in the late 70s to 2020. This all sounds pretentious and complicated, but it somehow falls effortlessly into place. Despite the obviously experimental prose, it has a surprisingly classical old-fashioned tinge to it. It may be because of the whole nostalgia permeating it. It’s like Proust for the digital age. I’m getting the feeling that the sex drugs and rock’n'roll self-destructive thing is becoming vintage material for this squeaky clean, technologically savvy and paradoxically eco conscious, slow food cooking, domestic new generation and the novel definitely carries some sort of heroin nostalgia.

Some may find it tiring that each chapter starts from an entirely new perspective that one needs to get accustomed with, but the effort pays off in the end as you start to see the fine lines tying all of them together. They are all almost poetic and despite their shortness, you get a deep insight into each character and an uncanny sense of how the passage of time is altering them. My favorite chapter belongs to a former teen-age guitar-prodigy, now toothless recovering heroin addict turned bum, who spends his time fishing in New York and one day brings a big catch to his now big shot producer former childhood friend, leaving a big stinky fish wrapped up in newspaper on his fancy desk in  an equally fancy skyscraper office building. It plays beautifully with the ambiguities of success and how sometimes reaching rock bottom is not very different from achieving what society would refer to as success. And how success is always tinted by the fear that you are nonetheless always one step away from hitting rock bottom. There is also a touching chapter written in power-point slides, not my favorite, but definitely an achievement keeping up with the connection between the passage of time and ever changing media theme, in an eloquent way. It got me looking back at my own life and what the passage of time has done to it and I found myself already missing the characters while I was done with the last pages.

And an ecstatic cover:

Noroc cu oameni care mai incita la posturi, in grup de data asta, ca alfel eu nu mai prea dau pe aici.

Si inca un semn ca tre’ sa-l citesc pe Michel Houellebecq asta desi am impresia tot mai pregnanta ca n-o sa-mi placa. Am vazut filmu’ cu particulele elementare parca si am facut cadou si cartea cuiva frantzuzit, se pune?

boladenieve78

Je vous présente Houellebecq. Michel Houellebecq. Pentru ca l-a plictisit istoria din romanele lui Dumas dar i-au placut benzile desenate cu Pif. Pentru ca te pocneste in ochi cu adevaruri precum “people get married to have a personal life”. Pentru ca l-am iubit de la “Particulele elementare” pana azi, cand il savurez in dialog cu Bernard-Henri Levy, si am tresarit dureros a recunoastere citind “Extension du domaine de la lutte” taman cand lucram ca programator. Pentru impertinenta asumata si libertatea de a se contrazice, pentru ca se inchipuie romantic si se vrea iubit. Pentru ca e uman si inteligent si scrie bine.

[interviu houellebecq]

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Micawber

Tocmai mă bucuram că am un interviu cu Wagner, ba chiar unul publicat într-o carte cu ştaif, Wagner’s Meistersinger: Performance, History, Representation (editor Nicholas Vazsonyi). Unul din contributori, Peter Höying, reproduce o convorbire cu compozitorul, sub titlul http://worldwidewagner.richard.de: An Interview with the Composer Concerning History, Nation, and Die Meistersinger. Până la urmă se dovedeşte că discuţia e inventată, cu tot parfumul ei de verosimilitate (la un moment dat intervievatul se plânge chiar că e întrerupt). E frustrant de-a binelea – n-am găsit niciun interviu real cu Wagner şi nici nu am cum să-l întreb, direct, „e adevărat, maestre, că vă plăceau pilotele de puf şi hainele de catifea, după cum susţine Thomas Mann, un individ care s-a afirmat după moartea dumneavoastră?” Aşa că adresa de mai sus trebuie luată ca parte a glumei (să nu-i vină cuiva ideea să-o acceseze). Linkuri la interviuri adevărate n-am.

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bicicleta galbenă

Pentru că a scos din zona de confort atâţia mediocri dovediţi, dar ultra-prezenţi şi obositor de vizibili, spunând lucruri sincere într-o limbă ciudată & adâncă, de o rafinată simplitate. Şi pentru că, de fiecare dată când îi citesc interviurile, realizez cât de ipocrit/ipocriţi sunt/suntem în relaţie cu oameni pe care-i dispreţuim din rărunchi, dar le zâmbim strepezit – precum în viaţă, aşa şi pe bloguri. Da. Deci: Herta Müller.

[interviu herta müller]

delaskela

când am dat de ’’Ziua independenţei’’ era o zi de iarnă mă învârteam aiurea printr-o librărie văzusem un film cu titlul ăsta mi-am zis băi frate ditamai romanul pentru un film cu extratereştri răi dar eram în mare mare eroare nici vorbă de aşa ceva m-am lămurit citind un interviu într-o revistă dăruită de o doamnă aşa am descoperit pe unul dintre cei mai puternici prozatori din toate timpurile Richard Ford iar ’’ziua independenţei’’ nu are nicio treabă cu filmul e un roman remarcabil, la fel e şi ’’Cronicarul sportiv’’ artă narativă pură glorioasă.

