forget it, Jake

Roman Polanski's sexual proclivities might make me severely uncomfortable but personal politics aside, Chinatown shouldn't be missed. It's right up there in the sunshine-noir category, west coast crime where the bright light only serves to make the shadows darker. It knocks you out, this dirty tale of conspiracy and corruption set in the dustbowl L.A. of the 1930s, with Faye Dunaway all cheekbones and lipstick as the tightly wound femme fatale (there's always a woman)and a twist as black as they come. Most importantly, this is the film that made me suddenly realise why Jack Nicholson was a bona fide ladykiller back in the day: as J. J. Gittes he is morally dubious, impeccably dressed and ever so attractive. Chalk it up to my ongoing affection for fictional gumshoes perhaps, but there it is.

that obscure object of desire

Speaking of favourite things, Jeffrey Eugenides is finally coming out with a new book! It's been nine impatient years since the gorgeous odyssey of Middlesex, and I've been pining.

"To start with, look at all the books. There were her Edith Wharton novels, arranged not by title but date of publication; there was the complete Modern Library set of Henry James, a gift from her father on her twenty-first birthday; there were the dog-eared paperbacks assigned in her college courses, a lot of Dickens, a smidgen of Trollope, along with good helpings of Austen, George Eliot, and the redoubtable Bronte sisters. There were a whole lot of black-and-white New Directions paperbacks, mostly poetry by people like H.D. or Denise Levertov. There were the Colette novels she read on the sly. There was the first edition of Couples, belonging to her mother, which Madeleine had surreptitiously dipped into back in sixth grade and which she was using now to provide textual support in her English honors thesis on the marriage plot. There was, in short, this mid-sized but still portable library representing pretty much everything Madeleine had read in college, a collection of texts, seemingly chosen at random, whose focus slowly narrowed, like a personality test, a sophisticated one you couldn’t trick by anticipating the implications of its questions and finally got so lost in that your only recourse was to answer the simple truth. And then you waited for the result, hoping for “Artistic,” or “Passionate,” thinking you could live with “Sensitive,” secretly fearing “Narcissistic” and “Domestic,” but finally being presented with an outcome that cut both ways and made you feel different depending on the day, the hour, or the guy you happened to be dating: “Incurably Romantic."

— The First Lines of Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Marriage Plot via let us read and let us dance

oh boy

JTE covers my favourite Buddy Holly song. Swooning all over the goddamn joint.

the big man

As a good Boss-lovin' girl, I couldn't not tip my hat at Clarence Clemons' sad passing this weekend. As it so happens Saturday night (Sunday morning?) found me twirling in the divey-est of dive bars to Dancing In The Dark with a handsome man, which seems as fitting a tribute as any. Oh Clarence, you were the only sax player I could ever love.