{"id":139815,"date":"2019-09-27T14:03:52","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T18:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=139815"},"modified":"2019-09-27T14:28:20","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T18:28:20","slug":"staff-picks-biopics-blades-and-balloons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/09\/27\/staff-picks-biopics-blades-and-balloons\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Biopics, Blades, and Balloons"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_139831\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/taylor.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-139831\" class=\"size-full wp-image-139831\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/taylor.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"667\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/taylor.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/taylor-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/taylor-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-139831\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brandon Taylor. Photo: Bill Adams.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>David Ferry\u2019s poem \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/josh.flagrancy.net\/poems_html\/ferry\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">At Lake Hopatcong<\/a>\u201d has its narrator considering a family portrait taken a year before he was born. He knows everyone in the photo, and yet it is \u201cof no country I know.\u201d Over and over again, I tried to picture the lakefront in Brandon Taylor\u2019s debut novel, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/594502\/real-life-by-brandon-taylor\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Real Life<\/em><\/a>\u2014I who toured endless college campuses, lived on several, visited friends on still more, I who am white and have lived in majority-white communities for deep decades at a time. In the descriptions of this life with which I am so familiar, I both recognized and didn\u2019t recognize the world displayed, so fresh and frank are Taylor\u2019s observations of the daily hurts of being Other. Taylor\u2019s protagonist, Wallace, is a bright, lovable biochemistry Ph.D. candidate at an upper-Midwestern university who as a queer black man is repeatedly made to feel he is neither bright nor lovable\u2014I kept thinking of Waugh\u2019s line \u201ca blow, expected, repeated, falling upon a bruise.\u201d He feels the felted insularity of specialized academic life: complaints muted, seasons distorted. Everything is endless semesters and claustrophobic cohorts, which both bring him closer to that community and highlight his distance from it. <em>Real Life<\/em> asks questions many of us shy from: Who is entitled to pain? How useful is an apology? Can sharing our feelings free us from them? How much is empathy? Taylor is a student of the Master, and at times fire catches the taut laces of dinner-table talk as in any Jamesian parlor. Taylor isn\u2019t above a bit of play: a life preserver becomes an erotic harness, nacho cheese becomes sexual effluvia\u2014or does it? If there was as much attention paid to good writing about sex as there is to bad sex writing, Taylor would sweep the top prize. Amid the flurry of new novels drifting down like so many balloons, <em>Real Life<\/em> is the one weighted with confetti, each flake moving at half speed, a silicon membrane away from free fall. <strong>\u2014Julia Berick\u00a0<\/strong><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I often wonder why anyone bothers to watch biopics. There\u2019s something so greedy and grasping about them\u2014the moments of supernatural tenderness, the music that crescendos with too much desire, the bald-faced schmaltz masquerading as prestige performance. But on occasion, this is precisely what I need. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.judythefilm.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Judy<\/em><\/a>, which focuses on Judy Garland\u2019s final series of performances at the London nightclub the Talk of the Town, more than delivers. Ren\u00e9e Zellweger is stunning in the leading role; close shots provide the movie\u2019s best moments, when we just get to watch as her face shatters with feeling. And what a spectacular face! I have never before understood so clearly the power of makeup, which shifts Zellweger\u2019s Garland from clownish to lucid and back again. Sure, it can all be a bit much. But isn\u2019t that Judy? Isn\u2019t all that grasping, all that saccharine searching, what made us love her in the first place? <strong>\u2014Noor Qasim<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_139830\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/joni.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-139830\" class=\"size-full wp-image-139830\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/joni.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"750\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/joni.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/joni-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/joni-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-139830\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joni Mitchell. Photo: Asylum Records. