Plus: Abby Holtzman interviews author Lois Lowry S
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For David Bowie by Colette Gerstmann
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CONTRIBUTORS Daniel Bidikov is a student at the City University of New York. Kara Bledsoe #BlackGirlMagic #8for8 #DiHum #BlackHistory #10perproject #choose901 Colette Gerstmann is a sophomore from New York studying English and gender and sexuality studies. She likes popcorn, is terrible at sports and probably should learn how to drive.
Letter policy Letters are welcome from all readers. We will not ever publish letters anonymously and we reserve the right to edit all letters for length and clarity without contacting the letter writer. Letters generally should run no longer than 1,000 words. They should be sent to agonzal4@swarthmore.edu.
Abby Holtzman is a senior from Newton, Massachusetts studying clinical psychology and English. Her favorite Lois Lowry book is “Gooney Bird and All Her Charms.”
How to contribute
Nora Kerrich is a senior from New York and a wonderful person to live with.
We solicit pieces from writers, though we will also accept submissions of long-form reporting, personal, argumentative and photo essays, book and movie reviews, short stories, poems, and anything else that seems suitable. Submissions will be considered from Swarthmore students, alumni, faculty, and staff, and will be considered anonymously, though we will not, except in rare cases, publish anonymously. Submissions should generally not go longer than 10,000 words.
Izzy Kornblatt ’16 is a philosophy major. Gabriel Meyer-Lee is a prospective engineering major of the class of 2019. He grew up in Northern Indiana where he first heard the word of our Lord and Savior, Yeezus Christ. Sarah Moses is a senior film and media studies major at Haverford College who plans to continue work as a documentary filmmaker after graduation. She enjoys Chipotle, puppies, and long walks on the beach.
Contact: agonzal4@swarthmore.edu, ikornbl1@swarthmore.edu
Cecilia Paasche is a senior neuroscience major from New York City. As a child, she would secretly pull all-nighters to read books, and has returned to her old tricks for the Review.
EDITORS IN CHIEF ANNA GONZALES IZZY KORNBLATT
Rudrani Sarma is a senior from Colorado. They are studying English, Black studies, and creative writing, and have a slight obsession with procrastiknitting while binge-watching “Gilmore Girls.” They love dogs, but who doesn’t?
ART STEVE SEKULA BOOKS PHILIP HARRIS
Giulietta Schoenfeld is a Bryn Mawr College senior studying Spanish among other things. She intends to minor in psychology, has done significant work in creative writing and the fine arts, and has recently discovered a love for poetry. Abhinav Tiku is currently a sophomore interested in studying history and film studies. He’s a traveler trying to find where to stop, and in his spare time, he’s also crazy about eating potatoes of really any kind.
MOVIES & TV RACHEL YANG
Bobby Zipp is a sophomore from Dover, Delaware. He’d like to thank Nigella Lawson and Sandra Lee for giving him the inspiration to keep writing.
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS ISABEL CRISTO PRIYA DIETERICH LEO ELLIOT SAM HERRON BRANDON TORRES
PHOTO ESSAYS NOAH MORRISON
S W A R T H M O R E
Doriana Thornton is a senior from Virginia. Jay H. Wu ’15 just can’t get enough of being published in the Review. They live in Washington, D.C. and on the Internet. (Mostly on the Internet.)
POETRY COLETTE GERSTMANN VICTORIA STITT Z.L. ZHOU
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Design © 2016 the Swarthmore Phoenix. All content © 2016 by its listed author unless otherwise noted. The “R” logo is based on the font Layer Cake by Luzia Prado. The “Review” logo is based on the font Soraya by Pactrice Scott. Printed at Bartash Printing, Philadelphia, PA. Please recycle this magazine.
“I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.” William Shakespeare, Henry IV
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INTERVIEW: LOIS LOWRY
March 2016
Arts
FEATURE
Holding the bones to the light
BOOKS
‘Chelsea Girls’ returns 21 On the 2015 reissue by Rudrani Sarma
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by Abby Holtzman
‘Eileen’ 22
A review of Otessa Moshfegh’s debut by Cecilia Paasche
Empathy and furor 23 Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel by Dan Bidikov
Alice Goffman’s gaffe 23 How the ‘On the Run’ controversy misses the point by Kara Bledsoe
TELEVISION
PERSONAL ESSAY
The untimely death of the Gallery Izzy Kornblatt on the sad story of Philadelphia’s best shopping mall
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by Brandon Torres
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POETRY
A Well-Kept Secret 12
Comfort food 27
On ‘The Great British Baking Show’ by Rebecca Brill
It was good: on homecoming
Giulietta Schoenfeld
Bumble Bees and Suet Pudding
FICTION
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Jay Wu
MOVIES
Missed movies 29
Recommendations from 2015 by Sarah Moses
‘Carol,’ ‘The Assassin’ 30 On complex female communication by Nora Kerrich
MUSIC
For the Starman 32
On David Bowie’s life and influence by Colette Gerstmann
Vanilla & chocolate & strawberry
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ILLUSTRATIONS
by Abhinav Tiku David Bowie by Steve Sekula Cover, back cover, 33
Apple chips
19 by Bobby Zipp PHOTO ESSAY
trip to the graveyard by Doriana Thornton
Hip hop in 2015 34
Looking at the year’s biggest albums by Gabriel Meyer-Lee
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The Gallery’s final days: by summer 2015, every store in the Gallery’s eastern half had been shuttered
FEATURE
the untimely death of
the Gallery How politicians, journalists, and activists took Philly’s best mall from the poor and gave it to the rich
text and images by Izzy Kornblatt “Chestnut Street is perceived as a problem, because it includes businesses that appeal to the vast majority of Philadelphians who do not have enormous amounts of money to spend and who are dependent on a transit system designed to dump everyone in the center of town. “…Now there are many who would like to knock down Chestnut Street as well, perhaps in the hope that everything lower-class will be pushed back into the neighborhoods.” —Thomas Hine, Philadelphia Inquirer, 1988
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hen I returned from studying abroad in spring 2015, it had been more than six months since I had visited Philadelphia’s Gallery shopping mall and it was almost unrecognizable. I was there to buy t-shirts at Century 21, a new addition in the former Strawbridge & Clothier building: it had seemed a perfect fit for the 1970s mall, once home to flagship depart-
ment stores, now to the likes of Burlington Coat Factory. I thought that Century 21, a small New York-based discount chain, would both fit the mall’s vibe and draw lots of new customers. And indeed, the store seemed to be doing decent business—but not with mall customers. Almost every customer in sight looked well-heeled, and most were white. It’s not that Century 21 had necessarily done anything to exclude others. The store did block off its second-level entryway to the mall concourse, but that hardly mattered: by the time I came to visit, almost every store on the concourse had closed. Indeed, almost every store on that entire side of the mall had closed. I walked the length of the mall underground, from the subway interchange at 8th St. to the Jefferson train station at 11th, in a stream of harried commuters—no shoppers in sight. Security guards, arms crossed in front of blacked-out store windows, looked on with disinterest. As always, light filtered down from skylights above and cheery music played on tinny speakers, but now the effect was ghostly and sad: the music
was too audible, the patterns of light on the blank travertine walls too visible. I should have been distracted by bright sale signs and window displays, kiosk owners trying to sell me iPhone cases, groups of teenagers with pretzels and water ice. At the food court, only McDonald’s was still open. By the time I next returned a few weeks later, it too had closed.
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hundred years ago, Philadelphia’s East Market Street, with its eight department stores, was one of the country’s grandest retail centers: both the price tag and the store refund were invented here. Huge signs plastered the buildings; crowds and stalls filled the sidewalks and spilled into the street. The architect of John Wanamaker’s block-long store at 13th Street, the famed Daniel Burnham, modestly described it as “the most monumental commercial structure ever erected anywhere in the world.” The store is still standing: visit its soaring grand court and you will know what he meant. The Gallery was the city’s effort to save that retail experience. As middle- and SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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Arch St CHINATOWN Reading Terminal Market, Jefferson Station, PA Convention Center
Gallery parking, hotel above
Gallery parking garage Intercity bus terminal
Gallery parking garage
Filbert St Former J.C. Penney (now Burlington Coat Factory)
Aramark headquarters
Gallery Expansion (opened 1984)
Former Gimbel’s, later Kmart (now vacant)
Former Strawbridge & Clothier (now Century 21)
Original Gallery (opened 1978)
Former Lit. Bros dept. store
upper-class residents decamped for the suburbs, retail followed: King of Prussia, with its seven anchor stores, was the new Market East. Determined to stay competitive, and draw wealthy whites in from the suburbs to shop, city planners hatched the idea of building a modern retail center around the existing department stores. Early iterations of the vision, created by the talented architect Romaldo Giurgola (of Swarthmore’s Lang Music Center), show dramatic new buildings framing Market Street, elevated pedestrian walkways, and open-air connections to the subway below. That never happened. Instead, Philly got America’s first downtown shopping mall. Financed by the city, developed by urban real estate pioneer James Rouse, and designed by much less interesting architects than Giurgola, the Gallery is a dirty white three-block-long monolith. There are no open-air esplanades or striking building forms. Instead there are blank exterior walls and hulking parking garages that cut off street retail north of Market. Better to subsidize suburb-dwellers’ parking than preserve Chinatown retail, city officials apparently decided. But regardless, the Gallery did well. According to an essay published last year in Philadelphia magazine, the mall was one of just three Rouse Company properties to gross over $250 in sales per square foot soon after its opening in 1978. It was featured on the cover of Progressive Architecture magazine (presumably not 6
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because of its exterior), and received positive coverage in the New York Times. In the decades that followed the Gallery’s opening, the city continued to push (and finance) large-scale developments around Market East. And yet despite—or maybe in part because of—those vanity projects, the area never took off in the way city officials hoped: it never became a destination like Old City or Walnut Street. Department stores were shuttered, large parking lots appeared. Today the retail opposite the Gallery is low-rent—stereos, checks cashed, 7 Eleven. The rusted remains of grand old signs are still visible atop some of the buildings. Eventually suburban shoppers stopped patronizing the Gallery, and its anchors closed: Gimbel’s became K-Mart, J.C. Penney became Burlington Coat Factory, the vacant Strawbridge’s was walled off. (Unfortunately the hulking garages didn’t go anywhere.) The mall remained busy, but with different customers: primarily lower-income people from Philadelphia neighborhoods. As the Yale sociologist Elijah Anderson put it in his 2012 book “The Cosmopolitan Canopy,” “Here, in the gap between the well-to-do areas of Center City west of Broad Street and the emerging chic of Old City on the edge of the Delaware, black people from the neighborhoods ringing Center City … found a comfortable place to shop and congregate.” These customers found the mall’s location convenient: the city’s transit system
Site of proposed Disney theme park, originally Gimbel’s (now parking)
8th St
9th St
10th St
Site of former Snellenburg’s dept. store (Now redevelopment site)
11th St
12th St
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converges on Market East. They may also not have had many other places to go. As gentrification has swept through Center City, retail catering to lower-income customers has disappeared, and public spaces where many once gathered have become much more aggressively “managed.” City Hall’s Dilworth Plaza, once a favorite skateboarding spot, now hosts a celebrity chef ’s cafe, a gelato food cart, and an armada of security guards on the prowl for skateboarders. Chestnut Street, once seen as “ghetto,” is now home to J. Crew, a flagship Uniqlo, and a Bloomingdale’s outlet—with a W Hotel soon to join them.
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t turned out that the gentrifiers didn’t like the Gallery any more than they liked the old Chestnut Street. Internet forums are littered with descriptions of the Gallery as a “jungle” full of “punks.” Spend some time with well-heeled people downtown and you’ll surely hear someone explain that the Gallery is “dangerous,” “an embarrassment,” or a “problem” in need of solving—particularly, the thinking goes, because it spans the blocks between the Convention Center and Independence Mall. What if tourists were to wander into the mall, only to discover that Philadelphia is home to both discount shops and many black people? This disturbing view made its way into the city’s mainstream press. In Inquirer news stories the Gallery was described as “decrepit,” “half-dead,” “one of Center City’s most notorious dead spots.” Had
these writers bothered to actually take a walk down from their offices above Century 21, they would have seen that the Gallery was anything but dead. I remember first visiting it freshman year: it was bustling and thoroughly normal, with those big skylights and ubiquitous brands—Old Navy, New York & Company, Books-a-Million. The food court was loud and packed. Big decorative signs featuring iconic Philly people and places hung in the atrium and a long line of customers spilled out of Starbucks. At least one Inquirer writer, architecture critic Inga Saffron, saw the Gallery’s liveliness: “You can’t help but notice what [Jane Jacobs] called the ‘ballet of the good city sidewalk’—people greeting acquaintances, seniors hunched over chessboards in the food court, teenagers flirting with schoolmates.” The Gallery was also, of course, not even remotely unsafe. A brightly lit, enclosed shopping mall filled with security guards is not a good place to commit a crime. Groups of teens hanging out in the Gallery weren’t menaces—many of them were taking good care of themselves by getting away from the violent crime sadly present in their neighborhoods. They weren’t dealing drugs—they were eating frozen yogurt and buying clothes. The Gallery’s critics probably took it for granted that their own neighborhoods were safe places for teenagers to hang out outdoors. Not all of its patrons had that luxury. But now the party’s over: there are a few stores left on the mall’s western end, but the rest are long gone. In July, a security guard told me the east side would soon close for a two-year reconstruction. To him, the mall’s strange ghostly state—open and kept up well, with moving escalators and that cheery music, but no stores or customers—was no surprise: there have been signs for years of what’s to come. “Once they closed Kmart,” he told me, “things got weird.” And it stayed weird— ghostly, open but unalive—until early January, when the east end finally did close, leaving just Century 21. Kmart shut its doors almost two years ago; its space at the mall’s center has remained blocked off since. That space isn’t one it makes sense to leave empty—it’s where the mall’s vibe should be strongest. But the mall’s owners, Philadelphia-based PREIT and California-based Macerich Co., have no desire to maintain the mall’s vibe. Their goal is to clear everything out and rebuild the Gallery as a shinier and cooler destination with a new brand and
wealthier customers. That’s why they’ve spent much of this and last year doing everything in their power to remove tenant after tenant. Century 21 is to be one of the new mall’s anchors, and it’s already playing the part. As I saw this spring, its customers are the educated, mostly white set who’ve been moving to Center City in waves over the past 20 years. No doubt PREIT’s renovation project makes sense: higher-end malls bring in more money. But the Gallery was built with public funds and much of it remains under city control: it’s not just private property whose owners are free to do what they like with it. Unfortunately city government is beholden to the interests of the powerful,
and the powerful had spoken: the Gallery was a problem to be solved immediately. How convenient that PREIT and Macerich were offering to do so, with the small condition that the city had to chip in—to the tune of a full $110 million in tax financing and other public subsidies. This past spring, PREIT and its lobbyists pushed the public assistance bills through City Council. There were some minor issues— would kiosk owners be allowed back into the mall after the renovation?—but on the whole the process went by remarkably smoothly. PREIT executives told City Council that they would be unable to go forward with the project without public help. Instead of responding by rushing
The Gallery’s 9th Street atrium sat open but empty for most of the summer.