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milfUnde nu i-ar da dumnezeu un d-asta si lu’ Eugenia Voda!

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Simona Radoi Bun, interviul ales de mine este cel facut de Eugen Istodor cu Cristi Borcea: [interviul] Interviu ales din motive obiective, cu mentiunea ca in ziua aparitiei m-a sunat un prieten, dinamovist, sa ma roage sa il felicit pe Eugen Istodor.

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S(f). Vasile Cititorule, ai conştiinţa împovãratã de atâta dialog cu Luciferii zilelor noastre? Ai cugetul nãclãit de atâta “culturã”? Alungã ACUM mirosurile neplãcute de pucioasã din viaţa ta de apoi!

Sigur aţi cãpãtat suficientã lecturã serioasã pentru azi, aşa cã uite un interviu cu tânãra speranţã a ligii terţe, Stelian “Maradona sixtinã” Baban.

[interviul]

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puπla diletantă

mișel houellebecq îmbracă straie de gogâie într-un monolog de oferit drept exemplu pentru interviuri. din sutele de clipuri cu acest superstar dubios ăsta pare a fi un bun start în a-l cunoaște pe musiu, pentru că în ciuda aparențelor excentricitatea insăși – de altfel caracterizantă pentru mișel – se ascunde parcă timorată sub patul acelui hotel din la fel de dubiosul frankfurt.

[alt interviu houellebecq]

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TuPac Cianur

Eu când aud de gonzo, mă gândesc la filmele porno în care actorul o face și pe regizorul, dar și pe cameramanul aruncându-și în centrul atenției șomâlca după care este avidă cucoana din film. Hunter Thompson este un gagiu care pare-se a oficializat gonzo-ul în activitatea jurnalistică, adică și-a pus la bătaie șomâlca, unii au sărit pe ea, iar apoi a scris despre eveniment. Este cam ceea ce retarzii ăia de la Can Can fac când se pun de-a curmezișul drumului ca să nu treacă Mihaela cu Dany, fac poze multe și le vând apoi ca eveniment exemplar de conduită retardă a unei Dive. Thompson a fost un drogat, bețiv, cu afinități gay – a făcut-o pe peștele (vezi poza) pentru niște băieței și a mai produs și câteva pornoace d’alea. Îl admir pe omul ăsta pentru că este schizofrenic de primul grad. Am ales două bucăți de interviu, unul dat în Vanity Fair (1994), pe modelul oracol de școală primară și un altul apărut un an mai târziu, când se pregătea debarcarea lui Clinton la Casa Albă. Nu peste foarte mulți ani, se sinucidea. Treaba se împuțea – nu cu lumea, ci mai ales cu el.

[interviu thompson]

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tlön

[interviul] acest interviu ne ofera o recomandare esentiala. ne arata, de asemenea, ca nu e totul pierdut daca nu o urmam.

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fiction addiction

Nu prea ma omor dupa interviuri pentru ca de multe ori cei care pun intrebarile ma scot din minti ducand discutia in directii irelevante. Exista evident si exceptii, intervievatori care stiu cu cine au de-a face si ce vor sa scoata de la subiect sau subiecti care intorc intrebarile proaste si vorbesc despre ce vor ei calcandu-si respectuos in picioare intervievatorul. Un interviu pe care il recitesc din cand in cand e unul cu William Faulkner pentru ca e incredibil de bogat in ciuda intrebarilor cliseistice. Pe langa filosofia lui de golan zen, ca nu stiu cum altfel sa o rezum, care ma da gata de fiecare data, interviul are raspunsuri la multe intrebari pe care mi le puneam citindu-l: [interviul] Si pentru ca Faulkner mi se pare mult mai golan in realitate decat mi l-am imaginat citindu-i romanele, William S. Burroughs care e cel mai mare golan in scris ma surprinde de fiecare data in interviuri prin calm, coerenta si costumul respectabil: [interviul]

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bătrânul safo

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chestii livrești

pentru că este posibil ca Marcel Proust să rămână în memoria oamenilor mai mult după acest chestionar-oracol decât pentru ciclul romanesc În căutarea timpului pierdut, aleg acest “interviu” pentru tema propusă. deci, chestionarul pe care Proust l-a completat la 20 de ani. [chestionarul/interviul lui proust]

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voroncas

interviul ăsta cu woody allen e ca un film perfect de woody allen, e tot miezul lui woody allen acolo, e material dens, e absurdul lui de anii ’60-’70 pe care nu l-a mai regăsit deloc de atâta timp încoace și ne face o mare bucurie să-l revizităm acu în aceste vremuri triste, post-midnight pariziene. (e-n 4 părți, serviți cât aveți poftă și nici nu vă sfiiți!)