I am finishing this up very late. I saved the articles and books in piles, meaning to finish my recommended reading list as I read. But the events of the spring and early summer prevented me from doing much more than my writing and the work I needed to do to keep my business alive. I managed to get bits of the Recommended Reading List done as I read, but only bits. One of those bits is in this introduction. The others are scattered throughout this particular piece.
I wrote the following paragraph right after I finished the essay I’m referring to. I was shaking as I did so, because I was so very angry—and not in a good way.
Wow. I don’t get angry at the essays I read very often, but I lost my temper at one of the essays in The Best American Essays 2023. Normally, I don’t reveal much about an author or an essay I don’t like, but I’m going to mention this one here: “Revelation at the Food Bank” by Merrill Joan Gerber. I’m outing her because she infuriated me with her ignorance and her narcissism. Get this: during Covid, her cleaning lady told her to stop shopping at the grocery store and go to the food bank instead because they didn’t make you get out of your car. So this Gerber woman did. I figured the revelation would be “gosh, look at how many people are struggling.” Instead, this idiot of a woman, a retired professor with a ton of accolades as a writer, a woman who can afford a cleaning lady, for godssake, continued to go to the food bank because she made a connection with “the food bank lady.” No thought to the fact that Gerber can actually afford to buy her own food. No thought to something like grocery delivery. No thought to how many people needed the food she was taking because they couldn’t afford it and had a family to feed. As you can tell, I’m so furious at this woman that I could just…I don’t know. And I’m angry at the editor who bought the piece in the first place and the editor of this volume, who decided that this essay was one of the year’s best. (It goes on and on and on revealing this woman’s total self-involvement. No thought to others here at all.) Man. I do everything I can to support our various food banks and the services for the struggling folks in this city, and then there are people like the two editors and this idiot woman who don’t understand their freakin’ privilege at all. Wow.
Yes, I wrote the above in the moment, and I’m glad I did, because I’m writing the rest of this now after our difficult spring. The above paragraph reminded me how thoroughly pissed off that essay made me (and still makes me) and how it made me wonder if I should even recommend the volume. After a few months, I thought…ah, heck, I can recommend individual essays from the volume. After all, it’s not the fault of the other writers that they’re lumped in with this awful woman. But…as I sat down with the book…I found that I just couldn’t. I can’t honor this editor, nor can I give Robert Atwan, the overall editor, even tacit approval for the terrible decision to include this essay.
You can call this cancel culture if you want. But this is my list, and my website, and I am not going to give any credit to something I find so deeply, deeply, deeply offensive.
Anyway…I did return to the Alexander Chee Best American Essays volume after abandoning it shortly after the pandemic because I couldn’t handle tough subjects at the time. I’m glad I did return to it. I read a lot more than I expected in March. Looking back on it all, I’m a bit astonished by that. Most of it is nonfiction, essays, and articles. Only one novel here, which makes sense considering all that I was doing. I think everyone will find something to enjoy here.
March, 2024
Abramovitch, Seth, “Looks Like He Made It: Manilow At 80,” The Hollywood Reporter, January 4, 2024. Because of my age, I know too many Barry Manilow songs. Because of my age, I’m rather uninterested in the man. (It was exceedingly uncool to be a Manilow fan when I was a teenager.) So, as a result, I trained myself to be resistant to all things Manilow. And it took me a while to read this article. I’m so glad I did. It’s about perseverance in the arts at the highest level. If you’re working in the arts, you need to read this.
Biskind, Peter, “We Give Social Media Something to Fight About (That Isn’t Politics),” The Hollywood Reporter, January 26, 2024. A fun article about the things people love about Hollywood. You might agree with some, and might hate others, but this is fun.
Chae, Jung Hae, “The Gye, the No-Name Hair Salon, the Coup d’Etat, and the Small Dreamers,” The Best American Essays 2022, edited by Alexander Chee, Mariner, 2022. I love this essay. It combines the difficulties of dealing with a parent as their own person. It also reflects the way that different cultures impact our lives. And it looks, honestly, at our relationships to dreams and money. Read this one.
Chee, Alexander, The Best American Essays 2022, Mariner, 2022. Unlike the Best American Essays 2023, I can highly recommend this volume. Every essay caught me and made me think. The ones I list here are only there because they had something extra for me. This is an extra special volume. Pick it up.
Crosley, Sloane, “After Barbie, Greta Gerwig Has No Plans To Rest,” Vanity Fair, December/January 2024. Greta Gerwig has more courage than I do. She works in Hollywood and she’s willing to buck every single naysayer she meets. There’s so much quotable stuff here. One of my favorites? “At some point, the terror of never making anything becomes much bigger than the terror of making something bad.” Read this, and try to apply Greta-courage to your next work.
Galuppo, Mia, “From A Child’s ‘Insightful’ Eye,” The Hollywood Reporter, February 16, 2024. An interview with the director of The ABCs of Book Banning, a documentary on how banning books negatively impacts children. Read this, then watch the documentary.
Galuppo, Mia, “It Can Be A Very Lonely Profession,” The Hollywood Reporter, January 8, 2024. Producers are extremely important to making movies, to making certain that creative things happen in Hollywood. It’s really hard to organize a lot of money, the people needed to make the film work, and to keep your enthusiasm for the work. This is a very frank interview among a group of producers. Lots of great quotes, especially from Christine Vachon, who has been in the producing trenches for decades. I love this one from her, which came for me at the right time.