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to provide the funds, as it did, Council should have told PREIT that the Gallery was fine as it was. It was profitable and functional, if not beautiful, and it had a loyal customer base—there was no danger of it becoming blighted.
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n Philadelphia even the smallest public decisions are often highly contentious, so the quiet that surrounded the city’s handing out its largest developer subsidy in years was unnerving. When the Gallery was first built, future Mayor John F. Street picketed its construction, calling for the money to instead be spent on struggling neighborhoods. Where were the activists this time around? The gentrification of Center City and University City has brought scores of zealous and overeducated activists to Philadelphia, and they in turn have brought socialist community groups, urban gardens, and all the rest. You know the type: they live in “frontier” neighborhoods, perhaps they graduated from small liberal arts colleges just outside the city, and it is very important to them to trumpet their support for various causes. Ostensibly, Philadelphia has have never had more socially privileged white people on the lookout for injustice—and specifically injustice regarding the planning and development of cities. Philadelphia’s self-styled “urbanists” care about issues relating to zoning, transit, sustainable design, and the like; their unifying goal is to promote the urban experience of dense, walkable neighborhoods against the auto-oriented suburbs. (They are especially preoccupied with bicycling and the “pedestrian experience.”) Urbanists discuss these issues—or rather, repeat ad nauseam their preformed views
on these issues—on the Facebook group “UrbanPHL,” they get their news from websites like PlanPhilly, and take their cues from the Inquirer’s Inga Saffron, who frequently lambasts critics of bike lanes and developers who build parking garages. Philadelphia’s urbanists claim to care about issues of inclusion and power—they throw around the word gentrification more than anyone—but the saga of the Gallery showed that for many the concern is skin-deep. Sometimes the interests of urbanists and the urban poor do intersect, as in the case of improved public transit. But when they diverge, urbanists’ presentation of themselves as righteously working for the common good starts to feel disingenuous. Is building bike lanes really about safety and justice, or is it about serving educated whites? The litmus test for urbanists’ true aims is a case where their own interests are diametrically opposed to those of poor people: a case like that of the Gallery. Urbanists tend to dislike enclosed malls: they take away from the vibrancy of the sidewalk by drawing people indoors, and they feel suburban, unsexy, “consumerist”: they don’t have beer gardens or food coops. PREIT smartly sold its vision to the urbanist crowd as anti-traditional mall: it promised to break down the building’s blank walls to create dozens of new storefronts. Renderings show cafes with outdoor seating, a boutique brewing company, and indeed bicyclists riding by. And so urbanists faced a choice: fight harmful gentrification but save a reviled mall, or allow that gentrification but gain a new “urban destination” for themselves. No one did a thing. Urbanist websites were generally positive about the project;
1970s neon signs in the old Gallery food court
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few if any of the criticisms that did surface related to displacement. While City Council mulled the Gallery’s subsidies, Philly’s urbanists were busy getting up in arms about other serious issues—like a University City restaurant daring to build a temporary wooden fence on the sidewalk. Just two days before the final Council vote, the prominent activist and recent candidate for city sheriff Christopher Sawyer took to his blog to call that fence an “abomination.” Soon after he began referring to it— without apparent irony—as an “apartheid wall. (A search of his blog turns up zero posts about the Gallery.) One day before the vote, Philadelphia magazine published a full 1,000 words about the wooden fence, calling it a “land grab” and “slam-dunk urbanist offense.” (Philly Mag’s urban issues section, Citified, also appears to never have covered the Gallery.) I’m embarrassed to be interested in the same field as these people. Even Inga Saffron, who once noticed the liveliness of the Gallery, has focused her coverage of the renovation on the extent to which PREIT will be able to carry through on its promises of vibrant sidewalks. That should come as no surprise. For generations, the many social groups that share Philadelphia—from Quakers to Italian immigrants to Center City businessmen—have jockeyed over territory and other markers of identity, each promoting itself. We should not be so naive as to believe that we have magically moved beyond such crude power dynamics or that the urbanists are any different, no matter how they present themselves. There are always winners and losers, and control of places is a key prize. PREIT’s promise is that it will promote the interests of urbanists and create a place essentially owned by the larger demographic into which urbanists fit—the educated and mostly residents of the areas around Center City. The urban poor, who have gotten the short end of the stick for longer than anyone can remember, lack the buying power and political influence to effectively fight back. In 2017, the Gallery will be no more: in its place, the new Fashion Outlets of Philadelphia will draw tourists, conventioneers, downtown residents: it will be another cool place to go, another symbol of Philadelphia’s renaissance. Urbanists will cheer the new bike storage and frequent the outdoor cafes. Downtown power brokers and city officials will pat themselves on the back for having solved the problem of the Gallery. Will any of them feel a sense of déjà vu?
FEATURE | Interview
Holding the bones to the light Lois Lowry remains a spare storyteller
by Abby Holtzman he skeleton fell apart as she held it. The bones had belonged to a small squirrel the eight year-old girl had rescued and then put to sleep with the help of her mother and a cotton-ball soaked in chloroform. The squirrel had fallen from its nest and broken its back, and after she facilitated its death, the girl placed it in a wooden box that her father had built her earlier that year (hers was blue, her sister’s red). There was a funeral, soft and solemn. The headliner was a neighborhood boy playing taps on his saxophone, dressed in his Boy Scout best. A few months passed, maybe six, enough time for some serious decomposition. And then the girl dug up the squirrel. Mainly, she was curious. She gathered a spade and some friends and after a few minutes of digging, she saw the bones sticking out of the black dirt. The box was gone, fallen apart, and so was every scrap of flesh. The skeleton was perfect, tiny, and intact – until she picked it up. But the story remains, and when told in the voice of the girl (now a woman with a few dozen books to her name), in the smooth and simple honesty that has kept millions of children around the world flipping pages, all the important parts are preserved.
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lmost seventy years after digging up those bones, Lois Lowry is an author who writes about pain and does it for young people, which marks her
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Photos courtesy of LarrySpeck.com, SPF Architects
as a ground-breaking artist and also a frequent flyer on banned books lists. Her first book, “A Summer to Die,” published in 1977, is based loosely on the death of Lowry’s older sister, who died of breast cancer when they were both in their twenties. It is the first of Lowry’s many young adult novels that look with clear eyes at grief, memory, and the grotesque realities of life and death. Lowry is perhaps best known for the Giver quartet, the first book of which was recently made into a feature film. The final book of the series, “Son,” is in many ways about a mother yearning for her child. Lowry drew from her own experiences of losing her older son, Grey, who was a pilot in the United States Air Force. He died in a fighter plane crash in 1995, leaving behind a wife and young daughter. What is most affecting about Lowry’s storytelling is the way she approaches themes of death: with a vivid precision and tenderness, like the unearthing of small bones. he Giver” tells the story of Jonas, a young man in a Utopian society where both pain and love have been seemingly eradicated. Under the tutelage of the Giver, an elderly keeper of collective memory, Jonas is forced to confront suffering for the first time as he explores the hidden history of mankind. He soon begins to see wrongness and harm in his own life, especially in the treatment of infants who do not conform to society’s standards. Jonas’s family is taking care of Gabriel, one of these infants, and Jonas has to decide what to do, guided by his
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new understandings of love and justice. Although Lowry always wrote, she was not always an author. She left college at the age of 19 to get married, eventually landing in Maine with her husband and four young children. Here, she completed an undergraduate degree in English Literature at the University of Southern Maine, and then pursued a graduate degree. Lowry did freelance work as a writer and photographer (the cover photo of many editions of “The Giver” is her own), and it was one of her stories in Redbook Magazine that caught the eye of a Houghton Mifflin editor, who wondered if she might want to try writing for children. “A Summer to Die” was born, and just as her writing career was beginning, Lowry’s marriage ended and she moved to Boston at the age of forty, where she would soon meet Martin, her partner of the next 32 years, to whom she would dedicate Son. Today, Lowry is 77 years old and living with a fearless cat, Lulu, and a dog, Alfie, whose eyes are rarely visible beneath an adolescent flop of hair. Recently, when Alfie was recovering from surgery, he couldn’t handle the jump to Lowry’s bed, so she set up camp on the low couch in the living room for a few weeks. He slept on the floor besides her. Lowry’s house is in a retirement community in Falmouth, Maine, with a view of the mountains but not nearly enough bookshelves. (Lowry chose to pack up her novels and give only her biographies, memoirs, and other non-fiction shelf space, and they stretch out in the living room in sturdy volumes. Her favorite is a collection of letters by E. B. White). One day, as we sit at Lowry’s kitchen table, populated by one Mac laptop, its keyboard stained with coffee, Lulu arranges herself neatly on top of my tape recorder and flicks away my pencil. Lowry strokes the cat’s belly and brushes her black and white hairs off of the table as fast as they arrive. I do too, and they feel like the silken prickles inside my grandmother’s leather gloves. “Stop waving your tail in that sinister fashion,” Lowry admonishes. Lulu doesn’t stop. Lowry doesn’t shy from any question, although she may answer them abruptly. If she doesn’t know something, she will say so, but normally she does know, and her response might span several anecdotes, each doled out with a measured efficiency. As an interviewee, she is all lean SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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meat; she allows no extraneous words, and you get the sense that you are doing a good thing for yourself by listening. Her demeanor contains an echo of her military father’s “taciturn stoicism,” which, for him, was a product of being male, Norwegian, and a scientist, she guesses. Lowry is not taciturn, at least not in writing, but she is piercingly precise. When she speaks about her own mortality, Lowry does so with the same tone that she talks about everything else: a frankness that is somehow un-intimate, and highly professional. As an agnostic, she doesn’t know if there is an afterlife and “doesn’t waste any time thinking about it.” She wants to be cremated (Martin donated his body to medical research), but she doesn’t care where her ashes are scattered. At the family’s Maine farmhouse, into the nearby lake, wherever - as long as her kids are happy. Lowry doesn’t have any definite opinion about reincarnation, either, although after spending a recent weekend with the Dalai Lama in Birmingham, Alabama, it’s been on her mind. Maybe having one’s ashes become part of the earth and nurture whatever grows there is a kind of reincarnation. Which, she admits, is maybe a kind of an afterlife. Lowry can see the appeal in believing in life after death. She describes a dream her daughter-in-law had after her husband, Lowry’s son, died: Suddenly there he was, Grey, standing in a meadow, and the widow kept asking him, Are you alright?, and the grass was impossible to describe in words, it was greener than anything she had ever seen. Are you alright? And Grey was standing there and all he would say was: look, look at it. Which meant that yes, he was surrounded by wonder and would be alright. Lowry likes this idea, that Grey is somewhere comfortable, at peace, but she still is most drawn to the ambiguity of agnosticism. “That would be really neat, to believe that somebody was existing somewhere beautiful,” she says. But she doesn’t believe anything with certainty. Somehow, in a tangle of unanswered questions, Lowry is able to stay upright and moving forward. This might not be surprising from an author whose two Newbery-award winning novels, “Number the Stars” and “The Giver,” end on such question marks that readers are still writing to Lowry, in anguish, begging for closure. (The last lines of “The Giver,” as Jonas and Gabriel ride a sled into the unknown: “Behind him, across vast dis10
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tances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo”). Maybe her comfort with not knowing is part of how Lowry can approach wrenching things with such unblinking evenness. I think of her with a spade, unafraid of what she might find in the place of the squirrel she had loved. Lowry’s characters, too, are content to dwell in mystery. Especially the children. Lowry’s steady gaze towards the things that frighten us is childlike in many ways: sensitive but undemanding of answers. In “Number the Stars,” Annemarie is shocked by the cruelty of the Nazis to Danish Jews, including her best friend Ellen. The only way Annemarie can take action to help is by keeping herself in the dark about the details of her mission and its danger. “It is much easier to be brave if you don’t know everything,” her Uncle Henrik tells her. And in “The Giver,” acute and seemingly infinite knowledge of the world’s pain cripples The Giver, a community elder who is the guardian of all memory. Knowing too much, Lowry seems to be saying, especially about life’s darkest questions, is unnatural and full of risk. Back in the kitchen, Lowry stands up slowly, one hand at her hip, to get Alfie a bone. He has his jaws around Lulu’s neck. They are tussling in that way that is soft but edged with aggression. It’s a tough place to be, always on the verge of a canine tooth piercing the pink of an ear. “Go,” Lowry says to Alfie, shooing him out. “Take this somewhere and eat it.” The dog trots off, and Lulu is left on the floor, stunned and languid. artin won Lowry over with a single phrase (or at least it didn’t hurt). “You have good ideas,” he told her. “When I’m King, I will give you my green hat.” It was a line originally spoken to Cornelius the elephant in the children’s book “Babar,” which Lowry and Martin had both read to their children. This was their first date, at a coffee place on Boston’s brick chimneyed Charles Street, and he was her insurance broker, who had insisted that new clients of the firm were traditionally taken out for coffee. Company policy. On the phone, she had called him on his act, and he had laughed, explaining that a mutual friend had given him her name, and that when her insurance papers crossed his desk, it seemed like a good reminder. Not a sign, not fate.
