yesterday, the first of October, I did something I often consider doing but haven’t yet until this year: I set out to spend the month finally reading all of House of Leaves. I’ve read the first 119 pages something like 3 times, but on each previous effort, I put the book down after finishing Ch. VIII and never mustered the courage or time to dive into the notoriously bonkers Ch. IX. I’ve always enjoyed that first section, so I feel obligated to at least push through the barrier and see if the rest of the work earns my attention.
a kind of “joke” in the first chapter I never caught until this read was that The Navidson Record, the fictional film that the novel is supposedly an exegesis of, was distributed by Miramax. Harvey Weinstein is mentioned by name. it’s an interesting metatextual wrinkle to know what eventually became of the king of 90s independent cinema. not that it bears much on the novel.
by happenstance, last weekend I went to a screening of the 4K restoration of the movie most associated with Miramax, Pulp Fiction. a friend of mine once posted a review on Letterboxd of Magnolia describing it as “pulp fiction but you adjust the ‘written-medium-to-filmed-medium’ dial a few notches to the left.” I mention this only to point out what’s been pointed out innumerable times before, but Tarantino makes movie movies, films that operate on the logic of what cinema does that other mediums don’t lend themselves to. he writes tight dialogue and his narratives are well constructed, but he primarily asks “what do I want to see on screen.” this is signaled somewhat ironically by the line Fabienne delivers after telling Butch she wants a pot belly: “It’s unfortunate what we find pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye is seldom the same”
watching Pulp Fiction brought to mind a question I often wonder about, and have probably posted about here: why are genre exercises, or crime stories, or surrealist pastiches, more likely to make for “good” movies than novels? why are novelists expected to be more “responsible” and stick to “relatable” stories than filmmakers? I realize I’m making a generalization that immediately brings to mind a million exceptions—plenty of novels from the last 100 years aren’t exactly “relatable,” and the demand for “relatability” in art has warped the direction that non-comic book, non-horror movies have taken as of late.
it wasn’t until writing this that I realized my issue is with this idea of “relatability.” I’m desiring more freedom in what I’m making, and I imagine that filmmaking gives people greater freedom than what writing fiction does. this obviously isn’t true. I’ve internalized some norm that I should do away with. ironic that I feel this as a result of reading a novel about a movie, even more so than I did when I watched the movie about movies.
I’m frustrated with the thing I’m working on in part because I feel like the technique I’m using is too…basic. it’s also pretty close to mundane lived experience in a way I’m generally not particularly interested in in fiction. but what I’m working on is important for personal, therapeutic reasons, and I recognize the desire to throw it away just as I’m digging into something genuinely felt is me trying to self-sabotage. nonetheless, I feel the need for some project that allows for greater latitude in plot and technique.
this week is the first week where I’m being very deliberate and protective of my writing time. these are your hours, show up to work. this will involve working out what exactly my process is, and maybe it’ll be beneficial to have a couple, wildly different projects to alternate between. maybe I’ll even get around to actually writing a screenplay.
I should start taking photos again.
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