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2017\/10\/09\/joni-mitchells-openhearted-heroism\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dan Chiasson writes<\/a> of Joni Mitchell: \u201cMen often wanted Mitchell to be a wife, a muse, a siren, or a star. Instead, they got a genius, and one especially suited to deconstructing their fantasies of her.\u201d I made the same mistake as those misguided lovers this week; I\u2019d hoped to find reprieve from a particularly busy time by escaping into the soft colors and looping cursive of <a href=\"https:\/\/jonimitchell.com\/library\/viewmedia.cfm?id=147\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Morning Glory on the Vine<\/em><\/a>, a collection of handwritten early poems and illustrations by Mitchell. She printed a hundred copies to give to friends one lean Christmas season (\u201cAll my friends were kind of nouveau riche, so buying Christmas presents was going to be really difficult\u201d). Years later, a couple of those friends fled their home north of Malibu as a forest fire approached, and when Mitchell went to check on them, she noticed they had packed her book along with their most precious belongings\u2014thus the inspiration for this print run. Melancholic, rueful, and bittersweet, these poems are paired with minimal lines and flushes of color that are indeed beautiful to behold. But just as Mitchell deconstructs her delicate melodies with raw lyrics, the pastels and jewel tones are no match for the intense honesty of Mitchell\u2019s verse. <strong>\u2014Lauren Kane<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dostoyevskywannabe.com\/experiments\/liberating_the_canon\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Literature<\/em><\/a>, edited by Isabel Waidner and published by the Manchester-based indie press Dostoyevsky Wannabe last year, is a fantastic compendium of boundary-pushing prose. Highlights for me include an excerpt from a play by Mojisola Adebayo about female sexual pleasure and trauma; Joanna Walsh\u2019s \u201cI Wish Somebody Loved Me That Isn\u2019t Capitalism,\u201d an unflinching look at the relationship between heterosexual love, sex, and class; Mira Mattar\u2019s \u201cNever the Blade,\u201d with its meditations on horse girls, among other things; and Sara Jaffe\u2019s quietly lovely exploration of queer parenthood. There\u2019s a pleasingly DIY, mixtape-esque quality to both the collection\u2019s contents and its graphic design, bringing to mind legendary indie music labels like K Records. <strong>\u2014Rhian Sasseen<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The saxophonist Steve Lehman has made his name over the past fourteen or so years through a sequence of albums that mostly feature large ensembles\u2014adding vibraphone and extra horns to the core jazz quartet\u2014playing aggressive, rhythmically skittering, thrilling compositions. His new album, <a href=\"https:\/\/pirecordings.com\/albums\/the-people-i-love\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>The People I Love<\/em><\/a>, strips down the instrumentation to just sax, bass, drums, and piano but ports all the hectic precision of Lehman\u2019s composing style. It\u2019s sort of Lehman\u2019s version of a traditional acoustic jazz record, though it exemplifies a new tradition\u2014taking off from Lehman\u2019s mentor Anthony Braxton and the AACM ethos, with a bit or a bunch of nineties drum and bass mixed in\u2014that Lehman and many of his collaborators have helped to develop in the new millennium. Lehman\u2019s music is principally about rhythm, with the melody serving as a series of hoops for the time to jump through. I play drums, so the big thrill for me on this record is hearing Damion Reid behind the kit but in the foreground of this smaller group: he plays like a machine with a tremendous soul. His speed and precision are superhuman, and it\u2019s simply mind-boggling to witness him pulling off this music. There\u2019s not a lot of new news for longtime Lehman fans on this album, but it may act as a helpful ambassador to new listeners looking for a way in. Lehman seems to be cogitating in advance of his next big breakthrough, which I have no doubt is on the way. <strong>\u2014Craig Morgan Teicher<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_139829\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/steve_lehman_2-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-139829\" class=\"size-full wp-image-139829\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/steve_lehman_2-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"750\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/steve_lehman_2-1.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/steve_lehman_2-1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/steve_lehman_2-1-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-139829\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steve Lehman.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 pores over Joni Mitchell\u2019s handwritten poetry, considers the biopic, and enjoys a Jamesian debut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[438],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Staff Picks: Biopics, Blades, and Balloons by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 pores over Joni 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