I’ve known for so long that my relationship with acting is a complicated one. Not dissimilar to my relationship with food and my body. Both of them
I’ve known for so long that my relationship with acting is a complicated one. Not dissimilar to my relationship with food and my body. Both of them feel like constant pulling, yearning, begging, fighting. I’m trying desperately to get their approval, their affection, and I never quite seem to. I’m never quite good enough.
I cannot give this less than five stars, but it was horrible to read.
This memoir wasn't initially on my radar because I wouldn't know McCurdy if she showed up at my front door. However, in the hours since I've finished this, I've felt compelled to familiarise myself with clips on Youtube. It gives me a chill to think that this bright talented young girl was concealing so much pain.
The title is arresting, as it's supposed to be, but it's far more than just clickbait. McCurdy as an adult wrestles with her perception of her childhood and the pedestal she put her mother on. The mother who aggressively pushed her into acting, despite her protestations, then encouraged her anorexia and lied to doctors about it.
It is hard, harder perhaps than I can even imagine, to revisit your past and understand that a person you have loved, admired and tried so long to impress has been a toxic presence in your life.
People seem to assign thin with “good,” heavy with “bad,” and too thin also with “bad.” There’s such a small window of “good.”
As well as this, it's a portrait of the ugly side of child acting. Reading this, I found myself feeling that surely no child can give informed consent to becoming an actor. They are pushed and pulled between adults who fixate on their appearance, who criticise them, build them up and reject them. No wonder former child actors have such a high rate of substance abuse and mental illness.
McCurdy's experiences at home and within the industry left her with an unhealthy relationship with food, her body and being a woman, a relationship that she is finally beginning to reckon with after both her mother's death and her own decision to quit acting.
Though I did not know her before starting this memoir, this book invited me deep inside her experiences. I now feel an overwhelming desperation for McCurdy to overcome the trauma of her past and find peace....more
Am I who I think I am, or am I who others perceive me to be?
What a fascinating, hard-to-define book. It's a cultural critique, I guess, but quite
Am I who I think I am, or am I who others perceive me to be?
What a fascinating, hard-to-define book. It's a cultural critique, I guess, but quite unlike any I've read before.
Klein begins her descent into the Mirror World-- the dark side of today's culture where climate deniers, antivaxxers and QAnon devotees invent "facts" and the Internet propels them around the globe-- with the story of her own personal doppelganger. The one time feminist writer, now conspiracy theorist, Naomi Wolf.
Klein has been getting confused with Wolf online for many years now, to the point where she has received countless hate messages aimed at Wolf. What's interesting, for Klein, is that she kind of understands it. Both writers, both dark-haired women, both writing about society and culture. Wolf is a conspiracy theorist, but then you could argue that there was an underlying element of that to Klein's The Shock Doctrine.
This premise opens up the floor for an in-depth look at modern society, predominantly in the United States and Canada. The difference between the real Naomi Klein and Naomi Wolf is a bit like looking in a funhouse mirror-- almost the same, yet a distorted, slightly wrong version of oneself --and Klein likens that to the way rational skepticism and activism has been morphed into wild conspiracy theories in today's world.
This, Klein explains, is why so many of us have lost friends and family down the "rabbit hole" of online radicalism in recent years, and especially during COVID. A healthy skepticism of the government and medical industry turns into belief in outlandish claims.
Because here is the inherent problem: the state and government, the laws and medical industry, are indeed flawed and we should be able to question and challenge this… but what happens when that gets distorted beyond all reason? What happens when “maybe we should question the overprescription of drugs in a for-profit industry” becomes “doctors are in collusion with the government to install tracking devices in our arms”?
The notion of the doppelganger, the other, our mirror self, comes up repeatedly throughout. Klein deconstructs various examples of the doppelganger in media, from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Operation Shylock, and likens this doubling to many aspects of life today. We each create a kind of doppelganger in our online presence-- an avatar, a brand, that is us but also not fully us at the same time. This Klein describes as:
a doppelganger we perform ceaselessly in the digital ether as the price of admission in a rapacious attention economy.
She also laments a “mass unraveling of meaning”. This refers to all kinds of things like regurgitating slogans to show political alignment regardless of whether one agrees with-- or has even thought about --what it says, the right-wing appropriation of terms like "racism" and "enslavement", and the way small tweaks to the truth can result in outright falsehoods. Whoever can scream "fake news" first and loudest is right.