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Just an opportunity he was drawn to, with no expectations or fear. When Martin was alive, he and Lowry spent many hours just existing near each other. In Cambridge, they often both worked at home: Martin composing music upstairs (a hobby he had picked up in his later years), Lowry writing in the spacious room of the house that used to be a doctor’s office. When they would sit and read together, Lowry’s rapid page-turning would drive Martin crazy. He was a slow, deliberate reader, always the first pair of eyes to see and edit Lowry’s finished manuscripts. “He read every word,” she says. “And I don’t.” Just being together was enough, without the fuss of getting married and inviting the state into their partnership. Lowry had been married already, “somewhat unhappily,” to the father of her four children. “It just felt like something I didn’t want to do again,” Lowry says. “[Martin] would have liked to. But I think that was just sentimentality.” Lowry shies from the sentimental like it could burn her, but she is no objective archeologist herself, despite having precise tools. When she digs up the bones of those she has loved, she creates stories that move us by leaving much unsaid. Not every scrap must be examined and transcribed. On the other hand, Lowry’s stories contain little of the emotional manipulation that we often associate with sentimentality. She invites us to be moved more by what we bring to the book ourselves. When Lowry’s son died, Martin knew there was nothing he could say that would be of much help. The experience of losing a child was not one he could understand, and besides, they both knew that sometimes, the weight of a word is not enough. “I don’t know that anybody helps you through that,” Lowry says of losing a child. “It’s good to have company through an experience like that. A fellow traveler.” When Martin’s daughter died a few years later, however, Lowry could sit by his side in a different kind of silence, one injected with a fragile sense of understanding. he way that we sit with things unspoken is all about what we bring to the exchange. I think about Lowry’s other fellow travelers, her readers, millions of us, eyes wide open, walking in companionable silence in a valley of shadows she
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points out but does not define. It is her presence as our narrator that comforts, not her words. It is a presence open to mystery and hungry for more. In “The Giver,” Jonas is also faced with the futility of words. As the Giver’s protegee, he is exposed memory by memory to suffering in all of its incarnations and finds himself filled with a terrible, mute wonder. Normally, the citizens of his community are encouraged to vocalize their every feeling at a dinnertime ritual. However, Jonas finds himself unable to articulate. “But now Jonas had experienced real sadness. He had felt grief. He knew that there was no quick comfort for emotions like those. These were deeper and they did not need to be told. They were felt.” Jonas also feels his first flushes of sexual curiosity, or “Stirrings,” in a way he doesn’t feel the need to explain. Jonas dreams about his friend Fiona. He wants to know what she looks like without her clothes on. He does not want to understand why people love each other, or how. He just wants to uncover something potentially beautiful and scary, something as inevitable as bones. owry thinks before she speaks. Sometimes, she stretches her arms above her head while she does it, but normally she just looks away, and she is not afraid of silence. When she does speak, she might fidget with something: a rolled-up post-it note, Lulu’s tail. Lowry holds my gaze over the rim of her coffee cup while she takes a sip, and her eyes are ice blue. They neither dampen nor widen at the questions that I’m nervous about asking. When she slips into a story, there’s no fanfare or throat-clearing, no transition from chit-chat to tale-telling. She tells me about living in her huge house in Cambridge after Martin died in 2011. She stayed for a few years and then realized that “it was probably time to figure out where I was going to spend the last part of my life.” It took Hurricane Sandy, though, to compel her to move. She remembers the storm battering New Jersey and New York and then arriving in Boston, slightly winded but still bloated. Alone in her cavernous house, surrounded by a yard and tall trees, Lowry suddenly felt the very structure of the house shake. She knew something awful had happened and forced herself to go upstairs and look. “I went up, and there was a tree, in the master bedroom and bathroom. And
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Photo by Stephanie V. Strauss
a hole, and rain pouring in.” I imagine water pooling in the middle of her bed, turning a quilt sodden. A hat hanging from a twig. Moss on the bedposts, and Alfie swimming among the detritus. “I remember just standing and thinking, ‘Martin, come back and help me deal with this!’ But at any rate, of course I had to deal with that, and I did.” There is not a millisecond of time to wallow before the tension is resolved and Lowry ties the story shut. But so much exists between that moment - lightning visible through the roof, a Biblical flood - and the next
sentence. And it exists only in our minds, like my image of Alfie bobbing on his belly with total glee. The telling itself is clean as bones, details laid out like ribs, chronology straight as a spine. It has a bareness, though, that leaves room for the listener to fill in the joints and tendons, all the flesh that had gone. Maybe there is longing in the telling of this memory, but it appears to be mostly fascination: how has this thing aged? What happens when I turn it over in my hands? How does it all fit together? SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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A Well-Kept Secret by Giulietta Schoenfeld
Borges was onto something, when he wrote his famous essay, “Borges and I.” That’s what you think when you read it for the first time. Your hands scrunch the paper and your jaw clenches as you read, because you are reminded there are two of you. She is always there, lingering like a shadow of doubt in the early morning. Prescription can only do so much. As the sun rises, making the blue sky glow behind the clouds, the two of you exist in balance. You still maintain control, but you are weakened in the early hours, in a drowsy, drugless state. Your muscles are boneless, your eyes droop. She has a chance. Sometimes you fantasize about letting her stay, keeping her there. The world seems more colorful and vibrant when she’s at the front. But she’s dangerous. She’s a wild fire within a forest of synapses; if you let her out too long, you’ll burn out. “It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship,”
I think of Lowry in the moment before she pressed her spade into the earth – she must have been compelled by something like love, the ache to revisit, to return to memories and gravestones as sacred spaces. But Lowry takes it one step further. She pulls the bones from their hollows and presents them without polish. She forces us to look, and to remember, and to wonder – that strange mix of questioning and reverence – at the things we can’t know. At the end of “The Giver” film, after an “interminable” sequence of credits, 12
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Borges wrote. But sometimes you can feel her fighting. When you wake late and miss the allotted hour for the morning dose, you think you hear laughter crackling in the corners of your brain. Because she knows the truth you try to bury in the shadows. It’s the ugly reversal of Borges’ identity struggle; She’s the I and you, the name and while the real Borges battles his title, you are the one wrestling her back even when she’s smiling like a lion pacing back and forth in a cage, waiting for the day you slip, the day You runs out of prescription. When the you that’s come to be won’t stand a chance. She is the one that was born, the one that is real. You are temporary. Nonexistent without a pill.
a single dedication appears on the dark screen: “In memory of Major Grey Lowry, USAF.” Lowry has been telling all of her friends and family to stay, to sit through the scrolling text as the rest of the crowd stands up and trails popcorn out of the theater. It’s worth it, she says. A few months ago, in Germany, Lowry’s daughter-in-law and granddaughter waited. And when the words finally appeared, the two of them, Grey’s widow and daughter, took a picture. This story, too, is reported without ceremony. Lowry received an email asking
for a dedication and she suggested her son. That’s it. Or is it? This is not the stuff of myths or legends, but it is quietly, achingly important. A mother honoring her child. A tiny skeleton, held up to the light. The way Lowry describes it, unearthing that squirrel, it was a moment made up mostly of awe. How everything connected to everything else. What time had wrought. The skeleton fell apart as she held it, Lowry tells me, and what remains now is unpolished, raw, and true, and no longer belongs just to the earth.
PERSONAL ESSAY
It was good by Brandon Torres
“B
randon, hoy va a ser macho?” my mother would ask. Will you be strong? “Si, si, si! Voy a ser macho!” I would reply. Yes, yes yes! I will be strong! But every morning when my mother would go off to work, I never lived up to my word. Whether it was at the doorstep of the babysitter or at the gates of my elementary school, I would wrap my arms around her legs, sob, and hang on tight. “Hoy no!” I would say. Not today. Though she’d eventually force me to let go, I held on to this overly expressive love and devotion to my parents. Well into my middle school years, I would wake up early to spend some twenty or thirty minutes in bed with my parents and practically use every possible chance to rest my head on their laps and arms. Nowhere else did I find myself happier than with them. But now, laying down on the bare mattress in the corner of my bedroom, I wake up and wonder what was lost. What happened in between my high school years and my two years at college that severed this intense but natural connection to my parents? There are still days when I wake up and tread onto my parents’ bedroom early in the morning, but I feel much too awkward, much too fearful of the possibility that I may have nothing to say. No longer do I wrap my arms around them, but only lie down next to them, looking at the white ceiling, angry at myself for growing so old, for letting age burn down the walls that once made me feel so loved. I blame the aging because there seems to be nothing else to point to. In my head, it’s too easy to imagine a life where I am still taking long evening walks with my parents, walking to school and back with my mom, and shooting hoops with my dad. I can close my eyes and remember the crisp morning wind on our fishing trip, the muddy waters of Northern California rivers, and of course, the warm tortillas that would accompany every dinner. But I’m no longer seven, nine, twelve, or fifteen. I’m nineteen now, a full-time college student across the nation with selfish desires to experience the world. Sorry, I won’t be coming home this sum-
mer. I’ll be going to Japan. Sorry, I don’t think I want to go back to California just yet after college. Sorry, I can’t talk right now, I’m at the library. I hang up and proceed to Pub Nite. In pursuit of my individual dreams and desires, I have allowed our relationship to slowly crumble away, leaving ruins that I only stumble upon when I realize just how much I miss them. I can’t blame them because at the end of it, I chose this for myself. I chose to attend a school so far away and I continue to prioritize other seemingly small things over calling them every night. No. Aging may have brought about the circumstances and opportunities to leave but it was me who decided to leave it all for this. And now, I return with the same name and face that I have worn all these years, but I’m a stranger now. I intrude upon their lives, becoming another mouth to feed but just that, a mouth and no more. It became clear to me one night when my father and I went out for dinner together. We watched the live performance of many white artists in the slowly gentrifying downtown area of Santa Ana and sat in silence for the next twenty minutes. “Y, el trabajo?” And, work? “Bien. Y, como va la escuela?” Good. And, how is school going? “Bien tambien.” Also good. It’s all that I felt comfortable saying. I didn’t want to go into the details of the nights where I’ve ended up too drunk and woke up in someone else’s bed or simply
cried about how much I wanted to die. When I talked to both of my parents, who were working so hard to pay for my education, I couldn’t tell them just how shitty I felt. No, to them, school was hard but it was good. I was happy. Who am I to tell them that their long hours of work are only paying for an education that is slowly killing me, transforming me into someone else completely? No. I couldn’t do it and I still can’t do it. And so we still continue to talk on the phone every now and then, barely brushing upon the surface of my life and theirs. I’ll tell them that I’m fine and they’ll tell me that they’re fine, launching me into a hysteric five minutes where I’m trying to find anything interesting from my day. “Yeah, I talked to Jo Sensei today. It was good.” That’s the line. “It was good.” The only thing that I can find within my head to express the love that I have for them because, at the end of it, I still do love them. I call because I can’t imagine my life without them. I call to remind myself that no matter what I go through, they’ll always be there for me. I call to say “It was good” because that’s all I can say right now. I’m sorry Mom. I’m sorry Dad. I’ve grown up too much and have lost my connection to our home and our family. At this point in my life, I can only recall our memories and shared loved together and smile because of it. It was good. It really was.
Bumble Bees and Suet Pudding by Jay Wu Even “bed-ridden” implies too much movement. There is no riding here, only manuscripts as quilts, and quilts and milk-glasses carpeting the floor of Monk’s House. Sometimes a dog or a husband for company. Most faithful, though, are Virginia’s visions: Vita, short for Victoria but Latin for Life, a satyr. By Praxiteles’ account, pure, tame, fearless: dancing Kentish hops into beer; too full of movement to write longer letters or visit, too full of charm to walk anywhere but Virginia’s moonlit mind. There, Vita: garden-walking and tennis-playing, digging, sitting, smoking, talking— the most mundane imaginings; the only ones that keep Virginia from tipping over into nightmares.
ph
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Trip to the graveyard photo essay by Doriana Thornton
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This is a series about finding ghosts. A study of texture and multiple exposure is used to reveal created narratives in the cemetery.
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FICTION: Two short stories
Vanilla & chocolate & strawberry by Abhinav Tiku
“W
hat’s that one, momma?” said the child in her pajamas as she pointed to the chilled box. The agitated flies quietly buzzed around the drab store. The mother turned to look at her daughter. “That’s chocolate, sweetie.” “Chocolate?” “Yes. It’s the nice one you have on special occasions. Do you wanna try some?” “Hmmm...” she hummed as she shifted to see another glistening container. The mother followed her gaze. “That’s vanilla. It’s the one you eat at home all the time, after you eat your veggies.” “Mmmmm. I’ve had that one a lot.” “Do you like it?” “It’s nice. What’s the pink one, momma?” she said, pointing to a third container. “Strawberry, honey.” “The one with the berries?” “Right, honey.” “The red ones, right?” “Yes, honey.” “That’s daddy’s favorite, right? “...Yeah.” The child’s face was pressed against the box, her round eyes flitting across the range of available flavors, and when she stepped back, her cheeks left a foggy imprint on the glass. She rubbed her forehead with her stubby fingers to block the sweat sliding down her nose and to shoo away the fly crawling over her hair. Even with the conditioning in the store cranked up to the highest setting, the air was sweltering. “I’m thirsty,” she said, licking her lips. “Do you want vanilla?” “No.” “What about strawberry?” “No.” “You only want chocolate?” “Yes. Chocolate’s nice.” “So you’re sure you want to have chocolate, sweetie?” “Yes, momma.” “Yes, momma …?” “Pleeeaaasssse,” the child said, bobbing up and down on the balls of her feet. The
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mother smiled. “One chocolate and … one vanilla, with strawberry please. She’ll have the small, I’ll have the large,” she told the server. He got two cardboard cups and a sharp spoon from the register and the child watched as he effortlessly scooped the brown and pink and white globs out of their containers, leaving three wet holes in the perspiring frozen yogurt. The server gave the two cups to the mother, who gave the smaller one to her daughter. As the mother reached for her credit card, she instead chose to pay with cash and while she counted the crumpled bills, the child strolled outside to eat in the little shade provided by the strip mall. After about five minutes, the mother came and sat beside her daughter on the bench. The parking lot in front of them was vacant save for a sedan, which was still equipped with rusty license plates from Texas. “Do you like your chocolate, sweetie?” said the mother. “It’s really good,” said her daughter, smiling with chocolate-smeared-lips. “Sweetie, please don’t eat so messily.” The mother pulled a napkin out of her purse and wiped the spare chocolate off her daughter’s face. Her yogurt was beginning to melt, the vanilla and strawberry running into a bright pink confection. She didn’t notice. She was looking at her daughter who was slurping her own melting dessert with childish gusto. “Where we going, momma?” “We’re going on a trip, honey.” “What trip?” “Just a trip a little aways from here. It’ll be fun, like an adventure.” “Is daddy coming, momma?” “No. No, he’s not, I’m afraid.” “Why?” “At least, well not for some time.” “Where’s daddy?” “Well, sweetie,” she replied. “He’s … he left last week and is there already. That’s why he’s been gone.” As she said the last few words her eyes became watery with tears and she quickly turned to wipe them away, huffing slightly under her breath. “So where is daddy right now?” “Oh, he’s doing fine.” She paused for a
moment before adding in a tender voice, “He’s at a resort, high, high up in the mountains.” “Mountains?” “Yeah, in snowy mountains far from here,” the mother said, looking at her little girl gobbling up her little dessert. “Do you like your chocolate, sweetie?” “Yes, momma,” she said, baring her wobbly teeth as she yawned. The mother wiped some more chocolate off her nose and chin. “I’m sorry to have woken you so early, but we had to hit the road to get there by nighttime.” “Momma?” “Yes, sweetie?” “I miss daddy.” “I do too, honey,” the mother replied. She briefly gazed into the desert beyond the highway. “But we’ll see him soon, we’ll see him again in a while, once we get going again.” “How long, momma?” “Sorry?” “How long till we see daddy?” “Oh, the trip will be short, honey. It should be quite short. Very short.” “Will there be more ice-cream there? I really like ice-cream!” “It’s not ice … yeah, it’s ice-cream, honey. And there’ll be much more of it where we’re going. I’m sure of it,” she said. The two sat on the bench and together watched the road in the distance. After a little while, the mother decided to go back inside the store for another quick breather. She walked to the counter and politely asked the server for another drag before she and her daughter left. He gladly gave her what remained of the crumbling cigarette they had lit up after she gave him the money for the froyo. She sucked the smoke deep into her lungs before exhaling, “Thanks,” in a hazy breath. She was walking back outside when the server said, “Do you want to take some?” He was holding a packet of cigarettes that he’d hidden behind the serving spoons. “You know, for the road?” She looked at him, she looked at the pack, and then she took three for the trip before returning to her daughter, who was stretching her tiny tongue to lick the last drops of chocolate
in her cup. “It’s all gone now, momma.” “Did you like it?” “Yes, yes, yes, yes!” she jittered. “I’m glad you liked it,” she said, taking the trash from her daughter. “What about yours, momma?” “What about mine, honey?”
