Hiatus
My summer hiatus, comprising six weeks of travel—three weeks in Texas and three weeks in Montana and elsewhere, separated by a week at home in the middle—has come to an end. It was not necessarily my intention to stop writing and posting, but I did, for the most part. A good thing, I think. We all need a vacation, sometimes, even if it’s not really a vacation with young children, it’s just parenting elsewhere. But the elsewhere is the important bit.
When we flew to Texas in mid June it seemed like the pandemic might be winding down, for the US, that is; driving back from Montana a few days ago it seemed like it’s back with a vengeance. The kids go back to school full time next week, masked, of course. Until they send them home again, perhaps. It feels like they won’t do that this time, but it’s not possible to know the future, is it? So much of our lives are prefaced by a relentless focus on the future—planning, scheming, squirreling away, positioning, banking—that there’s a certain comfort in simply no longer being able to predict, and therefore “know,” what’s coming. It shows our supposed foresight for the laughable ruse it is.
I’ve done a fair amount of reading and far less watching, than usual, in these weeks. Since finishing Stephen King’s Danse Macabre at the beginning of June, I’ve read several classic horror stories he recommended: Ghost Story by Peter Straub, The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. All fun and, especially the latter two, stunningly written. Jackson’s famous ghost story is an angry, hallucinogenic wail against life in the closet, with a brilliantly unreliable narrator. Bradbury’s evil circus is a dangerous, wildly poetic elegy for childhood dreams and nightmares (and clearly a major influence on King’s It). The Straub and Siddons are also affecting, but the other two are masterpieces.
I added one of my own, Marisha Pessl’s Night Film, which was a deeply creepy mystery about the death of a cult horror filmmaker’s daughter. And I read, alongside Something Wicked, Quentin Tarantino’s novelization of his film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I will write about that fascinating experiment in another post. I have more of King’s recommendations to get to in the coming weeks, which I hope will be mostly filled with reading, writing and watching. When will I get back to teaching, I wonder? or some other kind of labor outside of the house?
I’ve watched plenty of movies this summer, but most were things watched with my kids and their cousins and other family. I showed Rear Window to my niece and nephew, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I actually saw a movie in a theater, Fast & Furious 9 at an Alamo Drafthouse with my dad. We watched the latest Marvel movie, Black Widow, which I enjoyed with my low, low expectations. Steven Soderbergh snuck back into his neo-noir wheelhouse via HBO Max, with No Sudden Move, which was an excellent showcase for Cheadle, del Toro and Fraser. And that week I was home I watched some delightful schlock horror. First, 1984’s C.H.U.D., a nutty D-movie with an accidentally great cast; then the Karyn Kusama/Diablo Cody effort Jennifer’s Body, a clever movie that feels watered down in execution. Next, I watched Larry Cohen’s insane anti-consumerist mixtape, The Stuff, which is a work of underappreciated genius; followed by Joe Dante’s The Howling, a mediocre werewolf movie with intermittent jolts of inspiration (and glorious makeup effects).
Since we were often camping when we went back on the road, there wasn’t much opportunity to watch anything. However, when we stopped over at Grandma’s place in Montana, and the kids were wondering about Westerns, we all watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I remembered much of it, but not the greatness, which shown through on this viewing—of the screenplay, the direction, the Newman/Redford bromance, the distancing music and narrative ellipses. I had remembered it as being more sentimental—this time, I found the sentiment purposefully curdled and a more Bonnie and Clyde-like sarcasm along with a searing violence that evoked the Vietnam War.
Back home now, slowly reassembling our lives from the boxes and suitcases of travel; cleaning the house; making new stacks and facing the coming season.