In these spaces of questionable morality, the femme fatale’s sex appeal gives her the upper hand. She’s always a target in rooms filled with men who want to leer at her. She knows this, and turns it to her advantage. While the erotic thrills are obviously meant to be found in her self-revelation, what seems more thrilling to me is how she works this trap. She’s a magician who can misdirect her audience with a quip and the raise of a perfectly sculpted brow. A femme fatale always knows how to use the erotics of the erotic thriller. When Catherine Tramell intimidates her male interrogators with candid discussion of her sex life and famously uncrosses her legs to reveal she’s not wearing underwear, the moment is so self-conscious in its studied sexiness that it becomes bizarre. Who would ever do such a thing in real life? But the men onscreen are so enthralled by her that she can do whatever she wants. It’s a fantasy of weaponized femininity in a misogynist world, and by the time Jeanne Tripplehorn exclaims of Stone’s character: “She’s evil! She’s brilliant!” I can’t help but wish that I too could be evil and brilliant, working my way into spaces where I shouldn’t be and surprising everyone with that stylish mix of sexiness and cunning that only exists in movies.
The news does not matter. It has little, if any real impact on your life besides what you allow it to have. Like a vampire, The news- whether mainstream, alternative, printed or screen-based- is a parasitic force that will drain you of your energy, happiness and rationality if you welcome it over your threshold and in to your life. The key is to simply never invite it in.
Now, I’m sure this controversial opening paragraph has already got some readers citing objections and caveats, reaching for counter-examples and exceptions, or simply getting ready to wave me off as an uninformed fool who doesn’t know what he is talking about. And perhaps there is something to that, given that my online avatar is a pixelated rendering of Stanczyk the Court Jester. But jesters are kept around because they say what needs to be said. And they express these unpopular messages with enough wit and entertainment that the kings let them keep their heads and indeed value their council. Which is the service that I am hoping to perform for you today.
Comedy has always been the author’s way into deeper issues. “You know, you laugh and you laugh and you laugh until you cry,” he says. “With this book in particular, I was writing at a time when our American democracy was being threatened by a president who told Orwellian lies constantly. I was editing the book during a pandemic and the strains a global health crisis put on our government. Those things led me to the question of: How far would a person go to protect something they see as sacred?”
In this new book by Kári Gíslason, the medieval tale of The Saga of Gisli is reimagined, providing flesh, bones and heart to a woman long relegated to the sidelines of Icelandic history.
Hannah Gadsby repeatedly points out that she’s zigging when a ghostwriter would’ve zagged in “Ten Steps to Nanette,” the enthralling and occasionally vexing book she bills as “A Memoir Situation.” Case in point: The Emmy-winning stand-up comic opens with an epilogue, concludes with the prologue and drops in an intermission to encourage mid-reading decompression.
Should we have expected anything less? The Australian rocketed to global prominence in 2018 with the Netflix release of “Nanette,” which challenged notions of what a comedy special could be through its unapologetic interrogation of sexual violence, homophobia and patriarchal structures. She remained in a form-breaking mood with her charming 2020 follow-up, “Douglas,” a lighter but more methodically crafted exercise in comedy deconstruction. Although “Ten Steps to Nanette” has the trappings of a memoir, as Gadsby embeds her memories with wit, reflection and self-deprecation, she eschews convention by meticulously framing her life through her defining work.
Early in his new book, Robert Whiting refers to the “Yamate Line,” and most readers who have been to Tokyo in the past half-century will suspect a misprint. Few visitors to the Japanese capital could avoid the subway train in question, which runs in a loop through such well-known districts as Shibuya, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, and Ginza. But they’ll know it as the Yamanote Line, a romanization of its Japanese name (literally “mountain’s hand,” equivalent to the English “foothill”) first adopted in 1971. But by then, the Californian Whiting had already logged almost a decade in Japan, having been sent there by the United States Air Force in 1962. “Tokyo is the best city in the world,” he remembers a master sergeant saying when informing him of his posting: “You’ll be over there with all those geisha girls, riding around in rickshaws. Ten million people. More neon signs than you can imagine.”
The neon comes up quite often throughout Tokyo Junkie: 60 Years of Bright Lights and Back Alleys … and Baseball, as one of the city’s few constants during a period of ceaseless change. Whiting closes his memoir with his 77th birthday lunch at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Nihonbashi: “It occurred to me over our gelato that there is very little left in Tokyo that is older than I am, given how this city keeps on renewing itself.” He arrived nearly 60 years ago to “the biggest construction site in the world,” a transformation motivated by preparation for the 1964 Summer Olympics. Still, there were plenty of attractions amid all the dust: there were “deluxe movie theaters with 70mm screens, and pachinko pinball parlors jangling noisily all day long,” beside “noodle stands, yakitori shops with their smoky grills, food marts, and discount shops,” beside “ancient temples with serene gardens of gravel and rocks and inner courtyards.”
Taking readers on an expansive journey across continents, cultures, centuries and even species, Gross reveals a stunning disparity in Western medicine and academia: While huge amounts of money and dedication are poured into the understanding of penises, the female body is disregarded. Like lore, this misinformation and shame are still being passed down to girls today.
It is a challenge to capture the essence of a protean life while the subject is still writing the script, but Mr. Markoff, a longtime tech journalist for the New York Times, has done it beautifully. “Telling the story of Stewart Brand”—now a vital 83—“poses a puzzle, for he isn’t someone who can be neatly categorized,” Mr. Markoff reflects. “Perhaps it is so difficult to put him in a box because he has such an uncanny knack for seeing the world from outside the box.”
It may be true
that I’m limerent
for you another victim
of love I’ve got all
the relevant symptoms