“Did you like it?” “Oh yeah … of course I did,” the mother replied, striding over to the wastebin and throwing her untouched, liquid froyo straight to the bottom. “C’mon, sweetie. Now hold my hand. We need to cross.” The child waddled up to her mother’s
leg and held her mother’s hand as they both stepped into the afternoon heat and walked to the parked car in the middle of the lot. Behind them, a swarm of flies had begun to nibble the pooling white and brown and pink leftovers, all the while scurrying over the large and small paper cups.
Apple chips by Bobby Zipp
B
efore Leslie could call her next appointment into the room, her cell phone rang. Her son’s school was calling her. “Hi mommy,” Jacob said. Leslie noticed a twinge of guilt in his voice. Was he in the principal’s office? It had been six months since the biting incident; he was due for another fiasco, and the call was right on schedule. “Hey sweetie, what’s going on? You all right?” Leslie stood up as she spoke and rested a hand on the metal desk in front of her. “Yeah, I’m ok ... but I forgot my lunchbox on the kitchen table and I asked Miss Keller to call you because I don’t have any lunch money and I wanted to ask if you weren’t busy today if you could maybe bring it,” he said, pleading. Leslie breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe third grade was the year Jacob was finally going to put his tantrums and his anger behind him. “Sure, Jakey. I’ll run home at lunch and bring it to you, okay? Don’t worry.” “Thanks mommy. I gotta go. I love you, bye.” There was a click before Leslie could finish her own “I love you”. She slid her phone back into the inside pocket of her blazer and ran her hand through her hair. Her lunch break up in smoke, Leslie contemplated a way to feed herself in less than five minutes. How unprofessional would it be for her to eat chicken soup during a Testimony? Leslie was already fifteen minutes behind schedule due to a particularly emotional Testimony first thing this morning, and Jacob’s phone call had pushed her back fiveminutes further. Her boss, Franklin, wasn’t a fan of Documenters who fell behind, and anxiety began to creep into the back of her mind. She opened the frosted glass door of
her assigned Testimony room and called out into the waiting room for her next appointment. She left the door open and sat down on her side of the metal desk, opening a manila folder that contained all the necessary paperwork. A man in his mid-forties wearing a faded maroon sweatshirt and stonewashed Levi’s closed the door behind him and sat across from Leslie. “Full name and month and day of birth, please,” Leslie said, her pen scurrying across a pink form in compact, curly cursive. “George Marcus Fletcher, ma’am. May seventeenth.” he said. “Thank you, George.” She flipped three forms, one green, one yellow, and one white, in his direction, and handed him a pen. Leslie guided him through the forms, standard procedure for any Testimony. “Once you’re finished with the Possible Linkages section, we can begin,” Leslie said. She wondered how she could have missed Jacob’s bright red Spider-Man lunchbox sitting on the kitchen table that morning; part of the reason why she bought it in the first place was because it was so hard to miss. “What about the blue form?” George asked, concerned. “You’ll sign the blue form after the Testimony is complete.” “My daughter told me they had her sign everything before she started.” Leslie clicked her pen three times in rapid succession. “Where did your daughter complete her Testimony?” She asked, paying close attention to sounding as professional as possible as she adjusted some folders that didn’t need to be adjusted. “Bloomington, Indiana.” “That would explain it. The few remaining local offices don’t have the same set of standards that we have here in Baltimore, or in any of the other major
cities.” George crossed his arms, eyeing Leslie warily. Her stomach let out a gurgle. “Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Fletcher.” Leslie was pushing ninety on the six ninety-five trying to shave as many seconds as she could from the twenty-seven minute drive from the Testimonial Affairs office to Jacob’s elementary school. She had done the drive plenty of times before: for forgotten permission slips, for upset tummies, and of course, for left behind lunches. And it never seemed to matter if there was rush hour traffic or if the roads were wide open; the drive always took her twenty-seven minutes. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t hope for it to become twenty-six. The radio in her station wagon mumbled the news through static-filled speakers, competing with the revving of the car’s engine. When she was alone in her car, Leslie always liked to have the radio on in the background. She was also the sort of person who would leave the TV on when Jacob was asleep or when she was home alone, because the voices made the spaces feel a little less hollow. “...and another heartbreaking story coming in here, we have just received a report that the body of Marina Hernandez...” Leslie’s pulse sped up. She must have misheard the name. She read in a magazine last week that people mishear things all the time. She turned up the volume of the radio, just to be sure. She had to be sure. “Hernandez was a mother of two sons, Alex and Manuel, and an active member of Holy Cross Church. Now, with the traffic, here’s Jeff Sparks...” It was her. Leslie remembered how much time she spent at the church. While listening to her Testimony, the most difficult one she’d heard in months, Leslie had desperately hoped that the church would save her, would be her SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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lifeline. Marina could get someone to watch her boys at home while she worked fourteen-hour doubles at Arby’s. When Marina needed something to get her through the night, she could call one of her friends from Holy Cross and get someone to hold her hand through the night instead. When she had finished her testimony, mascara streaming down her cheeks, Leslie went against protocol and gave her a hug. It was officially prohibited, and Franklin wouldn’t be happy with her, but as long as it didn’t happen too often, most Documenters could get away with a hug a week. Hearing stories like this about past Testimonies wasn’t new for Leslie, but it was her least favorite part of the job. They had warned her in her interview for the position that it was going to happen, and at first, she hadn’t minded. Her coping mechanism when she first began was to treat the people across the metal desk like they were just well written stories, pages that got filed away once they left her office. As the years went on, though, it became harder and harder not to care. When she dropped off the lunchbox at the front office of Jacob’s school, Leslie’s own mascara was running down her face. She smiled, thanked the receptionist, and left without waiting for Jacob to come down from his classroom. Leslie scurried down the hallway of the fourth floor of her building with a Styrofoam cup of tomato soup in her hand. The other Documenters, full of leftover pizza and Chinese take-out, had stumbled back into their offices more than ten minutes ago. Burning-hot soup spilling onto her fingers, Leslie called out “Next!” as she unlocked her office door with one hand, not bothering to see who was following her inside. She let her purse and her keys plop onto her chair and threw her plum pea coat onto the coat rack behind her desk. While she dug through a file cabinet for a set of blank forms, Leslie thought of Jacob, sitting in the cafeteria with his friends and munching on a pack of dried apple chips. Did Marina’s children get to munch on packs of dried apple chips? “Uh... should I come back later?” Leslie jumped when she heard the voice; she had forgotten that someone followed her inside. It belonged to a lanky teenage boy, no older than sixteen, sitting at her desk. Under dark, disheveled hair, Leslie saw eyes that had seen too much in too little time. “You’re fine, you’re fine, just give me a 20
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Testimonial Affairs sends the form out to students once, when they’re kindergarteners; Leslie was amazed that this boy managed to hold onto his. But how did he get it signed? She started at the crinkled boxes. second,” Leslie said, diving into her chair and whipping out the paperwork. “Are your parents out in the waiting room? Can you call them in? They need to sign the Parent Acknowledgement Form.” “No, they’re not.” “You came alone?” “Yeah. My parents think I’m at school.” Leslie noticed the boy wouldn’t make eye contact with her when she spoke, and a sinking feeling creeped into her stomach. Did his parents pack him dried apple chips for lunch? “I’m sorry, but you cannot give your Testimony under the age of eighteen without a Parent Acknowledgement Form,” she said, and started putting the forms back into the folder. “I have it.” He said, and pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. Testimonial Affairs sends the form out to students once, when they’re kindergarteners; Leslie was amazed that this boy managed to hold onto his. But how did he get it signed? She started at the crinkled boxes intently; something about the signatures didn’t seem right, but she couldn’t pinpoint it exactly. It was strictly against the rules to turn away a Testimony that had the proper documentation. She had to let him give it. “Okay, Alex, whenever you’re ready, I can’t stop you from giving your Testimony.” He nodded, still refusing to look Leslie
in the eye. She felt something tugging at her brain; it told her to stop him. “You know that this is your only chance to give a Testimony, right? You cannot add to it. You cannot edit it. It gets processed and entered into the database, and you may never see it again.” “ I know.” Leslie sighed. “Okay. Let’s get the show on the road, then.” She clicked her pen three times and waited for him to begin. Not long into the Testimony, it made perfect sense as to why Alex was here. He told Leslie of a childhood of close shaves and near-misses; he almost didn’t make it out of the starting gate because of a rare heart condition, and it almost ended when his perpetually nervous father took too long to turn at a stoplight and collided with a Ford F1-50. His favorite memories were of building rocket ships out of Legos and eating space-ice cream out of the little plastic packets. But when everyone else shed their childhood and picked up the sultry mantle of teenage-hood, Alex felt like he got left behind. He felt like the best parts of his life were behind him; he didn’t know where to go. “I mean, I’ve almost died so many times before, I feel like I might as well give my Testimony now in case it actually happens. Sometimes I feel like it might just be better if I do it myself. Then at least I’d know when it’s happening,” he said. Leslie stopped writing before she got to “...feels like would be better to kill self.” She asked if she could have a minute, put her head in her hands, and closed her eyes. All of the worst parts of Leslie’s job had decided to rear their ugly heads on the same day. She thought of Marina, and her kids, and of Jacob, and her brain imagined what the sounds of Alex’s death would be like: “...Alex Peterson, age fifteen, was found by his parents early Sunday morning...” Leslie felt something bubble up inside her; something that wanted to break the rules. Offering any outside contact to someone giving a Testimony was a fireable offense. She took a deep breath and lifted her head up. For the first time, they made eye contact. “Alex, I think you should stop. You can cancel your Testimony before you leave this room. I really think you should. Because... Listen, do you like apple chips? My son loves them.”
BOOKS Following Eileen Myles, wherever she’s headed ESSAY
The 2015 new edition of the classic ‘Chelsea Girls’ is a poem that doesn’t play by the rules
Pictured, a young Eileen Myles, whose 1994 ‘Chelsea Girls,’ reissued in 2015, chorincles lesbian life in New York City in the 1970s.
by Rudrani Sarma
I
picked up my 2015 edition of Eileen Myles’s “Chelsea Girls” from the “Classics” section of Old Firehouse Books, the beloved indie bookstore in my sleepy hometown of Fort Collins. The saleswoman, a septum-ringed 40-year-old hippie wearing a paisley bandana, winked and told me it was “one of her favorites.” Her airy voice and knowing look immediPhoto courtesy of Best American Poetry
ately made me loathe the hard-faced girl on the cover of the novel: her dark, sad eyes and upturned chin seemed snobbish, too-cool to me. Like one of James Dean’s earlier photographs, not that he looks uncool in his later ones. Now, before I’m called out for judging a book by its cover, let me tell you a bit about my familiarity with literature and lesbians: it certainly came in handy when I first dove into the panicky prose of Myles’s writing. Ever since I was a child,
my mother has studied and worked in extremely liberal English departments at large state universities: I grew up hearing stories of Angela Davis or the L-hole from dreadlocked, pink-haired writers who survived the illustrious eras of beatniks and ’Nam protests, and certainly lived to tell the tale in their brassy verse. So, as a child, most of the grownups in my mother’s mysterious world were poets. And lesbians. And hilariously animated dinner guests. When I inevitably found SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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myself in the writing world as a teenager, I felt a particular kind of safety when I encountered the Lesbian Poet—rare as they were to find—at a workshop or reading. And in my early days as an insufferably vocal liberal, I found myself morphing into these very women who had graced my childhood, their willowy skirts and bleary wine-drunk faces eerily resembling mine on Saturday nights. I had finally achieved the queerness that, in my mind, was necessary to become a brilliant female writer: I remember being particularly pleased in my realisation that I, too, found women beautiful in that stomach-churning, knee-wobbling way and could swirl around sloppy mishmashes of words on my tongue until they came out enticing, almost erudite. But, I am not a lesbian, or a poet, and I’m certainly not a white woman. And that face, who I later realised was a young and self-assured Eileen Myles, reminded me how differently I had turned out, in the end. I embarked on “Chelsea Girls” with the salty, nearly envious residue of yearning for the White Lesbian Poet experience. I wanted to feel so free, my words loose and unconstricted, like the hardened hush of the first few lines: I really had no damn business there. I mean, why am I living with my ex-girlfriend and her new girlfriend, and her ex-girlfriend. How could that possibly be comfortable. I could be writing this from a jail cell. Funny, huh? This introduction to Myles’s book, which was marketed as a novel in this new Harper-Collins iteration, made my stomach sink. Her words felt carefree,
but also careless, in their looping and lifting and pushing away. This initial story, entitled “Bath, Maine,” plunges into Myles’s poetically frenzied sentences on page one, while the narrative conciseness of the next story, “Merry Christmas, Dr. Beagle,” took time to ground the reader in Myles’s adrenaline-filled world. Although its opening lines are just as neurotic and kitschy as the previous chapters, this story eases comfortably into the flighty abstractions of the narrator’s inner monologue: There’s a place I don’t go anymore. Get on the “F” anywhere, take it, bells ringing and all, air-conditioning in the summer, out to Roosevelt Avenue, there you change to the number seven train, old clanky, interior dry as bone, people grim, canned— to the very end of the line, Main Street, Flushing. Perhaps it is because I am so viscerally familiar with that old clanky seven train, which today is still as old and clanky as in Myles’s 1970s world, that I prefer this second story, and the ones following it, to “Bath, Maine.” But I have a feeling the crisp, almost somber voice in this one has to do with my wrenching desire to follow it, no matter what, to whichever shady doctor’s office it’s headed. Myles’s second story—and I call it a separate story for a reason—is far more effortless and skillfully doled out than the one introducing our narrator, Eileen, perhaps because it wields the sharply drawn images I later found to be the hallmark of Myles’s poetry. I won’t tell you what happens at the doctor’s office, or how painful yet elegant Eileen’s language is when she describes her alcoholic father, or the funeral of her first lover. Myles’s book is celebrated for a
reason, and these stories of women growing their poetic flight feathers, and drinking what they want to drink, and fighting the men who dare to tell them not to, are terribly important. And I would much rather have been assigned this than “The Catcher in the Rye” or “Dharma Bums” on numerous occasions. Yes, Salinger and Kerouac are brilliant whittlers of strong narratives, but Myles’s verbal prowess is evident on a sentence level in a way theirs aren’t. My one wish for this new edition of the 1994 book is that it be marketed as something other than a novel. Genre classifications nowadays have more to do with sales than anything else, but Myles’s book belongs with the likes of Denis Johnson, Alice Munro, and other masters of the interstitial first-person vignette. “Chelsea Girls” is most certainly not a novel: it is a book of short stories, if anything, because almost every one of Myles’s chapters can stand alone (except, perhaps, the first one). And although her language is haunting and instinctive, I would find it hard to connect to it as a queer person of colour without having the parallel experiences of Audre Lorde or Diane DiPrima in tow. “Chelsea Girls” is a poem that doesn’t play by the rules. It reads like prose, for one. But it is precisely Myles’ secret weaving of metrical feet and enjambment into her narrative that renders her a genius. She writes, in her final story: I’m kind of overwhelmed by the beauty of things like a fascist. Which, consequently, is how I felt when I finished “Chelsea Girls.”
