Dispatch #4: The Bucket
The Dispatch #4: 14th August 2020
Dear friend,
“History is women following behind with the bucket.” This is a line from Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys, spoken by Mrs Lintott, the single female character in the play, an exasperated plea to her (entirely male) class to try to make the “occasional nod” to the small surface area afforded to women in the vast tapestry of historical record.
This line reverberated in my head like an echoing drum as I read three distinctly powerful novels by three remarkable female voices over the course of last month: Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell and Girl, Women, Other by Bernardine Evaristo.
While reading Hamnet—a sort of a Trojan-horse of a novel where you think you’re reading a book about the life of Shakespeare’s son and ostensible namesake to that Danish play but you soon realise that it’s really about Shakespeare’s much ignored, much maligned wife—I couldn’t help but think of Virginia Woolf’s luminous tribute to the forgotten great woman of history, A Room of One’s Own. Here Woolf writes (so movingly, so passionately) of Shakespeare’s (imagined) sister, of whom, Woolf predicts, if she had been “born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at.”
In another one of my very favourite plays, Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, the teenage mathematical prodigy, Thomasina, cries when she thinks of the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria and all the books and knowledge lost forever to us in that tragic conflagration. I think I feel a similar grief as Thomasina when I think think of all the lost women of history: what great works of art, what architectural wonders, what scientific discoveries, what books we might have collected if women of the not so distant past were allowed free lives, were not “flung about the room” as Woolf describes, were not forced to follow behind, carrying the bucket. During this pandemic we are seemingly at a flourishing of female leadership and female exceptionalism, indeed a commonality between nations that appear to be handling COVID-19 best, is that they are mostly led by women. And yet, as Sittenfeld’s bittersweet Rodham reminds us, the world remains particularly unkind to clever, ambitious, outspoken women. It is our duty then, for all of our sakes, that we should endeavour to make it less so.
Also in this issue: Shakespearean sitcoms, matchmakers, Tolstoy’s first draft of Anna Karenina, mysterious TV astrologers and sweet pies.
Much love,
Claude
Books | Film | Television | Longform | Recipe
BOOKS: THREE (AND MORE) WOMEN
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld is a thrilling piece of speculative political fiction, a novel that imagines an alternative timeline in which Hilary Rodham meets, woos and is wooed by a leonine Bill Clinton but, ultimately, chooses not to marry him. What would have been Clinton’s fate, Sittenfeld speculates, without Hilary Rodham to carry the bucket behind him? What would we have gained if Hillary was allowed, from the very beginning, to emerge unburnt and untarnished from Clinton’s charming but profligate star? It is Sittenfeld’s intelligence as an author, her pellucid prose and the utter believability of Hilary Rodham as a narrative voice that saves Rodham from collapsing in on itself like a soufflé. Rodham could have been a cheap, exploitative piece of real person fan-fiction, but it is much more substantial than that. Rodham dares to explore unfettered female ambition (still a so hopelessly underwritten subject, where are all the female heads of state in modern literature?), and does so with empathy and a generosity that I suspect few male writers would ever afford to their similarly situated female characters. Reading this book in the time of corona is an almost painful experience; the dream what could have been, and what could have been avoided, feels particularly cruel. But for those of us whose hearts were broken in 2016, Rodham remains a powerful, cathartic experience.
The woman at the centre of Hamnet feels like the converse side of the same coin as the woman at the centre of Rodham. Hilary Clinton has famously and infamously been known as the woman who never disappeared from her husband’s side (even to her own great detriment), whereas Anne Hathaway’s most notable quality lies in her almost complete absence from her husband’s history. Shakespeare’s personal life, the life he shared but also sequestered in Stratford-upon-Avon, is one of the great lacunas of history. From the very beginning, Hathaway’s place in Shakespeare’s story has always been a contested one. Is she a figure for romance, for pity or contempt? Historians who have puzzled over the significance of Shakespeare’s single acknowledgement of her in his will (the bequeathing of the “second best bed”), have never come to consensus. With such musty forbearers, O’Farrell throws any real pretensions of historical record to the wind with her novel Hamnet, a deeply moving, finely rendered depiction of Elizabethan domestic life in a rural country town, a life that just happens to brush with literary eminence. History remembers one prodigy in the family but Hamnet offers two: as the glover’s son (Shakespeare’s name is never mentioned in the entire novel) find purpose among the refulgent lights of London’s stages, O’Farrell suggests there is a kind of alchemy, meaning and genius in the life of Anne Hathaway, whose second sight and talent for naturopathy gives her, at times, terrifying power. There are so many novels and non-fiction about Shakespeare’s life in London, about his towering and titanic genius, that it feels refreshing and radical even that O’Farrell omits this narrative completely. Instead she casts her gimlet, sympathetic eye to what is both quotidian and profound, inevitable but inimitable: the wailing grief of a mother and the vast comfort and loneliness of a complicated marriage.
