Throughout all of this, I never sought to deny the painful history of British colonialism—instead, I simply chose to look the other way, putting it out of my mind in favor of more comfortable, depoliticized aesthetics. It wasn’t until I got older, and my nascent left-wing sensibilities had finally begun to develop from an ill-defined patchwork of amorphous principles into a more coherent, systemic political ethos which held anti-imperialism as one of its central tenets, that I began to confront these questions for the first time. What did it mean that as a child, having never learned my mother tongue or expressed much interest in connecting with my roots on any meaningful level, I felt more connected to the art and literature of my people’s colonizers than that of my own culture? What did it mean that this author, so beloved not only to me but to my parents, and to millions of their fellow countrymen and women, was a household name in India solely because of colonization’s far-reaching legacies? And what does it mean, even knowing all that I know now, that I still can’t seem to shake the warm, nostalgic comfort that I feel when I think about those stories?
A pecan tart is a tiny ode to pleasure. The pastry is unobtrusive but flavorful. Cream cheese adds a waft of sweetness. Its butter pastry dissolves on your tongue, beside a pecan mixture that’s crunchy and decadent and punchy — but not so filling that you can’t chew a single tart over coffee, or gulp a handful just before you’ve set the table for dinner. For a small amount of labor, the feeling you’ll yield is immense. Whether in moderation or excess, the pecan tart is a solid hang.
But in the same way that clichés exist because they hold a truth inside of them, there’s something extraordinary about Keegan’s ability to make some of the very oldest stories feel too specific to be any other story but themselves. “Foster” is exactly as sad as you imagine it would be, but more stunningly alive than you have any right to expect. Its language settles in your belly and then your bones only seconds after it has passed your eyes.
Here, as elsewhere, the author has made sure that we know no more than his protagonist, and usually less; we rely on the children in his stories to explain his beautiful, broken worlds to us and to assure us that they will fix them, if they can. Perhaps Shuna’s gods are some arcane far-future relatives of ours, or perhaps they lived long ago, in some pocket of history that mere grownups have forgotten about. Miyazaki is not here to satisfy adults or to make them happy; his focus remains on children, and, as a present to them, he has made his worlds repairable by children, sometimes with nothing more or less remarkable than a handful of grain. Our own world, he has always said, ought to be made repairable, too.
One of the great pleasures of these novels is their repetitive nature, and according to Lucy Worsley’s new biography, Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman, Christie’s life was a continuous yearning for a return to childhood pleasures. In that desire, she was not unusual. It was, however, her manner of conjuring those pleasures—through a signature mix of charming settings and cold, logical violence—that presents a mystery, since few authors have managed to assemble a body of work at once so comforting and so emotionless, so quaint and orderly and yet so saturated with cruelty.
But from 1983 on, HBO set out to acquire more original content catering to “male passions”: documentary shows like “Eros America” (later wisely renamed “Real Sex”) and raunchy mysteries like “The Hitchhiker,” which HBO’s own employees sardonically referred to as “F— a Stranger, Then Die.” During this era, if writers received feedback from on high that a particular episode lacked “cable edge,” the message was easily translated: needs more tits. A male executive once shot down the idea of building a series around a female comedian because “they’re not going to take their tops off.”
The profitability — and cost — of male fantasies is a running theme in Felix Gillette and John Koblin’s new book, “It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution and Future of HBO.” Both veteran media reporters, Gillette (Bloomberg) and Koblin (The New York Times) provide an exhaustive and only occasionally tedious account of how HBO’s executives, producers and creators built an indelible brand.
Overwatered the fire lilies.
Underwatered the aloe.
Prayed to the sun god
to dispel my gloom.