A lurid tale of a woman on the cusp of transformation REVIEW
by Cecilia Paasche
E
ileen, the eponymous narrator and antihero of Ottessa Moshfegh’s debut novel, is not a happy young woman. And if you think even for a moment that she is, her voice from 50 years later will soon assure you that 24-year-old Eileen was undoubtedly the most miserable wretch in all of New England: “I tried to control
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my myself, and that only made me more awkward, unhappier, and angrier. I was like Joan of Arc, or Hamlet, but born into the wrong life—the life of a nobody, a waif, invisible.” So begins “Eileen,” a lurid tale of a young woman on the cusp of a transformation, narrated by her future self sharing the excruciating details of her former life in the weeks leading up to her escape. Life in a small coastal New England town is oppressively dismal for Eileen Dunlop
in the winter of 1964. She is compulsively self-loathing, utterly friendless, and hopelessly stagnant in her job as a secretary at a prison for teenaged boys. Moshfegh precisely catalogues the minutia of Eileen’s misery to an almost satirical degree. She lives alone with her delusional and cruel alcoholic father in a filthy house, virtually untouched since the death of her mother: “Everything just sat there collecting dust, a magazine splayed over the arm of the couch for
years, candy dish full of dead ants.” Like the magazine and the ants, Eileen had remained in the house, her spirit festering. Her only “good times” include the moments after purging her insides with laxatives (“Empty and spent and light as air, I lay at rest, silent, flying in circles, my heart dancing, my mind blank”) and stalking a handsome coworker (“I held tight to the magical notion that as long as I kept close tabs on him, he wouldn’t fall in love with anyone else.”). When the older Eileen comments, “It may not sound all that bad to you, but it was pretty grim living there,” I longed to respond, “No really, we understand! We believe you!” While regaling us with tales of woe and festering banality, the older Eileen repeatedly points out that all of this was destined to change for young Eileen, and life would become bearable soon. Gradually, we find out that this will be her last Christmas at home, her last trip to the liquor store to replenish her father’s gin supply, her last day working at the boys’ prison. This narrative style does eliminate some suspense —we know she will get out, we know she will find love—but the tenor of an older woman remembering a misspent youth and her purpose in reliving and retelling usually keep the narration from becoming trite. It is not clear if we can trust the hypercritical and at times melodramatic portrayal of this young woman. While the narrator repeatedly emphasizes young Eileen’s selfish spirit, she also does her fair share of touchingly selfless tasks, like creating fake surveys to fill the time of the sad visiting mothers at the prison: “I thought having to fill them out would give the women a sense of importance, create the illusion that their lives and opinions were worthy of respect and curiosity.” Is there an ulterior motive to the older Eileen convincing an audience of
the sheer misery of younger days? That a young woman so imprisoned by circumstance and self-repression works in an adolescent prison is almost too obvious to be metaphor, but the implications are intriguing nonetheless. Eileen is impassive to the plight of the boys, yet perversely fascinated and aroused by the nearness of so much adolescent male energy: “I watched for a minute or two, rapt, stunned, mystified until noise from the hall made me jump and scurry back up to the office. I really don’t think the boy saw me. I learned later on he was only fourteen.” Everything changes for Eileen when Rebecca arrives at the prison, disturbing the routine and presenting an opportunity to have a friend. Rebecca is suspiciously beautiful and refined to be working in such an environment, and Eileen falls head-overheels in awe from the first crisply accented exclamation that Rebecca studied at Harvard, not Radcliffe. Eileen’s life-altering attraction to Rebecca is not unlike that of Therese and Carol in Patricia Highsmith’s “The Price of Salt” (adapted in the 2015 film “Carol”). This is a recognizable motif: the young, sad girl captivated by an older beauty, the potent mixture of admiration and envy. But the result of Eileen and Rebecca’s friendship is altogether sinister and surprising, and not something that I will spoil here. The speed and rhythm of the novel picks up perceptively with the entrance of Rebecca, propelling young Eileen closer to the escape that our narrator has forewarned. Oscillating between absurdly grotesque and disturbingly relatable, Eileen’s mind is a fascinating place to be, and even her smallest actions are documented with disarming detail. One such passage shows Eileen, unduly obsessed with modesty and chastity, feeling an itch in her “nether
regions” at work: “So I had to dig my hand down the front of my skirt, under the girdle, inside the underwear, and when the itch had been relieved, I pulled my fingers out and smelled them. It’s a natural curiosity, I think, to smell one’s fingers.” Such stark descriptions of Eileen’s habits and neurosis reveal Moshfegh’s uncanny ability to expose seldom acknowledged human truths. “Eileen” is a formidable debut novel for Moshfegh, a young writer beloved by the Paris Review, which has published six of her short stories thus far and awarded one, “Bettering Myself,” the Plimpton Prize. Her only previous long-form fiction work, a 2014 novella called “McGlue,” won the Believer Book Award and the Fence Modern Prize. “Eileen” has thus garnered considerable attention since its late 2015 publication. Throughout her work, Moshfegh is unfailingly sharp and perceptive, and her realist treatment of the ugly and mundane rather than the pleasant and extraordinary is reminiscent of Raymond Carver, or, more contemporarily, Jonathan Franzen. Eileen herself describes the New England aesthetic that seems certainly self-referential on the part of New Englander Moshfegh: “We New Englanders are uptight for sure, but we have strong minds. We use our imaginations effectively. We don’t waste our brains on magical notions or useless frills, but we do have the ability to fantasize.” In her short stories, “McGlue,” and now “Eileen,” Moshfegh’s strong mind and effective use of imagination are evident. Her pen is surgically precise and unyielding as it cuts into the human body and psyche—so much so that “Eileen” can teeter on the edge of tedium, but is saved by the pulsing momentum carrying the story to its climax and conclusion.
Latest Franzen novel attempts empathy through furor ESSAY
On ‘Purity,’ the newest novel from Swarthmore graduate Jonathan Franzen
by Dan Bidikov
I
imagine that book reviews exist more to ground points of intellectual controversy than to provide consumer information. If someone wants to buy a book, whether or not they would be advised to do so is better addressed by a software generated list of one-to-five star customer ratings than one to 5,000 words of carefully styled prose on the subject of carefully styled prose. If someone wants to
read a book review, they should admit that they are not reading about the novel more so than the critic’s institutional ego. Perhaps they are playing a game to see which writer uses the most clichés. I don’t read or hold much stock in book reviews, and I don’t think Jonathan Franzen does either. In reviewing his latest novel “Purity,” a book that hit shelves months ago and has by now been reviewed to death both professionally and algorithmically, I doubt I will be able to offer an interesting critical perspective or a binary vote of approval.
I enjoyed the book. It was fun to read, and funny. I laughed, once or twice out loud, and I was impressed with the way that many of the sentences and passages were put together. I was both sympathetic to and horrified by the diverse (emotionally if not racially, make of that what you will) cast of interesting characters. I didn’t really like it as much as his other books. Overall I would probably give Purity 13 forced smiles out of 6.5 confused elephants. That the narrative unfolds in a twist on the typical Franzen fashion of multiple SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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semi-related arcs shot from different angles, or that the Dickensian references suggest a neo-industrial breakdown of disruptive capitalist institutions, or that the coded metaphor for the contemporary literary culture provides a layered take on irony as a social value resonates very little with the college-aged readership of this magazine, no matter how intellectually uppity it likes to feel. At least, it would not mean anything to me. There are, it seems deliberately, a number of things in Franzen’s latest novel that do resonate very deeply with now-generation college students. I will speak to those things as best I can so that apart from the very simple decision of whether or not you want to buy the book, you can try and make the more difficult decision of whether or not you want to buy the book’s mission. Most young literary types have one of two opinions of Jonathan Franzen (here the name metonymically refers to his books, essays, and seemingly outrageous public statements): either (1) he is a very good, maybe great writer with interesting things to say about people and relationships and how those two things interact or (2) he is a crotchety old douche, who writes boring and chauvinistic garbage; he exists only to proliferate the blight of dated literary culture because he is discomforted by the thought of his waning relevance, and also Gawker rules. Indeed I have clicked through many a think piece that speaks loathsome 250-word volumes of his perversely masculine-fantasy sex writing, his completely out-of-touch point of view on literally any issue, even the gross improbability of his marriage to a real woman. I am skeptical of this range of views, because even though it is completely plausible, it seems unreasonably aggressive—outside of the empirically unsustainable allegation of diverting book sales from women writers or that he comes off as kind of a pompous jerk, I doubt he has done that much to make so many people this angry. Whether my stance rests on the sincere quality of the author’s work or mere positionality—I am a clinically grouchy white male with a hard-on for Germany and a posted bounty on several tech executives—I imagine the average Swarthmore student has already decided for themselves. And there is the other element that I’m not interested in unpacking that, because I don’t really have the headspace to give a shit about it. Much of “Purity” serves to offhandedly address and analyze the author’s vitriolic hatebase. To start, Franzen disaffiliates with his own popular stereotype by writing it into his novel. The has-been auteur 24
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Charles—who meets second wife Leila while married, via inappropriate teacher-student relations—has paralyzed himself in a drunken motorcycle ride, passing the time telling jokes about Michiko Kakutani reviews and bitterly decrying the amount of Jonathans in contemporary American literature. He writes a “big book” that has failed critically. Charles’s day-to-day is as follows: “[He spends] his day in boxer shorts, bitching about the weather.” It is what we have imagined Franzen doing for the last six years while supposedly working on his continent-and-generation-spanning novel. And yet Charles’s disastrous life is no less fulfilling than those of the other convicted serial adults chronicled in the novel. Take his wife Leila, an old school journalist battling for her relevance. Or her committed boyfriend Tom, the proprietor of an online newspaper looking to move Internet media backwards. Or take their mucky relationship as a whole in a whirlwind of prescription benzodiazepine, twisted commitment to former romantic partners, and grating conversations about biological clocks or the quest for mutually agreeable sexual politics that resemble those optical illusion hallways that twist into gravitationally unwalkable orientations. Even worse are the grown-ups who don’t even pretend to be normal people: consider Pip’s mother Penelope, the reclusive former artist who spent her trust-funded MFA years wrapping herself in wax paper to support representational politics and estranged herself from herself in order to raise a child under bizarre ethical pretense. And even worse are the atomically fissive conversations between Penelope and her ex-husband who, for the sake of not ~~spoiling it~~, will not be named here. They are unstable to the extent that, if you accept the hypothesis that fiction is autobiographical, grounds are provided for Franzen’s immediate hospitalization. But, as protagonist Pip puts it, they simply “cannot afford to be depressed,” neither financially nor socially. Pip is a clever young woman whom I would very much like to take to the prom. Or an ironically prom-themed party that might be hosted by one of the many young characters embodying the chimerical assembly of what the author thinks 20-somethings are like and what they are actually like, characters I like to imagine Pip and I quietly deploring and appreciating in equal measure. Characterization in “Purity” functions as scaffolding for cultural commentary. However, this does not make the book a structured cultural treatise. The charac-
ters and narrators of “Purity” give body to Franzen’s theses almost exclusively in alcohol-inspired rants and resentfully targeted masturbations. Much of the novel reads as if the author is thinking out loud to himself, as if he is logging meticulously detailed caricatures of the kids who bother him at school into his diary, nailing them (or so he thinks) right down to their fundamental modes of being. In this way he simulates the free and unfiltered expression of impassioned nonsense that one in 1,000 times yields an original thought of his Twitter-savvy opposition. His book is held together by mimicry of the public that airs its dirty laundry over the Internet such that it’s never clear if it is done to achieve meaningful ends or just for the sake of it. The sweeping thesis statements made in “Purity” are obscured in walls of uncomfortable and awkwardly voiced anti-social rants. Consider the following passage, in which Pip finds herself at odds with her colleagues, interns at an organization that Franzen has conceived as a self-aware parody of WikiLeaks. At this “Sunlight Project” (located in a scenic Bolivian mountain range that one can’t hear about and not imagine a cute Instagram post captioned “trip to Bolivia, bitches!”), the employees are sheeplike only in their productive maximization of individualism. “...the division of labor by gender was perfect. The boys went to a windowless and heavily secured building beyond the goat pasture and wrote code there, while the girls hung out in the refurbished barn and did… social media and copywriting. To a person, they had backgrounds more fascinating than Pip’s…they appeared to have spent their college years not going to class (they’d already read and reread ‘Ulysses’ at twelve while attending private academies for the supergifted) but taking semesters off from Brown or Stanford to fabulously work for Sean Combs or Elizabeth Warren…Pip saw that TSP couldn’t possibly be creepy or cultish, because the other young women weren’t the kind who made mistakes.” This description of the organization’s hiring practices is where the gears of Franzen’s argument start to mesh and move. Behind the selection of the “fascinating” body of interns is a deranged East German with an uncapped Oedipal complex. Andreas Wolf, who also functions as a self-aware parody of WikiLeaks, is a sort of centrist Julian Assange. He admits that he would never brush up against a powerful tech company—governments, after all, are much more Image courtesy of the New York Times