Girl, Women, Other by Bernardine Evaristo, co-winner of the 2019 Booker Prize is an immensely readable novel. Formed out of fifteen or so stories about fifteen or so women, Girl, Women, Other is powerful in its depiction of the lived experiences of Black, British women—namely in articulating the exquisite plurality and diversity of their experiences. The women in this novel live vast and very small lives, seek happiness, soothe their sorrows, fall madly in love (often with other women), find immense joy and pleasure their Blackness, or experience great pain in their disconnection from it. Like Sittenfeld’s project in Rodham, the Black women of Girl, Women, Other are given the space to be the central players in their own dramas, not to be relegated to sidelines, or erased from the narrative, as women of colour so often are. Evaristo paints a mural of womanhood that is so transfixing and moving that you’ll acutely feel the loss of each character as you end her story, even as you just as quickly fall in love the next woman who emerges to tell her tale.
FILM
There’s a certain cache of girls who grew up in the 90s for which, I am certain, Now and Then was not only a primary text but a sort of rite of passage. I think I experienced some sort of awakening watching Christina Ricci kiss Devon Sawa not just once in Caspar but a second time in Now and Then. At the time of its release, critics accused Now and Then of being an insipid, girly version of Stand by Me. But to reduce the film to such a reductive description does Now and Then a disservice. In my opinion, Now and Then is much more than what 90s critics gave it credit: a warm and fascinating portrait of adolescent female friendship, of shifting loyalties and identities and the immense pleasure and awfulness of learning how to be a teenage girl. Now and Then is not a great film: its flip book structure, which moves between the girls in their early teens to their late 30s, is somewhat ungainly, but when it’s good it feel as true and as honest as anything made about teenage girls made now, or then. (Netflix)
***
If you are looking for an uproarious political historical satire to distract from the political farce that is our reality and sadly not satire, Death of Stalin is for you. The set up? The Soviet Union’s most beloved (most reviled) leader takes his final breath on 1 March 1953. After almost 30 years of ruthless dictatorship, who will be Stalin’s worthy incumbent? While trying to invoke a united face of public grief, the key candidates, namely Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi), Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale) and Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) are a breath away from a declaration of all out war. Written and directed by the devilishly profane Armando Iannucci (of The Thick of It and Veep), Death of Stalin is searingly funny. The film asks: to what extremes will you take to clench power, if for 30 years you’ve had a first class seat to the most ruthless displays of political sadism in the history of the world? The most shocking thing about Death of Stalin is the way it mines the bleakest moments for laughs, making you cry with laughter at its absurdism, while you shiver at its wanton brutality. “Revenge is a dish best served cold” as the phrase goes—revenge is a dish best served Russian, more like it. (Stan)
***
I had never heard of Walter Mercado, the mysterious television astrologer so beloved in his home country of Puerto Rico and in the wider Spanish speaking world, but I adored Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado, the spritely yet moving documentary of his life, filmed just before his death at age 87 in 2019. Framed by testimonials of the likes of Lin Manuel Miranda, Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado is a joyful celebration of a mysterious and ineffably magical life. In the documentary we learn of Walter’s early years as a sort of holy relic embodied in the figure of a child, the bestower of miracles by age 7, as a flamboyant dancer who pirouetted to the beat of his own drum at a time when being different must have been an anathema to most, and finally as beloved spiritual guide of small screen, of the fantastical costumes and capes and of an scrupulously taut and unwrinkled face. Walter Mercado’s premature retreat from public life is the core mystery of the documentary, but so is Mercado’s coy but also brave bucking of rigidly masculine norms. Claiming to be a virgin even to his late 80s, Mercado’s own relationship with sex and gender seems as unique and elusive as his private persona: “I have sexuality with the wind, the flowers, the garden.” How can one resist such a fascinating subject? Highly Recommended. (Netflix)
TELEVISION
