The always erudite Tim Jones-Yelvington recommends Green Girl over at The Lit Pub. I really enjoyed reading his essay, as Tim really pokes into what I was attempting with the novel. I love especially what he has to say about writing into, as opposed to counter to, abjection, as well as the psychic and physical alienation of the retail experience.
I have been meditating lately about the aesthetics of depression, which in some way I attempt in Green Girl - although the "breakdown" scene is much shorter in the published version that it was in previous drafts, originally I had Ruth kind of stay inside and sleep all day for at least 30 pages, it was argued to me time and time again that this was boring, but I wanted to somehow convey the banality and cruelty of being depressed. I have been rather, voluptuously, intensely depressed the past week, although it's more complex I suppose, this vicious cycle of this illness I've been suffering from the past year or two, my flare-ups, my Flannery O'Connor invalidism. When I can stay awake I have been cycling through the entire oeuvre of Kirsten Dunst, and making notes about depression in cinema, in thinking about Melancholia. This will form an essay, eventually, about the "manic-depressive pixie dream girl." I think I'm going to take on this trope of the "manic pixie dream girl" everyone has been throwing around lately as what should not be represented (in cinema, in literature). I will argue that underneath the surface in reality the dream girl is quite depressed, and to fold this into a discussion of the actress, the ontology of cinema, and representations of female depression, and how this all relates to the star system and the genealogy of actresses, and women, unraveling. The term originated with Nathan Rabin reviewing Kirsten Dunst's performance in Elizabethtown in the A/V club, but has come to stand in for the lack of inner life of a female character. But I find it really intriguing that Kirsten's breakdown and subsequent entering of rehab for depression came around this time.Anyway. Overall I think the essay will be a close reading of Melancholia. I am thinking this essay might be for Slapping Clark Gable, or I might try to publish it somewhere, where, I do not know, it doesn't matter, perhaps.
Anyway. I'm also reading Thomas Bernhard's Gargoyles - I love, anything Thomas Bernhard - and meditating on what would it look like if I wrote an entire book in which the main character was depressed - where would be the movement, would it be readable. Less about the machinery of depression - the medicalized patient - but more about a woman in a room. Where would the urge and viscera come from, as issued from a static body.
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I saw Jones-Yelvington's essay and tweeted a link to it - this is probably going to be a bit 'well, so what' but @TheRejectionist responded saying how much she liked the book, so I'm hoping that might lead to a review from her.
ReplyDeleteI'm really interested in your treatment of what might be called 'slight' kind of figures, like Lispector's girl from The Hour of the Star. There's a kind of devastating clarity in how that novel treats its passive protagonist (if that's the right word - subject/object?). Also in the characterisation or embedding of the kinds of women who aren't so readily drawn into the public discourse except to be vilified. Sorry if this is all coming across a little clunkily.
My first ms was around a young, passive girl coming to terms with the vast gaps in her sense of identity, so I feel like I desperately need to be reading the kind of fiction that you write. So the point of this is - thanks for breaking ground. I very much look forward to the insights you're sure to find within the stasis of depression.
I hope you do this Kate.. the idea has already got my juices flowing..
ReplyDeleteHey did you read Terrance Rafferty's smart essay in the NYT some weeks ago, wrt Dangerous Method and mental illness in the movies?
ReplyDeleteI liked A Dangerous Methold okay but Keira Knightley was SO bad. It's painful, all the tropes of "this is a mental patient". I became ill midway through Melancholia, so can't really speak to it, but at least K Dunst wasn't channeling Sybil.
Also I think Shame was very good, devastatingly so. You two might like it.
ReplyDeleteFav Kirsten flicks (have yet to see Melancholia--need to):
ReplyDeleteCrazy Beautiful
Bring it On
Marie Antoinette
Virgin Suicides
Can't wait to read your manic pixie dream girl piece.
Thanks Anonymous!
ReplyDeleteRepat: I scanned the piece, mostly pissed that neither A Dangerous Method NOR Shame is yet in NC. Will go back and reread. I want to see Shame, badly. For one thing, Michael Fassbinder makes me want to tear off all of my clothes. For the other thing, Steve McQueen, concept, etc. I do want to see A Dangerous Method, and now feel if I write this essay I should.
Kate: Yes - I just rewatched Bring it On and Crazy Beautiful. I was actually on an extremely competitive cheerleading team in high school (I sucked, I don't know why I was on it) and it always brings back strange memories. Although our squad was much more militant than the one depicted. My favorite Durst films are the Coppola ones and Melancholia. I love it Crazy Beautiful there are a few weird scenes in the middle where her hair is tinted red, because she had just began filming Spider Man.
schietree-
ReplyDeletehave been thinking of your thoughtful comment all weekend, haven't yet responded, because no matter how much i consume and consume sometimes i feel some dread writer's block on the internet.
first of all, thanks for tweeting it - and the rejectionist is awesome, i love her blog. she's going to be interviewing me about the novel for her blog. so stay tuned for that!
i am really interested in this idea of what you call a "slight" kind of figure - the comparison to hour of the star is right-on, in many ways green girl was borne entirely out of my desire to have a dialogue with lispector's novella and her slim girl depicted within, and explictly the male author-narrator. in green girl my author-narrator is a woman, who is giving birth to and meditating on a girl who would have otherwise been a cipher, in literature and film, and yes, in society (the shopgirl, woolf's girl behind the counter). i think in lispector's novel there is this more nuanced issue of class, as macabea is someone who is not going to transcend the slums, ruth is also in a demimonde, but of a different type, and she has much more freedom to escape (out of her story, out of my story).
i think since lispector takes on the girl from the slums, she is more likely to be demonized. my ruth i feel is a type also to be treated hostilely - or to be viewed as a type, and the best writer of the girl as type was jean rhys (the jeune fille, the mannequin, etc.)
your novel sounds wonderful - did you publish it or put it away?
Thanks for your response. I'm very much looking forward to the interview!
ReplyDeletePerhaps my favourite character of Jean Rhys' is Antoinette, who I think still falls within the 'girl' type, with her fragile sense of self, inability to see herself in mirrors (or understand herself without them) and so on. But she is more fantastical, with all that literary history behind her.
Parsing the differences is tough - I have so much I want to understand about how these different characters operate, but online I feel my understanding is a little flawed, my eyes don't see as acutely.
Thanks for asking about my novel - I have an agent who believes in it and is sending it out to quite a few publishers, but it's been 6 months, no dice. Before that it took a year and a half to get the agent. Lots of nice rejections on the grounds of we like the writing but don't know how to sell it. Still waiting on half of them. So, limbo between the bookshelf and the drawer.
Crossed fingers would be much appreciated.