Reading: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Wherein I prove that I'm not frightened of MacArthur fellows.

It's an established fact that Adichie once lived in the same house as Chinua Achebe -- though not at the same time. It was a mere coincidence, said Adichie; in the small Nigerian academic community, these sorts of things were bound to happen. Achebe had moved out, and Adichie's family moved in. At the time, she didn't realize who Achebe was: she was not yet ten and was more excited to have a balcony and a staircase than to soak in whatever writerly vibes inhabit a place after an author has left it. Maybe it's like a light left on in the attic. Or mold that grows on the inside of walls. In any case, Adichie didn't realize the significance, she said, until the publication of her first book, when her editor apparently was flabbergasted by the news. I imagine the exchange as going:

"I used to live in Chinua Achebe's house."
"OMFG!"
"He had terrible choice in wallpaper."

I wonder how much children grasp the concept of a book as a physical entity, as a fetish object. Thinking back to my own childhood, books were merely the place where stories resided. Nowadays, I see books as having heft and weight and white space and clever cover designs. The words inside--who cares about those anymore?

At the Adichie reading, I encountered into my "signing buddy," Matt, whom I see regularly at the Philadelphia Free Library Events (also the photographer of Adichie and me above). He's like the book dealers I used to see at readings elsewhere, coming to readings with backpacks laden down with ARCs and dust jackets tenderly wrapped in acid-free plastic covers. But instead of simply getting a signature to bump up the resale value, Matt has the authors inscribe the books to his children, Caleb, Brigid, and now Colleen. That evening, Caleb had come with Matt, hanging on his father's arm and being shy. He was halfway through the sixth Harry Potter book, in preparation for the movie later this summer. He had listened intently for the last hour and a half and looked forward to getting some ice cream afterwards. His opinion on Adichie: "She was all right." When he grows up, he and his sisters are going to have an impressive library, courtesy of his father: all these carefully protected books; stories that jump out at them; their names in black marker on the inside, as if to say This was especially written for you.

I can't think of a better inheritance.

Reading: Joseph O'Neill

According to Joseph O'Neill, the first organized team sport to be played in the United States was not football, or baseball, or soccer, and polo. It was, in fact, cricket, that strange sport familiar to most Americans only as what those good-looking British chaps played in all those Merchant-Ivory films. In fact, as O'Neill pointed out, Philadelphia itself was known as somewhat of a hub for cricketeers, and he, himself, has played (for the Staten Island team) on Philly cricket pitches, the least of which is located on the unfortunately named Dick Avenue.

So even though O'Neill's novel Netherland became somewhat of a cause célèbre when President Obama revealed on the BBC that he was reading it, O'Neill seemed quite self-effacing, declining to speak further on what might be the hippest endorsement since Oprah Winfrey's Bookclub called it a day. Instead, he was content to talk about cricket for the uninitiated, all but inviting the audience to come cheer him on. (You see, there's this ball, and this bat, and two teams, and something called a wicket...)

But he did point out an fascinating point on the issue of celebrity and the president: for ordinary folk, meeting the president can seem like a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Something you commemorate by taking copious pictures, writing effusive diary entries, and vowing never to wash your hand again. But for the President, it's possibly the most forgettable moment in his day. So perhaps, O'Neill hopes, reading novels is a way for the President to reconnect with the people in a more sustained way than a handshake and a quick shuffling of Secret Service agents. The novel becomes a means of re-entry, rather than escape.

And if that fails, there's always a game of cricket.

Movie: Deep in the Woods (Promenons-Nous Dans les Bois)

Stop me if you've heard this one before: five good-looking youngsters venture out to a secluded house in the middle of a dark, spooky forest. What sets apart Deep in the Woods, then, is a defintie sense of style. instead of drawing inspiration from 80s slashers or 70s grindhouse, direction Lionel Delplanque takes inspiration from Italian giallos, particularly Dario Argento. Indeed, the opening sequence plays like an homage to Deep Red, with its tale of childhood trauma and its rich, saturated colors.

Deep in the Woods also plays upon the internal creepiness of fairy tales; in this case, the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Whereas Neil Jordan turned into a story of female sexual empowerment (helped, in no small part, by Angela Carter), Delplanque seems content to make a solid shocker. Although he confuses his animal metaphors (what's with all the crows?), his stylistic flourishes bring a surreal touch to a pedestrian storyline. Take, for instance, what seems to be the largest, steamiest bathroom in the world. Some of the camera tricks, of course, exist merely for their own sake (including: glove compartment cam, nylon bag cam, and fisheye lens crow cam), but if nothing else, they're kind of fun... which sums up the movie in general.