Growing up I never quite understood the appeal of A Series of Unfortunate Events, written by Daniel Handler or, as his better known nom de plume, Lemony Snicket. Compared to the relative cosiness of Harry Potter, A Series of Unfortunate Events always seemed sadistic and coldly ironic. Harry Potter at least, always has Hogwarts. The three Baudelaire orphans of A Series of Unfortunate Events seem cruelly fated to never find their own equivalent. It’s then a surprise that the Netflix adaptation of this property turned out to be one of my very favourite pieces of television of 2018-2019. Yes, the series is still rather dark. The theme song literally tells us (albeit tongue-in-cheekily) to not to watch it: “ Look away, look away, this show will wreck your evening, your whole life, and your day.” Even so, the show is very definitely defanged for television. Amid the darkly funny/depressing, is sweetness and wonder. While A Series of Unfortunate Events seems to be mostly about the selfishness and negligence of adults, it also just as much appears to be a sincere paean to the resourcefulness and resilience of children and child-like of heart. Part of the pleasure of the show comes from from its magnificent art direction, a plush and whimsical melee of mid-century design. Also winning is the show’s storybook structure, the stentorian narration of Patrick Warburton as Lemony Snicket and the audacious and completely committed performance of Neil Patrick Harris as the dastardly villain, Count Olaf. If you allow yourself to be enmeshed (and you likely will) you’ll discover that A Series of Unfortunate Events is an exquisitely rendered puzzle box, whose secrets, over 20 or so episodes, will unfurl in beautiful, immensely satisfying ways. Highly recommended. (Netflix)
***
If Maggie O’ Farrell’s Hamnet is a serious and moving portrait of Shakespeare’s shadowy personal life, Upstart Crow is its farcical, often flatulent cousin. Initially commissioned by the BBC as part of the commemorations of the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, Upstart Crow is the brainchild of Ben Elton, who also wrote Blackadder, with whom Upstart Crow shares much DNA, and many jokes with. Shakespeare (played by David Mitchell) may be a genius (he certainly lets everyone else know it) but he’s also a harried dad and husband, constantly pulled by the extreme politics of his work in London, and the ire of vengeful rivals such as Robert Greene, and the demands of his family in Stratford. Upstart Crow is both deeply silly and perfectly clever, full of groaning puns, ingenious wordplay, scatalogical humour and deep-cut theatrical references. If you like the notion of a recurring joke in which Shakespeare’s complaints about his lengthy carriage commute from London to Stratford-Upon-Avon are mostly thinly veiled invectives at the modern National Rail, this is the show for you. (Stan)
****
This is not a recommendation, per se. Indian Matchmaking, which can be found on Netflix, has become somewhat of a phenomena and is, I must confess, is very watchable. The show follows, Sima Taparia, a professional matchmaker based in Mumbai who has crafted an immensely successful career uniting India’s elite. What I love about Indian Matchmaking lies in the way it inverts everything that I find irritating about Western dating reality shows (i.e. The Bachelor franchise), which seem to be mainly a wallowing in waspish mediocrity, notably lacking in any representation of POC, or indeed, any type of cultural specificity. Tiresome too, are such shows’ pretensions that they are in any way related to genuine explorations of love, rather than opportunities for crass self-promotion. At least Indian Matchmaking never proffers these delusions. Most of the marriages sought in Indian Matchmaking are occupied with crafting successful partnerships between families. In Indian Matchmaking, love is a welcome, but nevertheless tertiary factor. The real drawcard of the show then is its superb casting, from the persnickety Aparna, to the warm-hearted Nadia, the peacockish Pradhyuman and inveterate Mummy’s boy, Akshay. There’s a certain unconsciousness in all these lovelorn figures that makes them terribly compelling viewing.
And yet I can’t really endorse the show. By way of explanation I would love to direct you to the excellent writing and commentary both writers in India and the Indian diaspora at large on the show’s problematic elements. Casteism, classism and colourism are prevalent in the show, and none so much inhabited by matchmaker Sima, whose concept of an eligible match is a very narrow one indeed. Does Indian Matchmaking provide genuine representation and insight to a highly underrepresented community? Or does it merely enhance this community’s “otherness” in the eyes of Netflix’s consumers? If you do check out the show and come to your own conclusions, I would love to hear them. (Netflix)
LONGFORM: ESSAYS
Literary magazine, Kill Your Darlings recently published a fantastic showcase for Filipino writers, from the Philippines and wider global diaspora. As a Filipino-Australian myself I am keenly aware of the vast underrepresentation of my background in any globalist/Western context, but most especially in the realm of literature and culture. One of the most compelling offerings in KYD’s showcase is Patricia Arcilla’s Finding Miss Philippines, which attempts to extricate Filipino female identity from its two most common, most visible stereotypes: the domestic worker and the beauty queen. By questioning and challenging these prevailing images, Arcilla unearths and deconstructs the forces of colorism, racism and sexism that millions of Filipino women, including myself, must contend with and try to emancipate from, every single day.
