What I Did On My Summer Vacation
what i read, watched, and enjoyed while soft serve melted down my hands
Lately I have been eavesdropping more than I’d like to admit, even though I am admitting it right now. It’s so easy these days; the sun is shining and it’s beautiful and clear like a postcard of the French Riviera, so everyone is in the streets. I like to sit on park benches with my headphones on and pause them if the conversation happening one bench over seems emotionally heated, if there is a lot of eyebrow raising and gesticulating. The work elevator is especially good for this purpose: twenty-something floors of companies I’ve never heard of, and always a pair of people my age discussing recent app dates or friends-in-town or (in hushed tones) tepid complaints about a coworker. I’ve always felt a sort of perverse kinship with the protagonists of a genre referred to sometimes as Surveillance Cinema — Carl Boehm in Peeping Tom or Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window and especially Kyle MacLachlan in Blue Velvet. Maybe it’s boring to identify with the looked-upon women because that is the true, non-escapist reality of my life and the lives of most other young women. It’s basically cinema-verité. It is much more fun to take pleasure in looking, spying, overhearing. I learn a lot this way, and then I can cull the good stuff for my writing. This summer, I proclaimed this urge Childlike Wonder and Curiosity, and I leaned into it.
I heard men with ornamental carabiners and ornamental cargo pants and ornamental tactical climbing shoes talk about how dumb their girlfriend’s yoga class is. I heard a writer shout, “Buy my book!” and I won’t buy her book, but maybe I’ll borrow it at the library. I overheard couples fighting on the train, but I also glimpsed a man standing spread-legged over his girlfriend on the seat, and I was having such a good night that I felt happy for them, that they could be so drunk and so baldly in love. I’ve realized this season that it is undeniably easier and better to feel neutral-to-positive about strangers that I encounter in public. New York basically grooms you to become grated and worn down by MTA delays, the creaks and groans of construction, and angry drivers leaning on their horns; these minor disturbances accrue, making us all more irritable, less generous toward those around us. Maybe it’s because I’ve been so happy lately, but I’ve tried to become a magnanimous person, to train the voice in my head to sound less critical. Those teenagers being loud on an early morning commute probably haven’t been beaten down by life yet, and we should celebrate that rather than condemn it.
I think I am looking for small victories because, frankly, I am feeling a little directionless when it comes to my writing. This often happens to me after completing a large project. I finished a draft of my novel, turned the manuscript into a PDF, and then never let any of my friends read it. There was no fanfare, no sense of finality, and maybe it’s because I knew, knew on a completely unconscious level, that it was far from done. If anything, the editing process will inevitably be much, much longer. So I hesitated, and I put it off, out of shame or fear or laziness; but everything else in my life was so full of light that I hardly cared. “The fall will be busy!” I said to myself, “It’s when I really come alive! Why worry?” But I worried. I’m saying it now, unceremoniously, because I know there is a lot of work left to be done, and it’s made writing, my favorite thing, a task to avoid. Nevertheless, I Pledge Allegiance to the Seasonal Wrap-Ups, and I enjoyed a lot of things this summer! Here are some movies, books, and Concepts worth celebrating as we enjoy the last few weeks of bare-legs-weather — unless you’re me and derive a sick pleasure from shivering in a skirt with no tights.
What I Watched:
1) 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) - Museum of the Moving Image
The second-to-last time (but not the first time) that I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey was on a plane to Tokyo, the furthest I had ever traveled from home. I felt like David Bowman in some ways, adrift and alone, thousands of miles from solid ground. The last time I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey was at a packed Sunday night 70mm screening at MOMI, and now I say things like, “I think I am going to get really into the moon.” It’s hard to argue with anyone who proclaims this the best movie ever made, because it probably is, if I choose to be objective about the situation. But what I noticed while watching it this time was the human element that remains in a largely inhuman, technological film — heightened, naturally, by the experience of watching it surrounded by spectators young and old, all leaning forward in their seats as if they couldn’t believe their eyes. The scenes of those ruddy young American men jogging in place in the middle of space are so heartbreaking; there is something really tender about it, a tenderness you don’t often edge up against in Kubrick’s work. It’s not sentimental, but it is highly emotional, and when Strauss’ “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” lilts over impossibly pristine staged footage of the galaxy I couldn’t help but weep.
2) The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960) - Le Champo
Perhaps it’s because I saw this movie while jet-lagged in Paris with French subtitles, but I cried the whole time. Lately I’ve been in a regressive mood where all I want to watch is old Hollywood — which will likely reflect in this segment of my wrap-up. But it’s like a blanket, and sometimes I get cold! The Apartment is deceptively smart. It invites you into a warm workplace rom-com, but it’s also a scathing indictment of American capitalism, how work can encroach on your personal life in the most literal way. It’s certainly a more convincing argument for socialism to the average American than The Communist Manifesto — Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon are there, after all. But watching it in Paris amongst a bunch of older Parisians, I kept wondering if, in the same way that French New Wave films taught me what to expect of France, they see The Apartment as an accurate representation of New York City. And I smiled to know that yes, it really is that good, and that bad, it sparkles like that, and so does Paris.