savory targets, and he practices a unique brand of “militant feminism” that, while really an excuse to surround himself with attractive women, appears publicly as a sign that he is doing the right thing on at least most fronts. The smooth, prestigious, and progressive veneer of Wolf ’s technologically-motivated push for ostensibly righteous social ends obscures what is wrong with its membership, its founder and its fundamental purpose. A chaotic diarrhea of classified intel becomes, with the right feminine touch of public relations, a noble cause. A group of people who are so past pretentious that they can only be boring is solidified as the most wonderful subpopulation in the universe. They are cool, they are intelligent, and most importantly they are smug. It’s not a new idea, and certainly not a new one for Franzen. Consider something written a couple of years ago in a collected translation of essays, in response to a series of advertisements by Apple emphasizing the simplicity and elegance of their products: “You wouldn’t want to read a novel about the Mac: what would there be to say except that everything is groovy? Characters in novels need to have actual desires; and the character in the Apple ads who had desires was the PC…his attempts to defend himself and to pass himself off as cool were funny, and he suffered, like a human being.” The point is less, contrary to popular critical belief, about the make of computer on which Franzen writes his books, but more about the way in which modern life swells the market share of uniform chicness and leaves less room for personhood. And indeed, our girl Pip makes a point of owning a “cheap, generic PC from OfficeMax” while her peers do their gawking on expensive MacBooks. She owns a shitty and slow computer due to pressure of circumstance, while her fellow interns and Santa Cruz private schoolers might consider their laptops one of many unquestionable human amenities. Perhaps the metaphor is becoming clear: while “Purity”’s unstable
cast seems best defined by its misery and brokenness, it remains unrecognized in its potential for constructive self-development. The world’s human Apple computers are convinced that they have bigger things to worry about than their own testy components, and that they are especially privy to the understanding and resolution of global human struggle. Meanwhile the generic laptop folks are so preoccupied with their own problems—problems that shouldn’t even exist! problems that Steve Jobs never would have had!—that they are positioned to contribute little in the Very Straightforward and Vaguely Progressive Good Fight against Badness. The sentiment as it stands in “Purity” is a little anti-capitalist but mostly the more familiar Franzen dogma of anti-Cool. It is, in a technofabulous world, undesirable to have a Windows life. It is morally repugnant to aspire to a prefabricated house and mostly repaid loans and a whatever job that you leave as soon as you can so that you can slam deflated tennis balls on the side of a wall until you feel passably resigned. And, Franzen believes, that judgment deserves fair scrutiny. That the average human being’s operating system should require a few crash-prone iterations, or that their batteries should wear out their electrochemical capacity and demand replacement, is not necessarily a problem waiting to be fixed. An emphasis on individual maintenance is not selfish or flawed: rather, it provides the personal and social benefit of the externalities which arise from the arduous accumulation of self knowledge. But in rebelling against the increasingly pervasive mass-individualism of modern hipness, it’s easy to go too far. The journey for self-aware uncoolness bears its dangers. Consider Pip’s mother’s case—her decision to remove her child from basic financial security as progress towards personal emotional fulfillment is acceptably unjust. In “Purity,” Penelope Tyler’s quasi-spiritual abandonment of worldliness (she calls it her “Endeavor”) is contrasted with the precocious collective mastery of worldliness. It’s
very easy to go too far in either direction, to be immorally selfless or nobly self-centered. To exist in either extreme is individually satisfying, but neither yields the positive social end it proudly guarantees. The point, really, is not that millennial youths are uniquely misguided in their moral urges. This is clear almost right off the bat as the book unfolds its older characters. The engine of misdirected social equity is not a millennial invention. Yet having declared the world of the so-called adults to be completely shitted up and the prospects for the future unhopefully ambiguous, Franzen appears at a glance in the ungainly position of being considered a person who holds claim to “hating everybody equally.” He does not seem nostalgic for a state of affairs that never was—rather, he is entirely alien to the concept of nostalgia. But though it is hard to see, he is hopeful. He is almost corny. Consider the closing lines, in which Pip looks to the future: “It had to be possible to do better than her parents, but she wasn’t sure she would. Only when the skies opened again, the rain from the immense dark western ocean pounding on the car roof, the sound of love drowning out the other sound, did she believe that she might.” This is “Purity”’s conclusion: a nonspecific appeal to embracing uncertainty. It is as generically positive as it gets. Maybe the point is that the novel’s ending be an experimental step towards the appreciation of human badness. Or maybe it is a last minute maudlin appeal to the people who can’t separate the idea of Franzen from the idea of douchebag. Either way, it presupposes that you have made it to the end of “Purity” through almost 600 pages of one-sided conversation with Jonathan Franzen. Whether or not the attempt at universal empathy via furor he presents is enough to exonerate the author of his difficult and especially dickheaded social position is the most important, and only, open question it contains.
Alice’s adventures in Wonderland The controversy over Goffman’s now-disgraced ethnography misses that the book was bad to begin with
by Kara Bledsoe
L
ast school year I was given the opportunity to write a review of “On The Run,” an ethnographic study written
by Alice Goffman, for the Swarthmore Review. Goffman, an up-and-coming sociologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin, decided to study a low-income Black neighborhood in Philadelphia as part of her thesis for the University of Pennsyl-
ESSAY
vania, and as is expected of an academic, she adapted her notes into a book. Her extensive fieldwork has come under fire in the past several months while colleagues in sociology and anthropology began to call into question the veritability of the text and SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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the apparent lack of consideration for ethics in her acquisition of information. Honestly, I am not particularly concerned with how the soc/anth community has either accepted or rejected her work; my primary objections to “On The Run” are centered around the shoddy writing, the presumptuous conclusion, the irrelevant addendums, and the blatant hypocrisy. 1) The book, at a basic level of readability, is poorly written. What’s worse is that Goffman offers no new information. She restates, repeatedly, what is already known about low-income Black neighborhoods in urban centers, and she does so without any of the nuanced analysis that one would expect of a scholar who received an unprecedented caliber of media attention. So then how does one explain the praise she garnered immediately upon the release of her book? Your guess might not be as good as mine. I think she got so big because she’s anomalous: a small, unassuming white woman with superstar academic parents who befriends a few rough-around-theedges-but-inwardly-good Black men and follows them around a rough part of town, taking copious notes of all the injustice so that she can do her part to right the wrongs of an inequitable society. What a hero. MY hero, Alice. Thanks. 2) Goffman is able to neatly situate her story as the latest and greatest news coming from the inside of the Black community. Again, thanks, Alice. Because without your book, how would anyone know about police brutality and the corruption of the criminal justice system? I originally had problems with this part of the book because I felt that Goffman was compartmentalizing Black history. Any historian would tell you that there are no distinct beginnings or endings to history: the analysis of a specific moment in time is grossly incomplete without consideration of the historical and contemporary social, political, and economic context. “On The Run” reads like a research paper written by a student who hasn’t read the primary source materials and relied only on JSTOR book reviews to situate their argument. I have been there, Alice. #NoShade… In this present moment, though, I feel that Goffman’s understanding of her role in enacting social change is largely exaggerated. Goffman presents herself as the white knight of anti-racism activism, but what she doesn’t seem to realize is that there are plenty of people who have already said what’s she’s saying, who have said it better, and who have actually done something about what they’ve witnessed: she’s late to 26
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Goffman’s understanding of her role in enacting social change is largely exaggerated. the party by almost a century! The only way her findings are groundbreaking is if you are unfamiliar with or unbothered by the tensions surrounding white people going into poor, minority neighborhoods and transcribing the observed social ills. Again, there is a history behind this practice that walks a fine line between the exposure of injustice and the exploitation of marginalized people. If she hasn’t read it yet, I would encourage her to check out Tim Wise’s “White Like Me.” It’s not a perfect text, but since she does such a good job translating the Black experience for sympathetic white audiences, she might find kinship with Wise, who speaks candidly about the realities of doing anti-racism work as white person. 3) Why, Alice, would we need to know that your white friends thought you were crazy for wanting to move to the ghetto? No one needed to know that. These random additions in the book’s extras were irksome because they were irrelevant: they revealed to me that her reasoning for publishing the book was less about raising awareness for the causes she now claims to champion, and more about having something to show for yourself in light of her lineage and the expectations of her mentors and peers. It seems as if when you get to a certain stage in your career, you’re supposed to write a book. When both your biological father and your biological mother and your step-father are all prominent figures in your field, you’re supposed to write a book. When you’ve spent a decade of your life doing fieldwork and you just moved out of that neighborhood, you’re supposed to write a book. When you are in your mid-to-late 30s and are on a tenure track at a large stage school and you want very much to have a permanent position, you are supposed to write a book. And, doubtless, you hope very much that people receive it well, and think your ideas are compelling and compliment your poignancy and stuff. You need them to do that. Your book’s positive reception is the key to advancing your career. I get that. It’s like the ethnographer version of Jeb!’s “Please clap,” and fortunately for her, people actually do. Large groups of primarily white audiences
are convinced that she is the next big thing in social justice, and that’s precisely what Goffman wants, the credibility of commercial success. Now that she has this platform, though, what has she done? 4) I went to see Alice Goffman speak at the University of Pennsylvania shortly after my first Review piece was published. I was able to confirm that Goffman’s white Savior Complex is off the charts. She gave vivid accounts of various manifestations of oppression, and throughout her talk I was thrown by how inconsistent her expressions were with her speech. She spoke of the obligation she felt to “do right” by the family she had found in these neighbors, how she loved them, and how they loved her, and how now that she is done with living in their demeaning conditions, she is dedicating herself to lifting them up. So fine, Alice. What exactly is it that you are doing to improve the lives of the people whose exploitation made your 15 minutes of fame possible? You seem to have a lot of speaking engagements. Where does that money go? Do you pay the exorbitant court fees that trigger the warrants that enable the hyper-policing of your “family”? Have you started any programs for the youth in the neighborhood, whose childhoods are cut short by the school-to-prison pipeline? Are you planning on introducing any legislation to combat the political corruption that ensnares your ethnography’s subjects? What have you done? I’ll wait. I really want you to prove me wrong. In the meantime, there are hundreds of grassroots organizations who are doing the work that Goffman is praised for suggesting. How do you columbus social justice?? #AskAlice. To end, I recognize that it takes a considerable amount of effort and time to research and write a book and that it is much (MUCH) easier to sit back in the main library of my cushy private college and critique someone else’s efforts. Kudos to Alice for putting in that work. She was able to force the majority to acknowledge the disadvantages of the minority, and bridging those gaps can be the pitfall of social change. We all are in the struggle together, and I’m definitely a supporter of interracial coalition. Still, while I appreciate the consciousness raising, I think it’s also important to be clear about what our goals and motivations are in the campaign for a more just, equitable society, and Alice’s end game is pretty clearly not aligned with effective activism. Indeed, the jump to criticism often happens too soon, but in this case, it’s time we left Wonderland and entered the realm of reality.