But what would a giallo be without flamboyant camera moves and psycho-sexual weirdness? The main creepy guy in question, Alex De Fersen, seems quasi-gay. He takes an unusual interest in blonde pretty boy Wilfried, complimenting Wilfried's physique, among other sleazy old man moves. And yet... he has a son and a co-dependent relationship with his pervy gameskeeper, Stephane (the French go-to guy for freakiness, Denis Levant). And although, in the end, the psychological make-up of the killer seems head-scratching, keep in mind that giallos were never really meant for their acuity into the human psyche. Instead, enjoy the lesbian sex, full-frontal nudity, and wolf-head imagery. It doesn't always have to make perfect sense when you've got those.

Movie: Eden Log

Remember that episode of Pokémon that caused kids to have seizures? The first three minutes of Eden Log should probably carry a similar warning. I'm opposed to strobe effects, particularly when they're used well (for instance, the last few minutes of Looking for Mr. Goodbar), but director Franck Vestiel seems insistent to make his audience feel as much physical discomfort as possible. So if this entails inducing epileptic fits, then so be it.

Still, Vestiel tries the best he can with a limited budget and a surfeit of imagination. Eden Log, on some levels, reminds me of Cube, another cerebral sci-fi/horror film that makes the most of its limited set(s). (Primer, however, is the one to beat.) There is, however, only so much creepiness that you can eke out of a mud-covered man looking at plant roots. So Vestiel cleverly incldues some deformed and violent humanoid beings to up the ante.

But, oh, if that were only enough. Instead, Eden Log tries to cram in as many ideas and concepts into its limited space as possible. So rather than offer another siege-and-escape movie, Vestiel attempts to add timeliness. Is the film a Marxist parable? An environmental warning? An uneasy mixture of Soylent Green and The Matrix? At one point, a character threatens to let the world know "what you're doing to all the minorities" -- a post-racial future, my ass -- but is quickly (unsurprisingly) quieted. Somehow, the political points don't mesh with the film's metaphors. They feel sort of tacked on -- the right idea, but the wrong execution.

Mostly, whatever political point Vestiel tries to make also gets lost in the murk. The movie, shot in black-and-white with the occasional splash of color, is so dark that everything seems to get lost. As the movie begins, the main character wakes up at the bottom of a pit covered in muck, and decides that he must trek his way up from Level -4 to the surface, where (theoretically) answers await. But, since our main character conveniently has amnesia, he's as in the dark about his situation as the audience is. Quite literally. Along the way, there's a man covered in tree roots, a botanist who glides in mid-air (thanks to a series of wires and harnasses), and a mysterious woman who is weirdly passive. There's an infection, there's a revolution, and, most of all, there's Eden Log itself: giant tree, scientific facility and overburdened Macguffin all in one.

We get clues to Eden Log's purpose via memory cards -- in a unique touch, the hero must find screen onto which these images, whether it's pieces of scrap metal or a dead person's face. But all the cinematic flourishes don't resolve the issue that it's still terribly unclear what's going on. When we do finally discover the hero's identity, it feels like a big so what. As it turns out, the guy's just another poor sap.

Reading: Yu Hua

In the film The Interpreter, we get an inside view of the world of simultaneous translation at the United Nations. Nicole Kidman, who for her part learned an invented African language for an invented African country, has to listen, process and translate as the original speaker talks. For Yu Hua’s appearance at the Philadelphia Free Library, Chinese woman, certainly less tortured than Kidman’s character, and several shades more perky, took on the job adroitly, punctuating her translation with the time-honored time-buying words well and umm. Let's face it, though: I worked as a freelance translator (my specialty: Vietnamese) and totally sucked at it.

So as Yu discussed his newest novel, Brothers, I accepted without complaint long pauses as the translator parsed questions and answers back and forth. Interpreting is a different skill set than translating; interpreting means working on-the-fly, trying to capture mood, tone and nuance in an immediate situation. And I’m not sure all those came through, despite the interpreter’s best efforts. Oftentimes, when Yu spoke, the Chinese-speaking audience laughed, and we English speakers waited breathlessly to hear the joke. (Yu, after all, is known as a great satirist.) And yet, what we heard in English didn’t seem as funny. Perhaps there was some slippage. Or perhaps humor doesn’t translate well—which is often the case.

Still, she cheerfully translated when one audience member asked a long, rambling question—well, less a question and more an observation of how the world works and how the world should work, and why isn’t the world working the way it should?, and wouldn’t it be great if…—stopping the speaker at certain points to digest what he had to say, and possibly saving the rest of us from more grief. Yu himself indulged the question, addressing what he saw as the number one issue facing China today: poverty.

