Lewis Hyde was scheduled to give a reading at the Hammer at the beginning of Covid. I was disappointed when it was canceled. The Gift has been a favorite read since my boss at the used bookstore where I worked gave me a copy over a decade ago. Something permanently shifted in me, after reading it. Finally read the copy of A Primer for Forgetting I was going to ask Hyde to sign at the Hammer, and it is excellent, too.
It’s such a great book (and he was truly a lovely man even if he bullied me at the ping pong table like nobody’s business. Dude was the Minnesota Fats of ping pong)
Agreeing so much with the spirit of this. I think so often of the shrinkage of movies, how they no longer occupy the center of pop culture, how they transformed from stories about the “everyperson” we might see ourselves in, experiencing extraordinary things, into stories about branded characters possessing extraordinary powers, who most of us can’t identify with, and which are effectively tales of celebrities.
Man, this is . . . pretty exactly what my forthcoming book is about, and about watching that demolition of ordinary/middle classs experience from the inside out. It's no accident that Hollywood stopped making movies about people and started making them about strongmen at precisely the same time the American middle class was wiped out. It was, in its way, our preparation for fascism. It's really fucking enraging
Wow, I am your ideal reader and can’t wait to pick up a copy when you put it out. This is something I have been in a state of mourning about for a while so your book will be a confirming, communing balm. When I return to the old movies, which is constantly, threaded through so many of them, and their genres, is a sense of characters who strive from a lower level and have a belief in social mobility, and that for all the ways those movies might be considered simple fantasy or even propagandistic, they really did have a power in them, in a collective, national story kind of way. To me it totally tracks with what you say about the middle class. For god’s sakes, Norma Rae was put out by 20th Century Fox, just to name an on the nose example, in a year where Kramer vs Kramer was the top grossing movie in the US. Unthinkable. (Here’s a lone optimistic thought about the state of movies: all the young people I see at those old movies playing at the booming rep theaters circuit here in LA. I think maybe in addition to wanting to be away from phones for two hours, to escape from the blob of streaming options, and generic globalized franchise pictures with zero cultural specificity, there might be a craving for those old stories about people and those old genres/forms, which perhaps, somehow, spurs a future renaissance. A renaissance happens when artists look backwards right? I of course hold this pebble of optimism very loosely in a year where, for example, MoMA had a retrospective titled “Paramount in the 70s,” because that corporate entity happened to fund so much fucking art in that decade, but this year that corporate entity’s main movie it’s pushing for Oscars is Gladiator II.) Anyway. Thanks for letting me rant on your page. Gnashing my teeth and wiping my tears as I put in my well worn blu rays of The Godfather, Chinatown, and Nashville.
The Welch song is great. I remember hearing that it was about Napster and other file sharing websites that were popular at the time. But it also has the deeper meaning that you allude to when she sings “we’re gonna do it anyway / Even if it doesn’t pay”
Yeah, it was—I think (and really pretty obviously)—very much about Napster, it that line was always the one that felt truer to me, even if I’m not sure it was to Gill
Oh man I’m so happy for you! That place is great! (Hopefully the sandwiches at lunch no longer have those funky pickles in them sometimes. By way of “complaints” that’s literally all I’ve got.)
I’d like to add that I saw Gillian & David perform recently at The Capital Theatre in Port Chester and while not free, it most certainly was magnificent.
I love this, passing it on to someone I think will enjoy it. And, yes, McDowell has always sounded cool to me, as does Yaddo, but maybe that's just some vague interest in a place seemingly unattainable, where I would just get a rash from some creepy crawling thing.
Lewis Hyde was scheduled to give a reading at the Hammer at the beginning of Covid. I was disappointed when it was canceled. The Gift has been a favorite read since my boss at the used bookstore where I worked gave me a copy over a decade ago. Something permanently shifted in me, after reading it. Finally read the copy of A Primer for Forgetting I was going to ask Hyde to sign at the Hammer, and it is excellent, too.