TELEVISION A world where all your old friends come back again ESSAY
Finding comfort in ‘The Great British Baking Show’
by Rebecca Brill
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returned to school early from winter break to work on my thesis and found myself alone for two weeks in my four-person house. Campus was mostly empty, and none of my close friends were around. I decided the best way to stave off loneliness was to whip up a batch of lemon cookies. It wouldn’t have normally occurred to me to bake, but I had recently started watching “The Great British Baking Show” (née “Bake Off ”) on Netflix, and the show made it seem like just the right project to take on. With my laptop set up on the kitchen table beside my measuring cups and sack of flour, I watched episode two of season five—devoted to biscuits, appropriately—as I worked. The show gathers 12 amateur bakers from around the U.K. to compete. In each episode, one contestant is eliminated until only three bakers remain for the finale. While Diana rolled pinwheel dough and Nancy prepared what would eventually become the walls of a gingerbread house, I creamed sugar and butter in a metal bowl. I added the dry ingredients to the wet ones, rolled out balls of dough, and placed them one by one on the baking sheet. It almost felt like a communal activity. The batch was still warm when my brother called to inform me that one of my childhood friends had died a few hours earlier in a bus accident on a community service trip. At first, I was convinced that he was playing a sick joke on me. The semester he’d studied abroad in Scotland, I’d lied and told him our parents were getting a divorce, just for the hell of it. I figured this was his revenge. “I don’t believe you,” I told him again and again. “Why would I lie about this?” It was a fair question, but it took me minutes after I hung up the phone to process the unfathomable news. It was late, too late to catch a train home
to New York. Most buildings on campus were closed. There was nowhere to go. So I sat. I sat on the couch and wept and drank and wept and lay down on the floor and sat again. At some point, I pressed the “resume” button on “Bake Off.” I watched three more episodes in succession: bread, desserts, and pies and tarts. This wasn’t escapism—I didn’t and couldn’t forget about my dead friend being dead. Still, it took the edge off: it numbed me just the right amount, the way that binging on food can in the moments just before nausea hits. One comfort of “Bake Off ” is its visual appeal. The competition takes place inside an enormous white tent pitched in the middle of a bucolic garden, some cross between Eden and a Victorian tea party. Inside the tent, each contestant gets a personal workstation, complete with pristine appliances in Easter egg colors. The other comfort of “Bake Off ” is its ritualistic adherence to structure. There are three baking challenges per episode: the signature, the technical, and the showstopper. For the signature challenge, the bakers prepare dishes they have made many times before—family recipes and dinner party staples. It’s a way of easing them into the more demanding work that lies ahead. “Bake Off ” takes no sadistic pleasure in watching its contestants fail. This is a show that roots for its people. The technical challenge is the most satisfying to watch. The bakers, with no prior preparation, are all given the same recipe with minimal instruction. The bakers must use their prowess to prepare the recipe as it was intended. The final products are placed side-by-side. The judges, regal 80-year-old Mary Berry and the slightly slicker Paul Hollywood, taste each dish and provide extended, if nitpicky, commentary (“The layers are a bit uneven” is practically Mary’s catchphrase). They then rank them from worst to best. Each “Bake Off ” episode concludes with a showstopper challenge, in which bakers must present a large dessert that is both visually appealing and delicious. The results are elaborate and often ridiculous. Showstoppers in season five
include a fire-breathing dragon made out cookies, a chessboard made out of layer cakes, and a stack of pies laughably dubbed the “Pieful Tower.” Even more uplifting than the optics of the show is its inclination toward compassion. The eliminations on “Bake Off ” don’t feel like eliminations. They have none of the callousness of Tyra Banks ruthlessly telling a girl she must “pack…her bags… and go home.” In fact, the hosts, Mel and Sue, dread the task so much that they alternate each week. Before the elimination, the host apologizes profusely (“It’s really hard ’cause I have to send someone home today”). Afterward, she showers the baker with so much praise (“You are brilliant, my darling, and you are going to rule the world”) that the decision doesn’t feel final. Hugs abound. Tears are shed. It is not unusual, at the end of an episode of “Bake Off,” to hear the words “I love you.” I took the train into New York the next day so I could attend my friend’s funeral the following morning. When I came home from the service, I didn’t know what to do with myself. It didn’t even seem right to change out of my black dress, because to change would be to declare the mourning over, to try to move on. I wasn’t ready to move on. I sat on my bed and looked at pictures of my friend and me at the bat mitzvah we’d shared. I sent a blubbery, mawkish email to an address the synagogue had provided for notes of condolence intended for the family. I addressed it to my friend. Still in the dress, I opened Netflix and clicked on “Bake Off.” I watched episode after episode over the course of the next two days. I began to appreciate small things: the neat row of pushed-together chairs the bakers sat in for the elimination, the way they hung up their raincoats upon entering the tent like a class of kindergarteners at the beginning of a school day. Most of all, I liked the contestants. Ranging in age from 17 to 70, they seemed not like a cast of characters so much as the residents of a small town. There was Norman, the retired naval officer SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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with an understated baking style. There was Richard, the builder with a blue pencil perennially tucked behind his ear. And there was Iain, the engineer from London who, in the Baked Alaska showstopper challenge, got so frustrated with his melted ice cream that he trashed his entire dessert. There is no pretension or shtick in “Bake Off ”: the people are real and flawed. They also care for each other deeply, something practically unheard of on completion-themed reality shows. On “Bake Off,” when a contestant is running low on time, the other bakers and even the hosts help to make sure the dessert is completed. You know how if you watch a show too much, its rhythm gets stuck in your head? Overdo it on “30 Rock” or “The Simpsons” and your thoughts will become frenetic and crazy-sounding. The rhythm of “Bake Off ” takes over your brain, too, but it is gentle, structured, and calm. Binge-watching “Bake Off ” makes the inside of your brain feel like a Raffi song or a needlepoint pillow or a warm, well-organized kitchen. When I came back to school, my house
was still empty. My wine glass was where I had left it on the living room table, and the lemon cookies were still sitting, untouched, on a plate in the kitchen. I didn’t want to eat them, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw them out either. I tried to finally get some work done, but I couldn’t focus. I considered going for a walk, but I didn’t want to move. I had been saving the final episode of “Bake Off ” for the right moment, a moment when I really needed it. I queued it up. There is something otherworldly about the show’s season finale. It is the first time anyone is shown stepping foot in the garden surrounding the tent. It’s greener and lusher and bigger than you think it is, decorated with streamers for a special festival for the bakers’ friends and family. A band plays. Little kids dance. Women wear floral wreaths like subjects of Baroque portraiture. The finalists’ showstoppers, towering centerpieces made out of elaborate pastries, are displayed. The best part is that all the former contestants return. I’ve missed them more than I realized. Kate, who was once
described as having “the arms of Ryan Gosling and the face of a woodland nymph,” sips champagne on a picnic blanket next to her young daughter. Martha, still in high school, reports that her exams went well. I’m even happy to see my least favorite baker, toothy and irritating Jordan. And it’s miraculous to encounter Diana, the eldest contestant, who left the show mid-season due to illness. She smiles at the camera, appearing to be in good health. When the winner is finally announced, the audience applauds, and the other two contestants immediately embrace her. All three are presented with enormous bouquets. The applause resumes, louder and more emotional this time. It occurs to me that I don’t care who won. I only care that the show is over. Maudlin as it sounds, I’m not ready to say goodbye yet. I want to stay in this place where losers hug winners, where everyone gets flowers, where sick people recover. I want to stay where cakes look like villages and mountains and windmills, and where all my old friends come back again.
MOVIES The 2015 movies you may have missed by Sarah Moses
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ou’ve seen “Star Wars,” “Carol,” and “The Revenant.” You meticulously prepped your Oscar predictions and maybe got some right. You even caught a film at your local arthouse theater. But I’m here to tell you there were some fantastic films in 2015 that may have missed your radar, and they deserve some attention too. Below are four narrative films from this past year that received critical acclaim and highlight the diverse stories being told by contemporary filmmakers. There is something here for everyone. In alphabetical order, here they are: “Appropriate Behavior” (Dir. Desiree Akhavan) Desiree Akhavan’s feature film debut is a testament to her artistic ambition. Akhavan wrote, directed, and starred in this British-funded comedy, which went on to
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premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014 before its theatrical release in 2015. Akhavan stars as a fictional version of herself: Shirin, a bisexual Persian-American woman living in Brooklyn, who struggles to balance her multiple identities with her familial and romantic relationships. Akhavan approaches questions of sexuality, identity, and independence with dry humor, which makes for a temporally and culturally aware deadpan dramedy. We should be expecting more great things from Akhavan soon. “Grandma” (Dir. Paul Weitz) I stumbled upon this film serendipitously at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute’s College Night in October. (Check this event out next year—they screen films for free for students with college IDs). “Grandma” follows the dysfunctional grandmother/ granddaughter duo of Ella and Sage (Lily Tomlin and Julia Garner) as they search for enough money to fund Sage’s abor-
IN SHORT tion. After a slow, overly performative opening scene of Ella breaking up with her girlfriend, the film falls into a gentle, funny pace that is split up neatly into chapters despite taking place over a single day. “Grandma”’s narrative is simple, and at times predictable. But Tomlin’s performance shines through with ease and, in a world with such few roles for women over the age of 40, that is something to celebrate. “Güeros “(Dir. Alonso Ruiz Palacios) his 2014 feature film debut by Mexican director Alonso Ruiz Palacios made its way to the United States for a limited release in May 2015. A stunning black and white visual masterpiece, “Güeros” is an existential comedy, a road trip film, and an homage to the French New Wave all in one. When Tomás (Sebastián Aguirre) gets in a little too much trouble at home, he is sent to live with his brother Sombra
Clockwise from top: stills from “White God,” “Grandma,” “Güeros,” and “Appropriate Behavior,” four films you might have missed last year.
(Tenoch Huerta) in Mexico City. Sombra is a college student at the university there, but due to student protests and blockading of the campus, he is not attending class. This sociopolitical environment sets up a restless backdrop for the film. After some monotonous days sitting around their electricity-less apartment, Tomás, Sombra, and his roommate Santos (Leonardo Ortizgris) embark on a search for Tomás’ musical hero, folk/rock artist Epigmenio Cruz. Along the way we encounter Sombra’s love interest, the politically charged Ana (Ilse Salas) who falls into some “only
female character” tropes but is definitely a welcome addition. “Güeros” is currently available for streaming on Netflix, so catch it while you can. “White God” (Dir. Kornél Mundruczó) I will be up front. “White God” is not an easy film to watch. Dog fights and other animal cruelty set the stage for an emotionally grueling look at humankind’s thirst for control over the natural world. But if you can make it through the grit and
Photos clockwise from top courtesy of Movie Mail, The New York Times, Mancunion, Cinema Scope
gore, you are rewarded with a cinematic gem. The film follows 13-year-old Lili (Zsófia Psotta) and her dog Hagen, who are separated after her father is unwilling to pay a “mongrel”/mutt tax imposed by the government. Hagen and his fellow mutts are put through various tortuous and abusive scenarios, until they unite and start an uprising. That’s right, a doggy uprising. Who doesn’t want to see that? And if the images of animal cruelty bring you down, there is some good news: all of the ensemble dogs that were cast were rescued from local shelters. SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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Stunning, complex, powerful female relationships Considering communication between women in ‘Carol’ and ‘The Assassin’
by Nora Kerrich
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onsider the Bechdel test, born of a short comic strip written by Alison Bechdel in her cult comic “Dykes to Watch Out For.” The Bechdel test posits that a good measure of women’s representation in film is that there are at least two women characters with names, who speak to each other about something other than a man. The Bechdel test has been reworked and retooled for women’s representation in cinema, as well as for other underrepresented or misrepresented groups. This tool is useful in particular when pointing out the myriad of flaws in representation in cinema to those who are none the wiser. Two films of 2015 brought communication between women in film to the forefront of my attention. Cinematically stunning and narratively complex, “Carol” and “The Assassin” are films disparate in genre, but equally powerful in their management of women’s relationships and interaction. In what follows, I’ll consider the ways that communication between women appears on screen and in the audience for both of these films. The camera’s gaze in both films is voyeuristic, looking through windows, through curtains, and across the street to find its subjects. “The Assassin” is characterized by its unusual silences. Manohla Dargis, film critic for the New York Times, wrote that the screening she attended at the New York Film Festival was swollen with attentive silence until the credits rolled to thunderous applause. I had a similar theater experience at a much smaller scale in the IFC theater with about 20 seats and ten people present for the screening. Once the film began, there was little stirring amongst the audience: we were all focused intently on the epic, painterly cinematography. “The Assassin” holds the power of women in communication through formal channels. Lady Tian never confronts Huji, Lord Tian’s concubine, about her pregnancy in person, but rather uses channels of communication between chambers to request a deadly spell from a magician. Huji is cut down by the spell after a dance performance, brought to the brink of death
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by a shadowy, dynamic cloud. Another important method of communication and interaction between women comes in the dressing and cosmetic process in which Lady Tian is shown several times throughout the film. There is a clear chain of command among her women servants. Lady Tian’s dress and makeup are part of her communication with the world of her Weibo court. Thus, Yinniang, the titular character, is not the only woman with power in “The Assassin.” We watch Yinniang struggle under the weight of her responsibility to her mistress, and we see the power that Lady Tian yields over women who step outside of acceptable boundaries within her court. One of the most powerful aspects of “The Assassin” is its ability to include women in a male-dominated martial arts genre of wuxian. Women are present in nearly every scene. Unlike films across the board, there is a need for the presence of women beyond one titular character or objectified background decorations. This is especially important in a film like “The Assassin,” because it already exists in a male-dominated genre. It would have been simple to have Yinniang solely interact with men throughout the film, the axis of the film revolving around her ability to match and overpower armed, skilled men with her assassin training. But Hou Hsiao-Hsien and the other script writers chose to include visible women at every turn. This is significant filmically as well as historically. The Tang dynasty is broadly understood to be one in which the early practices of footbinding began in high courts. There was also historical and cultural precedent in coastal China during this time for women who weren’t peasants to exist and interact in a very specific private domestic sphere, whereas men held domain over public spaces and public interactions. “The Assassin” holds this historical and cultural reality alongside Yinniang’s overt subversion of it. We watch Yinniang navigate roads and squares in Weibo, while appreciating the delicate interactions women manage within the Weibo court. One of the only monologues in the entire film is spoken by a woman, Yinniang’s aunt, recounting the story of Yinniang’s mother’s choices which led to Yinniang being kidnapped and trained to
ESSAY
be an assassin, rather than marrying her beloved playmate and cousin, Lord Tian. Obsession and mercy stand out as two similar themes across both “The Assassin” and “Carol.” Yinniang is obsessed with seeing, warning, and deciding the fate of her cousin and former fiance Lord Tian. For Yinniang, mercy is her fatal flaw, the hubris that eroded her position as an assassin and casts her life’s course into uncertainty by the end of the film. In “Carol,” Therese is unequivocally obsessed with Carol, and that obsession is revealed to be reciprocated by Carol in the later acts of the film. It is Yinniang’s merciful act in the first scenes of “The Assassin” that send the main plot into action. When she decides not to kill a target because he is playing with his son, she is called upon by her trainer to kill Lord Tian to prove her worthiness as an assassin. In “Carol,” the communication between women is more informal: they confront each other and men directly. However, there are limits to overt spoken communication that can take place in public. So much of the relationship between Therese and Carol is communicated via their gazes, especially when they are in public or at least in the company of men. In one pivotal scene, Carol and Therese encounter a man in a motel they’re staying at who calls himself a magazine salesman. Therese entertains his conversation in the morning at the motel’s continental breakfast but, when Carol appears, their gazes meet and communicate their mutual displeasure and disinterest in his presence. Ultimately, this man is revealed to be more of a nuisance and danger to them than they initially suspected, as he is the private investigator hired by Harge, Carol’s husband, to collect evidence of Carol’s deviance. I saw “Carol” in theaters twice, both times accompanied by queer women. Both times I spent the second half of the film in tears, with my companions sniffling alongside me. I imagine this is true for many queer women who saw this film. After my second theater experience with it, I realized and articulated that the film is pure pain. The pain of the history that “Carol” and the novel it is adapted from, “The Price of Salt,” by Patricia Highsmith, is visceral.
This is not to say that the film is in its entirety sad or upsetting. In fact, so much of the pain that is portrayed through Carol and Therese’s relationship is dictated by hope. The pain of hopefulness for happiness and rooted love is unbearable at times on screen. Scenes that come to mind include Therese sobbing quietly on the train back to New York City after Carol and Harge have a confrontation, Carol looking desperately for glimpses of Therese in the city following the dissolution of their affair, and, of course, the final hopeful scene: a quiet, steady gaze held between the two lovers across a crowded room. In writing and thinking about the powerful role of women in both of these films, it is also necessary to consider the role that men play in opposition or in tandem with those women. Each film deals with men differently: in “The Assassin” they are equally entrenched in the scenery and intrigue of the plot, whereas in “Carol” they are obstacles in Carol and Therese’s relationship. The few moments of levity in “Carol” come from the obliviousness of men. It was telling in both screenings that I attended that there were only a few voices who laughed at the scene where the man who cornered Therese in the New York Times editing office and kissed her attributed her sorrow and unsettledness to his advances, hardly imagining the turmoil of Therese’s roadtrip with Carol. While men and women hold different cultural roles in Hou’s Tang dynasty China, their knowledge and actions are interwoven. It is telling that the only assassins that we know of in Hou’s world are women, Yinniang and her mistress. The men who fight are soldiers for warlords, the imperial court, or Lord Tiang, always at the mercy of Yinniang’s blade. What makes these films powerful and beautiful is their aesthetic and auteristic qualities. Todd Haynes, the director of “Carol,” and Hou are expressive and courageous directors. The lasting strength of these films rests on their ability to create a reality where women are present and agentic within their historical contexts. Neither of these films require one female character to stand on her own, representing a singularity of womanhood within a sea of primary and secondary male characters. While both “The Assassin” and “Carol” pass the Bechdel test—the latter especially so—there is an added intensity to the communication between women expressed through gestures, gazes, and rituals that increases the verisimilitude of both.