Indeed, Yu spoke eloquently (via cute translator) about the difference between bootlegging his book in China and in the U.S. In the U.S., he said, the issue is rightly one of copyright, and seeing that his hefty tome costs $30 retail (but worth it), recouping those losses is worth it. In China, however, illiteracy is a pronounced problem, so if bootlegging promotes access to reading material, then so be it. It reminded of Connaught Square in India, where I bought a bootlegged copy of Midnight’s Children. Does Rushdie need those few extra cents of royalties? And how would I feel if that was my book being photocopied and poorly bound?

Yu’s talk took place at the Independence Branch in Philadelphia, at 7th and Market, the designated Chinese-American/gay and lesbian branch, as it has sections specifically devoted to those communities. Power to the people, I say. Maybe well-stocked and fully-funded libraries should be the real solution to China’s illiteracy issues.

Movie: Sheitan

Sheitan has plenty going for it. For instance: attitude. As the first full-length from the Kourtrajmé collective (though Kim Chapiron is the named director)—best known for their hip-hop inspired short films—Sheitan demonstrates a no-holds-barred attitude when a title card announces, “Lord, don’t forgive them, for they know what they do.” It’s like Jean-Luc Godard in baggy jeans. Kourtrajmé’s anarchic energy attracted the attention of Vincent Cassel, who plays the maniacal, giggling groundskeeper Joseph. His wide-eyed portrayal of a man who may or may not have made a deal with the devil is another thing Sheitan has going for it.

The movie centers on a post-racial crew (an Asian, a black African, a light-skinned Muslim woman, and the main character, Bart, who’s as whiny has any other white suburban kid) who just want to have a good time—which includes picking fights, shoplifting, and driving away from the pump without paying. When they meet Eve, a pouty-lipped sexpot, she suggests, “Let’s go to my place in the country,” and—well, you know what you’re in for.

But not really. Sheitan bucks traditional backwoods stalk-n-slash for something more amorphous and loose. Kourtrajmé has previously disdained narratives, but when you’re not Chris Marker, achieving it with some sort of cohesion is a lot harder than it sounds. The director/writers move the film in any number of directions at once, milking creepy dolls and doll parts for all their worth. But bizarre plot deviations and perverse goings-on don’t necessarily build suspense; instead of building to a climax, Sheitan sort of accretes.

As if to compensate for this lack of narrative tension, Sheitan piles on the hip-hop attitude. And although linking hip-hop to the French riots might be short-sighted, the anti-social behavior in which our less-than-sympathetic characters partake have a hip-hop soundtrack, more a vent for their own strangely misdirected anger, rather than a means of authentic self-expression.

But fidelity to the strictures of hip-hop, however, isn't an excuse for misogyny. I know, it’s almost redundant to criticize a horror film for this, but given the filmmakers’ staunch anti-establishment stance, you’d also hope that they’d rebel against patriarchal structures, rather than falling prey to them. Their simplistic views of female sexuality seem too willfully narcissistic, and the sight gags involving female genitalia and childbirth seem particularly childish. The women in the film are little more than cyphers, and while Roxane Mesquida plays the siren effortlessly, compare this to her work as a fully-fledged seductress in À ma soeur! If you want a provocateur, try Catherine Breillat on for size. Jerking off a dog just isn't the same thing.

There’s also a strange queer subtext to Sheitan—which seems to codify this masculine ideal. When Joseph shows an unusual interest in Bart (inviting him to go skinny dipping, thrusting his nubile red-headed niece at him, having Bart climb on his shoulders), Bart insists that he’s “not a fag,” even as his compatriots tease him about Joseph’s advances. Plus: Vincent Cassel in wet underwear.

Wet underwear aside, Sheitan offers a thrilling, if confusing ride, willing to throw in camera-tricks and narrative jumps to shock the viewer. But, as we all know, the devil is in the details.

Reading: Wells Tower

Every year, there's room for one or two "next big things" in the literary world. Wells Tower has already reserved his spot for 2009. A recent issue of Poets & Writers had a feature on him, and all the folks from Farrar, Straus and Giroux at his book launch seemed smitten with his short-story collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. And meeting Wells in person, you can't help but be overcome by his sweet demeanor and good humor. Plus, he's got an awesome name. I dare you to say it without adding a little James Bond inflection to it.

Also, I finally discovered the difference between a reading and a book launch. At a reading, someone reads, and nobody gets drunk. At a book launch, nobody reads, and everybody gets drunk. While the former is more intellectually satisfying, the latter is more physically satisfying. A little bird told me that FSG has permanently banned the presence of Crisco from its book launches.

So at Moe's in Brooklyn (replete with a portrait of Moe from The Simpsons, natch), we revellers enjoyed free Mediterreanean food -- a full-on dolma feeding frenzy -- bathed in atmospheric red light. While I sat in a row of dislocated fold-down theater seats and jealously guarded the tapanade, Mr. Towers circled the room and charmed the heck out of people. Cheers!