It’s such a great book (and he was truly a lovely man even if he bullied me at the ping pong table like nobody’s business. Dude was the Minnesota Fats of ping pong)
Agreeing so much with the spirit of this. I think so often of the shrinkage of movies, how they no longer occupy the center of pop culture, how they transformed from stories about the “everyperson” we might see ourselves in, experiencing extraordinary things, into stories about branded characters possessing extraordinary powers, who most of us can’t identify with, and which are effectively tales of celebrities.
Man, this is . . . pretty exactly what my forthcoming book is about, and about watching that demolition of ordinary/middle classs experience from the inside out. It's no accident that Hollywood stopped making movies about people and started making them about strongmen at precisely the same time the American middle class was wiped out. It was, in its way, our preparation for fascism. It's really fucking enraging
Wow, I am your ideal reader and can’t wait to pick up a copy when you put it out. This is something I have been in a state of mourning about for a while so your book will be a confirming, communing balm. When I return to the old movies, which is constantly, threaded through so many of them, and their genres, is a sense of characters who strive from a lower level and have a belief in social mobility, and that for all the ways those movies might be considered simple fantasy or even propagandistic, they really did have a power in them, in a collective, national story kind of way. To me it totally tracks with what you say about the middle class. For god’s sakes, Norma Rae was put out by 20th Century Fox, just to name an on the nose example, in a year where Kramer vs Kramer was the top grossing movie in the US. Unthinkable. (Here’s a lone optimistic thought about the state of movies: all the young people I see at those old movies playing at the booming rep theaters circuit here in LA. I think maybe in addition to wanting to be away from phones for two hours, to escape from the blob of streaming options, and generic globalized franchise pictures with zero cultural specificity, there might be a craving for those old stories about people and those old genres/forms, which perhaps, somehow, spurs a future renaissance. A renaissance happens when artists look backwards right? I of course hold this pebble of optimism very loosely in a year where, for example, MoMA had a retrospective titled “Paramount in the 70s,” because that corporate entity happened to fund so much fucking art in that decade, but this year that corporate entity’s main movie it’s pushing for Oscars is Gladiator II.) Anyway. Thanks for letting me rant on your page. Gnashing my teeth and wiping my tears as I put in my well worn blu rays of The Godfather, Chinatown, and Nashville.
Great piece. ‘Algorithmic slop’ needs to enter the lexicon.
Thanks, man
Aha I started up the song to accompany my reading, and was not wrong. Thank you-- yes, they figured it out.
Thank you for reading, Elizabeth 🙏🏻
The Welch song is great. I remember hearing that it was about Napster and other file sharing websites that were popular at the time. But it also has the deeper meaning that you allude to when she sings “we’re gonna do it anyway / Even if it doesn’t pay”
Yeah, it was—I think (and really pretty obviously)—very much about Napster, it that line was always the one that felt truer to me, even if I’m not sure it was to Gill
Ha, I’m going to MacDowell in February but only for two weeks. And my express purpose is to create without worrying about saleability. Wish me well 😊
It does feel like something’s got to give in terms of [all this stuff you’re talking about].
Oh man I’m so happy for you! That place is great! (Hopefully the sandwiches at lunch no longer have those funky pickles in them sometimes. By way of “complaints” that’s literally all I’ve got.)
I’d like to add that I saw Gillian & David perform recently at The Capital Theatre in Port Chester and while not free, it most certainly was magnificent.
They're really just . . . peaking all over again these days. Just about the best American songwriters working, I think
I love this, passing it on to someone I think will enjoy it. And, yes, McDowell has always sounded cool to me, as does Yaddo, but maybe that's just some vague interest in a place seemingly unattainable, where I would just get a rash from some creepy crawling thing.
I need to be sent to a cabin in the woods. Any cabin and any woods!
Careful what you wish for. The days out there when I *wasn't* working well felt like being in prison