A crisis is only when someone gets hurt. Everything else is just a pain in the ass, a challenge, a problem. But “crisis”—there’s only one reason to ever use that word.
Gimpelevich, Calvin, “Among Men,” The Best American Essays 2022, edited by Alexander Chee, Mariner, 2022. The great hook on this essay caught me at the very start. Calvin was both transitioning and working construction. He ran into a lot of prejudice and had to deal with some problems that every slight male encounters. Only he hadn’t been in the world of men at that point as a man and saw parts of the culture he had never seen before. I’m not going to summarize any more because you need to read this to get the full insight and impact.
Keegan, Rebecca, “‘It Was One Big Train Wreck In My Head,” The Hollywood Reporter, January 18, 2024. This interview convinced me to watch the documentary, The Greatest Night In Pop, which I highly recommend. The interview is with Lionel Richie who pulled off an amazing feat. He had very big and very crazy night. He was hosting The American Music Awards. He was winning awards that night…and he was coordinating the single-night only recording of superstars who got together to sing “We Are The World.” He and Quincy Jones pulled off an incredible balancing act. From writing the music, to getting super famous people (and great musicians) to agree to managing personalities for nearly 24 hours, he did what in hindsight looks impossible. Read this…and watch the documentary, particularly if you’re an artist yourself. It’s astounding.
McClintock, Pamela, “Will Packer Mints Money With Black Movies,” The Hollywood Reporter, January 4, 2024. Like Greta Gerwig (see below), Will Packer has spent decades in Hollywood proving the suits wrong. He has made films that no one believed in because they featured Black performers or were about Black topics. I love reading articles about people like this, because they keep going despite the headwinds. And that is what Packer seems to do best. Take a look.
Mounzer, Lina, “The Gamble,” The Best American Essays 2022, edited by Alexander Chee, Mariner, 2022. A fantastic essay on living with a gambler and about magical thinking. I think there’s a bit of optimistic magical thinking in all writers, so this resonated for me. Unexpectedly, though, in the middle of the essay is a wonderful (very long) paragraph about the way that people give condolences in the various dialects of Arabic (which is fascinating in and of itself). The paragraph ends like this:
Death is the greatest of obstacles, the strictest and most unchangeable of fates. It is the single certainty, written from the start. In its face, this truth must be acknowledged by all. When it comes to death, a surrender to fatalism is a great comfort. Otherwise the if onlys might themselves to your feet, tripping you back into the past every time you try to move forward.
Breathtaking. And quite wise. And well done. There are more gems in the essay. Go see for yourself.
Simpson, Erika J., “If You Ever Find Yourself,” The Best American Essays 2022, edited by Alexander Chee, Mariner, 2022. Boy, I saw a lot of myself in this essay. The rest of the title is “…piss poor and struggling to survive.” I was, after my divorce. Maybe a bit before as well. I had no money and no one to ask for it. (My folks, upon hearing I was getting a divorce, said, “What did you do?” and did not offer to help in any way.) I barely made my bills. I wrote a lot of nonfiction and some places did not pay me. Others did, but never when I needed it. Fortunately, I had that skill, though, so I could augment my income. Still, I did most of the things that Simpson outlines in this essay. I sure wish I had had it back then.
So, Anthony Veasna, “Baby Yeah,” The Best American Essays 2022, edited by Alexander Chee, Mariner, 2022. This is a beautiful essay, very poignant. It’s about hope and despair and suicide. So lost a close friend to suicide, and the essay is, in part, a tribute to the friend. While that’s poignant, it’s made even more so by the fact that So himself died the year after this essay was written. Worth reading, but sad that he will not be around to contribute more.
Spitznagel, Eric, “Take My Joke, Please!” The Hollywood Reporter, January 10, 2024. A really good article on jokes, theft, and copyright. Even though most of us who write aren’t writing for ourselves to perform onstage, we are going out into the world and doing things. So this is worth looking at.
St. James, Simone, Murder Road, Berkeley, 2024. Creepy and marvelous book about a very scary stretch of road and a couple who encounters dark things along it. St. James has written a number of Gothic-adjacent books that I like. This one isn’t Gothic. It’s more contemporary dark fantasy. (I don’t want to say horror, because it’s not quite there either.) I devoured this in two nights, which for me is like reading in a single sitting. It’s not my favorite of hers, but it’ll tide me over until the next book of hers arrives.
Stevens, Angelique, “Ghost Bread,” The Best American Essays 2022, edited by Alexander Chee, Mariner, 2022. I’m sensing a theme in some of the essays I liked. They’re about the difficult relationships between parents and children. This one is about Stevens biological father and her own somewhat difficult life. Memorable and difficult.
Sun, Rebecca, “Blame The Gatekeepers, Not The Filmmakers,” The Hollywood Reporter, January 18, 2024. Very important essay about the reasons why movies about white people’s responses to horrible events in the native community, like “Killers of Flower Moon,” are the chosen narrative voice. Sun’s thesis is that the white gatekeepers can’t see past their own noses. Having seen that reaction to one of my projects which has been under option for nearly ten years now, and has had the “why don’t you focus on the white people” question or worse, the question that comes at me (why did you chose to write about these things? as if as a white person I shouldn’t have violated some code), I think her thesis has merit. If nothing else, it will start discussions.