The Painful Wait for Jonathan Franzen
Culture and entertainment musts from Eleanor Barkhorn
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Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Eleanor Barkhorn, a senior editor at The Atlantic who has edited stories about the value of sleepovers and why so many Americans have stopped going to church.
Eleanor loves “earnest songs by women” (think: Joni Mitchell and Tracy Chapman). She also loves reading Shel Silverstein out loud with her kids and watching place-specific movies such as Lady Bird, and she can’t wait to attend Nate Bargatze’s stand-up show next month—as she puts it, “It’s going to be An Event.”
First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:
- What is Nikki Haley even talking about?
- Skull and Bones and equity and inclusion
- If there are no stupid questions, then how do you explain Quora?
The Culture Survey: Eleanor Barkhorn
The entertainment my friends are talking about right now: My friends and I really love the comedian Nate Bargatze. Multiple text threads blew up in the days before and after the Saturday Night Live episode he hosted this past fall. (We loved the “Lake Beach” and George Washington sketches.) He’s doing a show a few suburbs over from us next month, and it’s going to be An Event. [Related: The nicest man in stand-up]
My favorite blockbuster and favorite art movie: This is tough, because my favorite movies—You’ve Got Mail and Lady Bird—fall somewhere between the extremes; they’re middlebrow, character-driven, and place-specific. Does The Sound of Music count as a blockbuster? Oh, actually, of course: Barbie! I loved Barbie. It’s a blockbuster for people whose favorite movie is You’ve Got Mail. [Related: The surprising key to understanding the Barbie film]
Regarding art movies: Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life is beautiful, moving, and inspiring in the hardest and least sentimental meaning of the word. I found Days of Heaven and The Tree of Life aesthetically impressive but not all that compelling or coherent narratively or morally. A Hidden Life takes Malick’s gorgeous visual style and applies it to a consequential and meaningful story.
The upcoming cultural event I’m most looking forward to: I can’t wait to read the next book in the projected Jonathan Franzen Crossroads trilogy! I keep searching the internet for any news on when it’s coming out and finding nothing. I read his recent New Yorker article about cats in L.A., but I’d rather read his next book.
Best novel I’ve recently read, and the best work of nonfiction: I’ve been slowly making my way through The Brothers Karamazov since July, and I have not let myself start any other novels in the meantime, so … it’s been a while since I finished a novel.
As for nonfiction, I read Harrison Scott Key’s hilarious, raw, bracing, profound memoir How to Stay Married and have been recommending it to everyone I know. Read it! I’ve never read anything else quite like it.
A cultural product I loved as a teenager and still love, and something I loved but now dislike: I loved and still love earnest songs by women: “Fast Car,” by Tracy Chapman; “Closer to Fine,” by Indigo Girls; “February,” by Dar Williams; “Winter,” by Tori Amos; “Never Is a Promise,” by Fiona Apple; anything by Joni Mitchell. These songs have their heart on their sleeve and take women’s feelings and interior lives seriously. I wouldn’t have made it through high school without them, and when I listen to them now, they still move me. It was thrilling to see “Fast Car” and “Closer to Fine” get new attention and appreciation last summer. [Related: The unknowable Joni Mitchell]
I thought Fargo was so edgy and clever when I saw it in middle school, and its depiction of regional stereotypes (the thick accents, the huge food portions) seemed all in good fun. But I watched the film again recently, and it felt meaner and more condescending.
The last debate I had about culture: I love Taylor Swift as much as the next middle-aged mom does (“All Too Well” is a master addition to the “earnest songs by women” genre I appreciate so much). But I do wonder if the effusive, fawning, obsessive way she is written about by otherwise-reasonable adults will seem a bit embarrassing a few years from now. I recently asked two friends whether Taylor Swift is the new Hamilton: a genuinely brilliant, pleasurable, impressive pop-cultural phenomenon that we went so nuts over, we lost sight of its flaws and deficiencies. Their initial reaction was “How dare you?” But after a few beats of reflection, they knew I was right.
Something I recently revisited: I’ve been reading the Bible several times a week since I became a Christian at 19, which means I have read certain Psalms or Gospel stories dozens and dozens of times. And yet, I’m still struck by things I didn’t see on earlier readings. Just last week, for example, was the Feast of Epiphany, which celebrates the story in Matthew 2 of the wise men coming from far away to visit Jesus. And reading the passage again, I noticed a connection I hadn’t made before: These foreigners worshipping Jesus were the first beneficiaries of the exhortation Jesus would later give his followers to “make disciples of all nations.” Jesus’s “Great Commission” was already being fulfilled when he was just a baby.
A piece of journalism that recently changed my perspective on a topic: I love silence, so reading Xochitl Gonzalez’s piece on the virtues of noisiness was revelatory.
A favorite story I’ve read in The Atlantic: The first Atlantic story I remember reading was “The Organization Kid,” by David Brooks, when I was in high school. It described my generation so well, even though I didn’t fully understand the critique because I was so embedded in the culture of meritocracy. I reread it every few years, and it always holds up—and as more and more books and articles are written about the problems of this culture, David’s prescience is more and more obvious. [Related: How life became an endless, terrible competition]
Something delightful a kid in my life introduced me to: My kids are at ages when they’re really into the great poets for young people: Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, Chris Harris. And they’ve reminded me about the joys of reading poetry aloud. A few weeks ago, at dinner, my oldest read “Too Many Daves,” by Dr. Seuss, and I can’t remember the last time we all laughed so hard together. It was a completely different experience from reading the poem on the page, silently.
The Week Ahead
- True Detective: Night Country, the fourth season of the acclaimed mystery show (premieres tonight on HBO)
- I.S.S., a thriller starring Ariana DeBose about what happens in space after war breaks out between the U.S. and Russia on Earth (in theaters on Friday)
- Saviors, a new Green Day album (debuts on Friday)
Essay
A Musical Reboot That Can’t Cross the Generational Gap
By Hannah Giorgis
Raise your hand if you’ve ever been personally victimized by a Hollywood reboot. I’ll go first: The latest ouroboros of intellectual property juicing to get under my skin is the new Mean Girls film, which is adapted from a Broadway musical based on the original 2004 movie. (You wouldn’t know it from watching most of the curiously tuneless trailers, though!) Somewhere inside this extended branding exercise is the familiar tale of Cady Heron (played by Angourie Rice in the new film), a teenage girl thrust into the baffling social hierarchy of a fictional Illinois high school after being homeschooled her entire life.
Twenty years after the eminently quotable bildungsroman first hit theaters, and more than six years after Cady made her stage debut, the new teen comedy attempts to extract even more profit from the fish-out-of-water story by infusing it with song, dance, and fresh attempts to woo younger viewers. But along the way, it loses the bite of its cinematic predecessor. The result is a painfully self-aware pastiche that fails to capture the acerbic magnetism of the original movie, the campy charm of jukebox musicals, or the real talent of its young cast.
More in Culture
- What was Jo Koy thinking?
- The queerest thing about Taylor Swift
- True Detective is still dark, still moody, still good.
- American Fiction is more than a racial satire.
- Easy mode is actually for adults.
- Seven books that earn your tears
- A vision of Russia as a country that runs on violence
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Photos of indefatigable ants, a cross section of beach grass, and more winners and finalists in the Close-Up Photographer of the Year competition.
Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.
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