***
I love reading the first drafts of great novels: those thin skeins of plot, those spectral emanations of character, the incipient, inchoate whiffs of future brilliance. It’s then immensely intriguing to read about Leo Tolstoy’s first attempts to construct the novel that we would later know as Anna Karenina in the article, Reading the Drafts of Anna Karenina, by Bob Blaisdell. As Tolstoy’s wife Sophia writes in her memoir: “Last night L. suddenly said to me: “I have written a page and a half, and it seems good. I assumed this was yet another attempt to write about the Peter the Great period, and didn’t pay much attention. But then I realized that he had in fact embarked on a novel about the private lives of present-day people.” Blaisdell’s article on this first draft is quite brief but features Tolstoy’s own scaffolding of the novel’s plot and his initial chapter plans for this great Russian tragedy: an absolutely fascinating glimpse into a masterpiece in the making.
***
Jo Anne Beard wrote The Fourth State of Matter 24 years ago, but the memory of this memoir/essay feels as vivid to me as if I had just read it yesterday. The fourth state of matter referred to in the title of this story is the plasma found on the rings of Saturn, a factoid that Beard’s friend and colleague, Christoph K. Goertz, professor of physics and astronomy, will obsess over until he is gunned down by a ex-student in a violent, insensate act of revenge. “The Fourth State of Matter” is a brilliant hybrid of crime writing and personal memoir. The senseless rampage that occurred at The University of Iowa is interleaved by Beard’s profuse grief over the painful, protracted passing of a beloved pet dog. If you want to read a perfect piece of memoir writing in less than 4000 words, “The Fourth State of Matter” will intrigue, then cut you to the core with its devastating narrative.
RECIPE: MILK BAR PIE
A delicious baking failure
In Manhattan, there’s a dessert chain, Milk Bars to be exact, that have been hewn from the imagination of two-time James Beard Award-winning chef, Christina Tosi. Tosi’s Milk Bar is such a beloved dessert fixture in New York, that its most famous wares: Cereal Milk, Compost Cookies, Candy Bar Pie and the Milkbar Pie are iconic in their own right, their names alone conjuring up a sense of unpretentiousness, improvisation and play that Tosi is famous for. The Milk Bar Pie perhaps encapsulates these conjurings best.
The pie itself is quite homely. When you first encounter it looks like a pecan pie without the pecans, or an egg pie that’s been over-baked. But looks can be deceiving. For more than ten years, the Milk Bar Pie was infamously known as Crack Pie, until Tosi and the Milk Bar franchise made the long overdue decision to change the name in 2019. The name may be in extremely poor taste, but gives you an indication of the pie’s appeal.
So what’s so great about about the Milk Bar pie? Firstly, after baking, the pie must be frozen first and left to congeal to room temperature before consuming. This is important. If you do so, when you cut into your first (of many) slice you will find a caramel-like filling that is not silky but rather, silkily unctuous: a symphonic intermingling of custard, caramel, brown sugar, butter and dulce de leche all in one. If you bake it right, the dense filling will be balanced by the buttery flakes of an oatmeal cookie base, which naturally, you will make yourself from scratch.
The Milk Bar Pie reminds me of my favourite dessert in all of Sydney, Lorraine’s Date Tart, not only because it shares similar textural qualities but because both—when made well—inhabit a sort of rarified simplicity, an effortless type of pastry perfection. This is all to say that I tried to make this pie last week and it was a complete failure. My cookie crust, hopelessly undercooked, kind of collapsed until the weight of the filling, leaving it an intensely syrupy base instead of a solid foundation for which the custard to dance on. It was still delicious though.
The recipe is quite lengthy and time consuming because it asks you to make the cookie for the crust by hand. I’m a kind of a throw everything into a pot kind of cook (ie. not a baker) but I think a more exacting and more patient personality would be able to pull it off splendidly. As an iconic piece of pastry for more than a decade, there are many recipes of the Milk Bar Pie from which to work from. I used Gourmet Traveller’s recipe so I didn’t have to do the metric calculations but I suspect the American recipes are slightly more accurate. Note: the recipe asks for corn powder, which is not readily available in Australia and I probably wouldn’t bother to source it—I’m not convinced that it’s an essential aspect of the recipe. Another note: be warned, the recipe is definitely not for the butter ascetic. In my opinion, you should seek your inner Julia Child and embrace the butter. If the recipe fails disastrously for you like it did for me, don’t fear, it will still be delicious. But if you do succeed, please let me know, so I can learn your secrets! (Gourmet Traveller)