3) The Return of Godzilla (Koji Hashimoto, 1984) - Criterion Channel
This was undeniably the summer of Godzilla. I don’t know why or how it started. I’ve been surrounded by Godzilla fans for a long time, but the oeuvre seemed so large and expansive that I just never gave it a try. One night in July, I finally decided to watch The Return of Godzilla, often considered a more ‘serious’ kaiju film, as it deals with the environmental implications of nuclear weapons. Suddenly, I was hooked. Not only is Godzilla adorable, but it was much more fanciful and creative than most American action movies that I’ve seen. I suspect this has to do with the suit actors — the actual men who don the Godzilla suit and destroy tiny models of Tokyo. I love to announce in a very suffering tone that I miss practical effects, and that CGI has made everything look like a desktop screensaver, but I think I might be right. The Return of Godzilla looks beautiful, I cried at the end, and I have developed a strong emotional attachment to Godzilla’s adopted son Minilla, a muppet monstrosity who I would love to keep as a pet. When the ending credits song featured the lines, “I love you, Godzilla / My old friend,” I knew I had witnessed something really special.
4) The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) - Museum of the Moving Image
After seeing The Searchers at MOMI, I kept telling people that it was a “rich text,” whatever that means. It was my first time watching it outside of an academic context, and I found that, released from the burden of viewing it through a critical lens, I became very swept up in the formidable Western landscape. I even cried at the end, almost against my will. I think John Ford is deeply ambivalent about its protagonist, Ethan Edwards. Yes, it’s a nasty movie, it’s often mean, but I don’t think it’s stupid. It has a lot to say about colonialism, masculinity, outsider-ism, and the project of ‘making America’. After all, the colonizer’s goal was to decimate the existing cultures and communities, sending white Europeans into landscapes that were utterly indifferent to them. I was stuck by how Ford’s characters seem totally lost and adrift in the desert, with no real attachment to the Manifest Destiny ethos, even whilst actively participating in it. It’s almost as if Ford knows that the era of triumphant Westerns has come and gone, leaving Ethan (and, by extension, John Wayne) wandering through a desolate genre, on the precipice, with nowhere to go. The much-analyzed last shot really cements this attitude: Wayne’s hulking frame fenced in by an open door, a vast expanse of Blue Unknown before him.
What I Read:
AN: This summer was such a successful reading season that I devoted a couple essays to two of the books I read: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Motherhood. What follows are brief write-ups of the other highlights.
1) Banal Nightmare - Halle Butler
Haller Butler is a nom d’importance for this newsletter. Since reading her debut novel Jillian, I have been hooked on her acerbic prose style. Her novels are always “compulsive” reads, that favorite adjective of ‘Praise For’ pull quotes. Banal Nightmare, her third effort, is not perfect, but it is my favorite so far. When protagonist Moddie (yes — Moddie) returns to her nondescript suburb, she is roped into asinine college town dynamics that threaten to unhinge the entire community. Like a weed, Moddie’s mere presence stifles the growth of anyone in her vicinity in a way that’s almost radical, antithetical to a capitalist self-care culture that insists we all prime our bodies and minds to be Good Workers. It’s absurd, it’s full of references seemingly tailored to me (Devil’s Advocate), and it’s also somehow more hopeful than anything else she’s written. Maybe that’s because it’s about PTSD — the “banal nightmare” in question — and how it can turn one’s life into magical realism in both good and bad ways. Butler resists girlbossing, she revels in feelings of disgust, but she is never above her characters. I think that’s what sets her apart from my arch-nemesis Ottessa Moshfegh.
2) The Old Man and Me - Elaine Dundy
When Elaine Dundy wrote her novel about a young American woman scamming her way through the Swinging ‘60s in London, she claimed a desire to create an antihero protagonist à la Holden Caulfield but female. Or to use modern internet parlance, Patrick Bateman-but-a-girl. After all, the men had their fun all the time — wasn’t the bell tolling for a story about an anti-humanist, antisocial woman? I found the book thoroughly entertaining, transporting even. Through Dundy’s mod, slangy prose, I was enveloped into smoking clubs and English manors and dingy flats full of beantiks. Maybe it’s because I studied abroad in London, but I’ve always been enchanted by stories of expats — it probably started with Hemingway’s tender masterpiece A Moveable Feast and spiraled outward. There’s something vicarious about the tales of international debauchery, like reading an escapist children’s novel for adults. Tell me about the old British guy you’re conning! Regale me with stories of quaaludes and Scotch! I’m listening . . .
