now that’s what I call volta
I loved this essay in Public Books by Emma Adler with exactly the sort of attention-grabbing headline to knock me out of my default internet sleepwalking state: “Every Novel Is Boring—Until It Isn’t”:
With almost every novel I read, I go through the same arc. At first the novel bores me. Then, suddenly, it becomes the most interesting thing in the world…I call this point in a novel its volta. The term comes from poetry, where it denotes a shift that sonnets exhibit between their opening octave and concluding sestet or between their first 12 lines and final couplet…Rather than a shift in perspective, the volta in a novel is a shift to visceral enjoyment…
That’s the best, isn’t it? The moment when an acquaintance becomes a friend, when a song goes from background noise to what I will demand people play at my funeral. Or when you walk through residential streets by your hotel in a new city, before turning the corner and seeing sights you’ll never forget.
The novel I read immediately after it, What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron has such a volta. It’s confrontational and mysterious and gets under your skin. A character says things like, “your soul has spilled into mine” to another in an ambiguously platonic way. Feels like a long out-of-print mid-century avant-garde novel that was republished by NYRB seven years ago and went straight to the top of everyone’s favorites. I wish this recommendation were for something more obscure (it is -ish right now, but not for long since Martin Scorsese has already adapted it and that movie comes out next year). But if you are having trouble resisting the siren call of your phone (especially this coming Tuesday when the returns come in), you can do no worse.
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An essay I wrote for The Blade Runner Contact Sheets by Stephen Vaughan has just been excerpted at LitHub. It’s the movie that was—at least for the first half of my life—the movie: the north star to my most consistent obsessions. I loved the opportunity to write about what makes it uniquely compelling:
There are films that you seem to live inside. Ninety minutes and change of what transpires on the screen singes your mind’s eye and once it happens, it stays. When the lights switch on and the credits roll, you are left with ashes of memory like recollected experiences of your own.
Blade Runner is a film that I have lived inside. Some part of me stubbornly refuses to believe that I’ve never actually been to Taffy’s Snake Pit, jostling with the lowlifes for a seat at the bar, nor have I ever sought shelter from the rain with a steaming bowl of noodles before me at the White Dragon downtown. I have, in fact, been to the Bradbury Building—many times, always as a tourist—and each visit, it feels like returning to a place I used to go at a more restless time in my life...
On November 10th, at The Loved One, I’m going to be speaking with Paris Marx about their incredible new book, Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires. It’s been really exciting to see Paris’s career take off since launching the podcast Tech Won’t Save Us in 2020. And this book is such a great example of how their incisive criticism is backed with thorough research and historical context.
Another book event in LA coming up, you don’t want to miss is Chi Ta-wei, author of The Membranes, speaking at UCLA on November 17th. I reviewed the book for Technology Review in 2021 and it hasn’t left my mind. A singular work of cyberpunk from 1995 that engages with Taiwan in the wake of martial law as the country was flooded with cultural activity from bootleg tapes, queer literature, and international film. Here’s more on Ta-wei’s talk.
Last month, I attended a car maintenance workshop at the Feminist Center for Creative Work, which I can’t recommend enough. The instructor, Sarah Lyon, made this beautiful workbook and you can get a copy too.
For the past twenty or so (wow!) years, I’ve carried a Slingshot organizer, which I use for tracking writing days, date of last oil change, periods etc. I love the hand drawn illustrations, the list of addresses for info shops and activist bookstores around the world in the back and know-your-rights guides and facts. Tomorrow’s trivia: Shere Hite’s birthday and “2009 - 2 grandmothers, 2 priests, and a nun vandalize nuclear weapons stock pile in Tacoma, WA.” It also just feels good to hold something this unabashedly handmade in the age of Calendly scheduling assistants and Google Cal invite back-and-forths.
There were a bunch at Skylight and Green Apple Books last time I checked. And for $8, it’s one of my favorite things to give friends as a holiday gift.
I had the good fortune to tour the Internet Archive headquarters a couple weeks back and saw for myself the sculptures made of every staff member who has worked there for over three years. (That’s Aaron in the front, RIP). The office is in a giant old church with a giant old nave as the auditorium. And it’s full of these sculptures! Hilarious and also creepy, I’ve probably watched too many Twilight Zone episodes to ever stand to be alone in the room with them but it’s fine as extra company when an event is happening. They are crowded around the back and the sides, but apparently, at the time of social distancing, they were spaced out between the pews and everyone had to sit between them at meetings.
Thanks for reading.
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