The Piano Teacher

The Piano Teacher (1983)

Elfriede Jelinek

A child has no secrets from her mother.

           

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a better and more effective horror movie than something like Paranormal Activity 17 for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is completely plausible: somewhere out in the darkest corners of the world someone is locking shut a freezer door in their basement charnel house. It’s certainly happened in the past. It’s probably happening right now. The Piano Teacher is also a horror story, but of a different sort. It’s not a gory slasher flick; instead it is a twisted, uncomfortable sort of psychological abuse porn. Unlike The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, however, The Piano Teacher is not very good. But it’s plausible! To be honest comparing the two is insulting to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The Suitcase

  
 

The Suitcase (1986)

Sergei Dovlatov

            What a strange, capricious animal memory is. It comes to you unbidden and unexpected: when your nostrils fill with a half-forgotten scent, when your fingers touch an old fabric, when you stub your toe in the middle of the night. Memory is like a distant relative who occasionally drops by your apartment, without phoning beforehand, and sits on your couch like he owns the place, tells you conflicting and confusing things, and drinks up the beer you were saving for yourself. Sergei Dovlatov’s The Suitcase is all about the power of memory: a brief second of autohypnosis while neurons firing at the speed of sound drag us into the crystallized world that exists in the throne of our unconsciousness. Perhaps a smarter man than myself (an actual expert: a neuroscientist or a philosopher, say) could answer this question but are we much more than our memories? Excluding the influences of purely material components that vary wildly between individuals (brain damage, mental retardation, alcoholism, depression, psychopathy) but our personalities are built on our experiences, right?  Have you ever seen a baby? They haven’t had much experience at anything and they’re all the fucking same, but an adult is a nuanced accretion of memory, a mental stalactite. Like your brain is the hardware and your mind is the operating system, that’s the analogy, right? I obviously don’t know anything about how the brain or the mind or our personalities work but, like most things that are probably wrong, that seems like a reasonable assumption. I don’t even know why I brought this up. It has little to do with the topic at hand. Ah, a question for people who have been to college!

Why I Write / Books v. Cigarettes

Why I Write

Books v. Cigarettes

George Orwell    

        

         I thought I might do something a little different for the new year so instead of a work of fiction the first two books I’m going to review are both collections of essays by George Orwell, the absolute, unchallenged master of the political novel. So this entry is both a change of pace and a double whammy. Two shocking surprise blows to the gut. I never really plan these things out in advance so I don’t know if this is going to work very well but I’m down for a ride if you are.