Auteur fiction
waterproof editions of Proust for the baths
Merve Emre—workaholic, book critic, mother, quite the subject of fascination across the media class, probably because of her good looks—posted an excerpt from a word doc on her instagram about the books she enjoyed last year. (This later was published in Granta.) I tend to ignore the year end lists out of pure snobbery, but a recommendation of hers stood out: “Joanna Howard’s Porthole, whose narrator, a ruthlessly seductive female auteur, a genius and a tyrant, thrilled me.” The book was released last June to little fanfare i.e. no one told me about it and I know nothing about the author. (I see she wrote a memoir about growing up in Oklahoma.)
I bought Porthole immediately. Auteur fiction is a particularly satisfying genre, on the screen and the page. The genius at work! There’s a slickness to it—maybe that of celebrity. Jean Echenoz’s Ravel follows the famous, prickly pianist on a solo piano tour around the world. (Much attention is paid to the way he dresses, and the slights he imagines from other pianists.) Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, the Sea is practically a romp: A narcissistic, aging theatre director isolates himself in the middle of nowhere ostensibly to write his navel-gazing memoirs, and is haunted by ex-girlfriends, both literally and figuratively. The director myopia on the film sets of Fassbinder’s Beware of a Holy Whore and Catherine Breillat’s Sex is Comedy stand out as particularly luscious. Both directors are sleeping with the cast. (In Justine Triet’s Sibyl, the director is trying to direct her ex-boyfriend, and his new girlfriend who will not stop crying.) All perfect works.
Porthole does not let the genre down. I tend to paper over the importance of plot—I’m into sentences—but the idea is quite funny: “World-renowned art-house film director Helena Désir may (or may not!) be responsible for the on-set death of Corey, her latest muse, leading man of the moment, and frequent bedmate. Haunted by the accident, a long trail of ex-lovers, and the corporate film studio who desperately wants to keep her, their cash cow, at work, Helena unravels and is swiftly delivered to a luxury retreat known as Jaquith House…” (Jacquith House is not unlike the quack rest retreat where John Cusack is getting treated at the beginning of America’s Sweethearts. Billy Crystal got the story credit for that film.)
It’s a Hollywood story told in the first person by a defensive director in crisis. You might just describe it as Bloviating director remembers love affairs. (“My romantic entanglements with actors were blown out of proportion by the trade journals, and shoddily reported. But they weren’t entirely wrong.”) She’s a self-important bitch, technically, but Howard eeks humor out of every possible sentence skewering actors, acting, and fame. (Of a French actor eerily similar to Denis Lavant under the direction of Leos Carax: “His method of instruction was understated-mystical. For one very long sequence he limbered his ankles.”) Helena’s movies are image-led independent films of the sort still being made in black and white to fulfill a director’s ego needs. A typical plot: a “single protagonist, a grim figure, a stolid blank, numb isolation, and a roughly masculine projection from a bygone era.” Is it meant to be hilariously insufferable? I think so? (Actually, one of her works is quite reminiscent of Ottessa Moshfegh’s hyper-masculine first novel about a drunk sailor, McGlue, which Jean Stein always told me was an underrated work of genius.) I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s very funny in a Rivka Galchen sort of way. (Funny, then, only to the audience.) A good example: “It was in Grenoble, and I thought, I am walking up the mountain in the way a D. H. Lawrence character walks up a mountain. Irrevocably.”
Since this is a shopping newsletter for people who read books, I must also point out that it’s one of the best lifestyle books since The English Prefer Wool. Lots of ideas for living tucked into it for the taking. I’ll reproduce a few of these here.
I had an overwhelming desire to buy someone a plane ticket to a Swiss Sanatorium and “the complete works of Proust in compact, laminated, waterproof editions.” Waterproof editions?! This will have to be a custom commission. I see there was a kickstarter dedicated to this cause, but their website no longer works…