by Steve Erikson and discovered within a few pages that the main character is obsessed with movies, I said, "Hey, this guy is like me." I then showed chunks of text to the Mrs. and she said, "That certainly sounds like you."And then, about halfway through the book I realize that the main character is supposed to be emotionally disturbed on a deep, fundamental level. Ach.
I read to connect with other people. I am not good when I talk about the weather or how your kids are doing in school or about this darn economy. But get me talking about books or film or the ideas behind them and -WHOA NELLY- stand back because I won't shut up.
In January '08 I heard a Spout.com podcast from Karina Longworth about how she was visiting the Sundance film festival and realized the spirit of American Independent film was not on the screen as much as in a book she was reading in the hotel room at the end of the day.
I had to read that book.
Zeroville
is a ready-made story for film obsessives. The main character is a film obsessive and the entire book is written with a series of oblique, unexplained references to film history and Hollywood lore. (Seriously, if you don't know the story about the film print of Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc
, major plot points will be lost on you.)Vikar, the main character shaves his head and tattoos Montgomery Clift on one half of his scalpand Elizabeth Taylor on the other half. He does this in honor of his favorite movie, A Place in the Sun
. In one of the opening scenes, someone thinks the tattoos are of Nathalie Wood and James Dean, and that person gets beaten with a lunch tray because Rebel Without a Cause (Two-Disc Special Edition)
is not a very good movie.Then it gets stranger.
Vikar moves to Hollywood the weekend of the Manson murders and stays there into the 1980s. While there, he meets many different directors, editors, producers, and actors, some real, some fictional. Vikar gets involved with the film industry as works as an editor, not so much to create films but to feed his film obsession.
The book is about what it is to be obsessed with movies and what a beautiful yet horrible thing that can be. There are some scenes of frank violence interspersed between passages of very beautiful discussions of what makes art powerful.
If I were going to lob any complaints at the book, it would be that it falls into a few cutesy post-modern traps. The chapter numbers go up to a certain point, and then start descending. So you read Chapters 1 through 227 and then start reading from Chapter 227 back down to Chapter 1. And the ending of the book falls a little flat. But that is not what makes the book special.
What makes it special is that it articulates the joy, the passion, and a bit of the madness that it takes to be completely obsessed with movies.
In other words, I recommend this book.