Photos from top courtesy of Omelete, Hollywood Reporter
Top: Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara in “Carol.” Bottom: Shu Qi in “The Assassin.”
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MUSIC The day the Starman died
ESSAY
On life with David Bowie
by Colette Gerstmann
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When I woke up to the text message “David Bowie died :(” one day over winter break, I had not yet even sat up in bed; lying on my back, I faced a white ceiling and tried to see a reflection of myself in its even spread. I thought of the way I looked into mirrors at fifteen, seventeen, nineteen, trying always to excavate the glass and draw out a new face. I’d unsettle and rethink, each time, my conception of my contours, the collection of tissues lifted by whims into smiles, mutters, curses. Each time, I would emerge from the glass fresh, sizzling, angry like a poppy bloom. The ceiling gave me nothing back, besides these memories of transformation. At fifteen, I had resolved to look into mirrors the way Bowie did, with an urge to reinvent, each day, the world inside myself. Taken with Bowie’s use of personas to refract himself, making himself plural and evolving, I kept a hazy assortment of ways to see myself tucked inside my brain. Bowie’s character Aladdin Sane housed a storm inside his body that he wore in lightning on his skin. I wore my variations out loud, scrawled on the surface of my face, even if nobody noticed them but me. Every day I’d name a tint for the world, and I’d feel it glowing on my cheeks and nose, slippery but real. And often, even if no one else could see it, I would walk around with it shining through my eyelashes and nostrils: a face in layers, brave maybe, but uncertain as lightning. Bowie taught me this. When I woke up on that day, nineteen and having moved through a streak of turbulent changes that bore me away from and back to people I loved, I could not believe that Bowie could have stopped moving, ceased his constant alchemy that bore him forward, shape to shape, substance to substance. If Bowie had died, was it just another necessary change? I imagined him stepping, tip-toe, like a
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schoolboy down a staircase, into one more dusty pocket of the future.
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always want to showcase my girlness like a curator, telling everything to orbit around the glitter on my nails, the cut of my jeans over my hips, the quiet war my blood cells wage to keep me steady-voiced and standing in the face of threat. But sometimes I think that girlness, like any room, can’t hold every part of me. I felt my first asymmetry in sixth grade: my face split into two halves, a zigzag down the middle, when twelve boys made a list ranking girls in order of
If Bowie had died, was it just another necessary change? I imagined him stepping, tip-toe, like a schoolboy down a staircase, into one more dusty pocket of the future. hotness and I was not on it. One half: a mad wish to be girled, named, showcased. One half: to use an ugliness, a silence, to get out of the room, and see what was outside it. Bowie crafts Ziggy Stardust and Lady Stardust, masculine and feminine aspects of one alien rockstar, who accentuate each other’s androgyny. I feel like Lady Stardust when I am catcalled while leaving a party thrown by people who are cooler than me. I have not lived up to the kind of girl they want me to be; the wrong leggings and the wrong eyebrows, the wrong parents and secrets, have cast me out of a correct girlness. But girlness is thrust back at me, coughed in my face, when I step out of that room. I am Lady Stardust, a seam of
girl working my way forward through the night, hiding and blooming alternately, to keep myself safe and to keep myself real. And as I turn the corner, I will, of course, become something else.
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aying to everyone, through speech and text and Facebook message, “David Bowie died :(” feels like knitting. From many different places, me and many people I know are trying to make something connective, a link that exists in real space, in real time. In third grade, I sang “Life on Mars” in a classroom full of people who I would know for years afterward, and laughed at the lyrics which were strange enough to be like real dreams. Those people have scattered like glitter across many floors, refracting light in the ways that they know. I would like to hug them, most of them, except I really do not like some of them at all. I would like to be back there for a second, and poke them lightly in the flesh of their arms to be sure that they are real. “Memory of a Free Festival” is what I listened to on the day that Bowie died, because his death released memory, for me and a for lot of other people who were trying to remember with each other, trying hard to bridge each others’ minds with music. The sounds of: oh, to capture just one drop of all the ecstasy that swept that afternoon, to paint that love upon a white balloon held me, and held others, in a space that we all understood, for a second. Nobody could dig for memory and draw out the same shiny, messy things, but we’d all draw out something. For me, I am thinking of a field that isn’t real, but all my friends are there, as they always were. We sing to each other, and the song is an apology. It does not cower near the ground, but looks up and up. It is a face that is showing itself.
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Making rap albums, doing numbers like it’s pop by Gabriel Meyer-Lee
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015 was a big year in hip hop. The year saw major album releases from big names in hip hop as well as the emergence of several powerful new artists. Despite many claims throughout the 2000s that hip hop was dead, not only does the spirit of hip hop live on in 2015, but characteristics of hip hop music have permeated all forms of music. One of the most significant album releases of 2015 was, without a doubt, Kendrick Lamar’s third studio album, “To Pimp a Butterfly.” The album features instrumentals dominated by jazz and several different variations of funk sounds, courtesy of Thundercat and Terrace Martin, interrupted at points by spoken word performances. The lyrical content at times addresses Lamar’s personal trials during the course of his rise to fame, and at other times is more general, addressing issues faced by the Black community, and much of the time is wrapped in a layer of metaphors and allusions. Unlike some critics, I will avoid making sweeping predictions about the album’s future significance or lasting influences. Likewise, given my identity as a white person, I will not wax poetic about the Blackness of this album. However, I will point out that is album currently rated a 96 on Metacritic, a review aggregation site, which means that according to Metacritic’s review aggregating algorithms, this album is the fourth best reviewed album and the best rap album since 1999 when Metacritic began. While “Butterfly” was not the top-selling hip hop album of the year, the album has gone RIAA platinum and won several Grammy awards, indicating a potentially surprising popularity for what can be considered a difficult and intricate album. The rich, honest storytelling of “To Pimp a Butterfly” is also present in a very different release from another, less famous California rapper. Vince Staples’s “Summertime ‘06” is the rapper’s first album and, while it was not an overwhelming commercial success, it did receive widespread critical acclaim. On the album, Staples shows a tremendous amount of growth, both lyrically and musically, from his previous EP, “Hell Can Wait,” and con-
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tinues to develop his style of dark, gritty, realistic storytelling. Aside from being a fantastic piece of musical work on its own, “Summertime ‘06” serves as an indicator of great things to come from Vince Staples. Drake continues his reign of dominance over popular rap music, which he initiated at the start of this decade. Drake’s 2015 mixtape/album “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late” appeared out of nowhere and then quickly proceeded to chart globally as well as break the Spotify streaming record that Drake had previously set. Drake’s particular combination of rapping and singing continues to evolve while staying absurdly popular. 2015 saw several very interesting developments in Drake’s character. The most infamous beef of 2015 was between Drake and Philly rapper Meek Mill. The response to Drake’s second diss track of the beef, “Back to Back,” indicated a nearly unanimous decision that he had won, a turn of events that surprised many, as Drake has historically been known as “soft” and Meek Mill is known for a particularly aggressive brand of rapping. Drake also displayed the breadth of his talents in 2015 through his collaboration album with Future, “What a Time to Be Alive,” another chart topper. Future, an Atlanta rapper, also released his own album in 2015, “DS2,” which solidified his position as an adept purveyor of melodic yet hard-hitting trap. 2015 proved to be an exciting year in general for Atlanta hiphop. The year saw the release of Rae Sremmurd’s “SremmLife,” Young Thug’s “Barter 6,” and Migos’s “Yung Rich Nation,” all of which spawned popular singles. This excitement was somewhat dampened by Migos’s collective arrest, although in general the year is still evidence of the continued emergence of Atlanta as a hip hop powerhouse, the result of a gradual process initiated by Outkast in the ’90s. No account of popular hip hop in 2015 would be complete without discussion of Fetty Wap. Although the New Jersey rapper’s hit single “Trap Queen” was actually released in 2014, it gained popularity in 2015 and was quickly joined on top of the charts by follow up hits and 2015 releases “679” and “My Way.” Unfortunately, his self-titled debut album has not had the infectious appeal of his hit single and whether he can extend his career past the
IN SHORT
pop phenomenon that was “Trap Queen” remains yet to be seen. Another noteworthy development in hip hop that occurred in 2015 was the debut of the musical “Hamilton.” Although the soundtrack to the musical has not necessarily been one of the most popular of the year among hip hop fans, it has been hugely popular with pretty much everyone else. The soundtrack charted uncommonly well for a musical soundtrack and is topping the Billboard rap charts. The musical itself continues to sell out on Broadway. Although the music of “Hamilton” still does contain many traditional characteristics of musical theater, it is undeniably hip hop. Not only does “Hamilton” feature rapping and hip hop instrumentals, the writer of the musical, Lin-Manuel Miranda, hid references and tributes to hip hop greats throughout his work. For example, Miranda’s “Ten Duel Commandments” very clearly takes inspiration from and pays tribute to Biggie’s “Ten Crack Commandments.” Additionally, Daveed Diggs, the rapper from the group clipping., is cast as Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette in the musical, allowing the groundbreaking rapper to break entirely different boundaries. The effect of the enormous popularity of the “Hamilton” soundtrack is that the audience of “Hamilton,” much of which does not overlap with the audience for most hip hop music, is immersed in hip hop history and culture, whether they recognize it or not. The popularity of “Hamilton” is just another example of how completely hip hop permeated popular culture in 2015. While the future importance of the year 2015 in hip hop is yet to be determined, it is certain that hip hop was important in 2015. Many of the most popular songs and albums of the year were hip hop or drew significant musical inspiration from hip hop, such as the Weeknd and Justin Bieber’s albums. Gone are the days of throwaway, single-verse rap features on pop singles. Instead, Drake’s question, “Who else making rap albums, doing numbers like it’s pop?” from 2013’s “Worst Behavior” turned out to be prophetic. It turns out that, by the year 2015, hip hop has become such a significant part of popular culture, that several rappers do have albums selling like they’re pop.
LETTERS OF REC Brief recommendations of books, television, movies, and more from our editors
TV: ‘Man Seeking Woman’ The indomitable tank of the television sit-com has worn deep, formulaic grooves. Deviance from the norm is generally slight and uninspired: offhand, “New Girl” is roughly “Friends” with Zooey Deschanel and some non-white characters, and Aziz Ansari’s “Master of None” tepidly incorporates topical racial and gender issues while still glorifying the millennial culture of consumption with admirable neoliberal slight of hand. Enter “Man Seeking Woman,” an FX show which takes the tired nature of the romantic sit-com (unassuming Josh [Jay Baruchel] is dumped by his girlfriend and re-enters the modern, tinder-inflected dating field) as a jumping-off point and proceeds to explode every genre convention. Over the course of Season 1, Josh is set up on a date with a troll named Gorbachaka, surgically conjoined to a clingy girlfriend, and attends a wedding in hell. The hyperbolic satire is at once funny and penetrating. At one point, Josh, a temp, tells his mom about being offered a position as office manager at a nondescript cubicle farm. When Josh doesn’t understand her hostility towards his “settling,” his dad takes him out to the backyard: a revivalist tent has been pitched, with his mother inside speaking in tongues and praising Josh as the second coming. Absurd, inspired, and containing a semi-profound truth. If you’re not convinced yet, Josh’s best friend is played by the incomparable Eric Andre. Bird up! (In the event that that reference falls on deaf ears, this is now a two-for-one recommendation: go watch the three available seasons of “The Eric Andre Show”). —Philip Harris, Books Editor Book: ‘Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe,’ by Benjamin Alire Sáenz At the start of every summer vacation when I look upon the three long months of being back home, or at the end of it when I instead face a whole semester back at Swarthmore, I always come back to Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.” I first read the book some time
Photo courtesy of Davidatlanta.com
after my graduation from high school and found within its pages a sort of comfort and nostalgia that I have yet to find somewhere else (as well as Mexican, queer characters as the novel’s protagonists). While the novel centers around Ari exploring a tender friendship and romance with Dante, it touches on issues surrounding family, their Mexican identity, and growing up. My high school years are now long gone, but “Aristotle and Dante” holds within it certain experiences of friendship, love, and growing up that still resonate with my life today. —Brandon Torres, Contributing Editor
TV: ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Despite my staunchly anti-TV tendencies, my girlfriend has successfully turned me on to the weird and wonderful world that is “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” On “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” drag queens compete against each other in a reality showdown akin to “Project Runway,” but with more glitter and sexual innuendos. The host, RuPaul, an esteemed queen herself, is always in the workroom to drop punny one-liners and to remind the girls that they’ll be judged on their Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent, in no particular order. There are themed competitions that culminate in a runway look, followed by a panicky “Lip Sync For Your Life!” in which the bottom two competitors dance their hearts out to keep their spot on the show. The queens have amazing names (e.g. Sharon Needles, Jinkx Monsoon, Violet Chachki), can throw shade like I’ve never seen, and have an inspiring talent for makeup. The show is silly, dirty,
campy, trashy, and hella gay, but also often heartwarming and inspirational. The best part? The most recent seasons are free to watch on Logo’s website, and the eighth season just started. —Sam Herron, Contributing Editor Movie: ‘Tangerine’ When Sean Baker pitched the project of what would become “Tangerine” to his producer, all he knew was that he wanted to make a movie about “two people coming together at Donut Time,” a donut shop on a corner near his home in LA. He found his lead actresses, Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, by sitting in that shop, and he based much of the plot on their own stories. The film itself, which was shot exclusively on an iPhone 5 camera, takes place over the course of one day—the day when Sin-Dee (Rodriguez) is released from a stint in jail, and a day which she spends hunting down her boyfriend and pimp who, she learns, has been cheating on her. Sin-Dee stomps around the neighborhood, reluctantly accompanied by her best friend Alexandra (Taylor), in the bright landscape of distinctively over-saturated shots, to a soundtrack of trap music that cuts in perfectly on the heels of the characters’ conversations. The plot builds like that of a buddy comedy should—unbelievably, humorously, and at times close-to-disastrously. But in the end, the outrageous plot does come back to two people, coming together at Donut Time. The film has garnered a good deal of attention for featuring two transgender sex workers (as both actresses and characters), but the film itself doesn’t overplay that fact. The lives of these women are not cinematically fetishized or made more understandable for a possibly ignorant audience. Rather, the characters are presented matter-of-factly, and on their terms. Really, “Tangerine” is a story of female friendship. It lovingly portrays the intimate moments when these women indulge each other, annoy each other, and, ultimately, protect each other. —Priya Dieterich, Contributing Editor
SWARTHMORE REVIEW
NOVEMBER 2015
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