3) Help Wanted - Adelle Waldman
In a Literary Fiction Publishing Landscape that has been for years dominated by stories of young, thin white women wringing their hands at their art world or media jobs in [insert world city here], Waldman’s retail store epic comes as a breath of fresh air. Oftentimes when book critics describe a new release as urgent and necessary, they are referring to books like the former: quixotic stories of relationship problems and Self Image and millennial ennui. But, and forgive me, Help Wanted is an actually necessary read about the lived realities of most people in the United States. Her protagonists, the graveyard shift employees of a big box store in the Hudson Valley, also worry about relationship problems and Self Image, but this is on top of the much more immediate fears of eviction, paying for childcare, and getting to work with no car. Having worked at a big box store myself as a teenager (followed by years in the restaurant industry), I kind of don’t believe you’re a Real Person unless you’ve been forced to be subservient to customers and managers who treat you like you’re less-than-human. Waldman herself worked at a big box store, and perhaps this experience prevents Help Wanted from falling back on salt-of-the-earth, Noble Working Poor stereotypes. The characters are messy, flawed, sometimes wrong, but they are extremely adept at building workplace solidarity. It’s like an Upton Sinclair novel for the Amazon age.
What I Did:
1) Went to the Jersey Shore
I never watched Jersey Shore because my Italian mother considered it somehow “offensive,” a label which she also readily applied to The Sopranos, which I’ve perhaps not coincidentally started watching this summer as well. But like all Gen Z/Millennial cuspers, Jersey Shore evokes a very specific brand of mid-2000s nostalgia that conjures Victoria’s Secret Bombshell perfume, leopard print, and T-Pain’s “Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin’).” This summer, I had the opportunity to visit the shore more than once, and I came home singing praise for the state of New Jersey. It’s really cathartic to be able to trudge around a suburban grocery store, to pop your Wawa’s cherry, to amble barefoot on hardwood floors in shorts and a tank top and a bikini still wet and salty from a beach day. I felt time slow down, each weekend a vacation, my nose perpetually sunburnt and freckled. I especially loved Point Pleasant, a charming stretch of boardwalk brimming with Americana kitsch and pretzels as big as your head. I think summers in the city can feel too packed sometimes — there is a bar you don’t want to go to every weekend, a birthday party, a screening. But Over Yonder, across the Hudson, I spent some of the sweetest times of the season. And I also sampled so many roadside ice cream stands that I should be considered a restaurant critic. There are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see.
2) Went crazy on eBay
I’m not being pithy when I say that eBay might be one of the best, most egalitarian archives in the world. Since the very beginning of its existence, eBay has become known for the accidental rarities you can stumble upon while browsing, the one-of-a-kind films or perfumes or items of clothing that you thought were lost forever. Sure, most of us don’t have thousands of dollars to shell out for Humphrey Bogart’s used Kleenex or an autographed Frasier script, but the mere confirmation of these tchotchke’s existence is enough to warm my heart. I guess I’m just sick of buying new — I’ve always been down on it, but the pandemic really aggravated the worst of our habits when it comes to online shopping and fast fashion. Not to be Catholic but it’s nice to deny yourself that immediacy, to find some old J Crew shift dress for work at a thrift store instead of purchasing one of [infinitum stock] from H&M. So what did I buy this summer? Well, stamps, a (likely child’s size) dead stock Japanese sailor dress, the 1980s Avon ‘curious kitty’ perfume, and a Ronette’s tour poster. Now, my phone illuminates with eBay notifications proclaiming deals on vintage Madame Alexander dolls or bidding wars for Miu Miu blouses. It’s like walking into the world’s largest and strangest estate sale <3
3) Made a summer checklist
Do you remember being a young person in the mid-2000s? Is your childhood closet still full of ~ironic~ American flag bandeaus and denim shorts with studs on the pockets? Are you instantly transported back to a crowded Forever 21 dressing room when you hear the sound of “Young Blood” by The Naked and the Famous (of course you’re trying on lace blouses from the Paris-themed room and an unflattering body-con skirt from the confusingly paired Clubbing/Corporate room)? Then maybe you also have fond memories of scrolling through pages of ‘summer checklists’ on We Heart It (RIP), Tumblr, or Pinterest. Back in 2013 these lists often included items like ‘go on dates with AT LEAST two boys’ or ‘kiss’ or even ‘do a jello shot’, and very rarely did I accomplish any of the items besides kiss, my one life-long passion and raison d’être, if we’re being honest. This summer, I half-jokingly made my own summer checklist, because I like turning things like ‘eat a banana split’ or ‘go to Coney Island’ into accomplishments. Last summer, the only thing on my summer to-do list was ‘have ice cream at least once a week,’ which I passed with flying colors. And honestly, those are rookie numbers. This summer I was leaning against those colorful trucks at least once a week.
(Dear reader, stay tuned for a longer and potentially more thrilling dispatch from my travels in beautiful Pair-ee ^…^)
‘On repeat’ playlist
You Didn't Love Me Then - The Hit Parade
Body Paint - Arctic Monkeys
Wave of Mutilation - The Pixies
Oh, Pretty Woman - Roy Orbison
Tears On My Pillow - Sha Na Na
Sweeping the Clouds Away - Maurice Chevalier
Taken for a Fool - The Strokes
Lingering Still - She & Him
I enjoy the generosity of your enthusiasm. Rare trait for well cultured people.
Some of the GOAT films, The Apartment gets me every time