One area of this book I found especially interesting was one that explained to me something I did not understand until now. In the past, if someone mentioned New Age body fanatics, I thought of hippies... so left-wingers, basically. I lived in left-wing hotspot Los Angeles for close to seven years, and wellness-obsessed, holistic yoga moms who know the colour of their auras were the norm. It was very odd for me to see, especially in the wake of COVID, these women fleeing into the arms of Steve Bannon and embracing conspiracies. I had thought they were kooky, but I also thought they were solidly on the left. But here Klein explores the long history of the fascist/New Age alliance, including the Nazi Party obsession with health fads in their pursuit of a pure race.
Far from the unlikely bedfellows they first seemed to be, large parts of the modern wellness industry are proving to be all too compatible with far-right notions of natural hierarchies, genetic superiority, and disposable people.
I guess it makes sense in an awful way.
This review is getting long, but that's because I made so many notes about it. I'll try to wrap it up now.
I'm not sure all the sections were relevant to the doppelganger idea; some worked better, and were more interesting, than others, but it was an overall really engaging read. It looks at the train wreck that certain parts of the Internet have made of modern politics and the ability to have open discussions and apply reason. It's so crazy it's almost funny at times, until you remember it isn't.
In Klein's own words: "It all would be so ridiculous— if it weren’t so serious."...more
Walter Isaacson really is a fantastic biographer. It also helps that the material he is working with here is fascinating... there's no denying that ElWalter Isaacson really is a fantastic biographer. It also helps that the material he is working with here is fascinating... there's no denying that Elon Musk has had a very interesting life and is himself quite unlike any other human. Though often not in a good way.
We start this book in his childhood in South Africa and follow him through his difficulties with his father, his move to the United States, and several tumultuous businesses and relationships. He certainly did not have his wealth and success handed to him, but earned it through a combination of being brilliant and being an asshole.
Isaacson is neither judgy, nor overly forgiving, and Elon Musk gets portrayed as the volatile idealogue he is. I do believe, after reading this book, that he is genuinely motivated by his own desire to better the planet and humanity, though his definition of bettering is suspect and he is not afraid to trample the little people to achieve his lofty goals. He's a genius, I guess. A savant. And a total dick. Thank goodness I can be fairly sure our paths will never cross.
Edit: After reading some of the comments, I wanted to add one more thing. Despite what some people seem to have assumed, Isaacson is far from uncritical of Musk. This is not propaganda written by a fanboy; Isaacson portrays Musk as chaotic, mean, immature and obsessive. He documents his childish outbursts and what he calls his "demon mode". Having read Isaacson before, I didn't expect any less....more
I knew absolutely nothing about Canada's oil sands before reading this graphic memoir. Truth be told, I know very little about Canada in general and hI knew absolutely nothing about Canada's oil sands before reading this graphic memoir. Truth be told, I know very little about Canada in general and hadn't even heard of the oil sands. Beaton paints a very bleak picture.
Cut off from the rest of civilisation, oil sands workers are portrayed as an insular community, lonely, a misogynistic old boys' club, often depressed but unable to talk about mental health. Beaton creates a world apart from ours in which the loneliness drives many men to behaviours they wouldn't even consider in their "real lives". Harassment is considered normal; sexual assault all too common.
Beaton worked there two years in the freezing cold loneliness and it left the kind of scars that cannot be seen. Others were even less lucky-- killed in fatal accidents brushed under the carpet by the bosses. The artwork is all in shades of grey, which adds to the dreary effect.
The author touches a bit upon the environmental impact of the oil sands, but her focus is predominantly on the human impact of living in isolation and being expendable... all to make a decent wage. While I hadn't heard of this before, I doubt I'll be forgetting about it.
My only complaint is that the story jumps a lot without any kind of break or just, you know, a couple asterisks to indicate that we're moving onto a new scene. This is quite confusing at times and had me flipping back a page to check I wasn't losing it....more
Illustrated/graphic memoirs are my favourite kind. I guess this is supposed to be middle grade, but I think the story has a lot of crossover appeal-- Illustrated/graphic memoirs are my favourite kind. I guess this is supposed to be middle grade, but I think the story has a lot of crossover appeal-- simple enough for kids to understand, but with some grown-up themes.
Yelchin shares what it was like growing up in the Soviet Union, feeling like neighbours are watching and listening to you, whilst also facing discrimination for being Jewish. I can't say I'm surprised, but I hadn't really considered before how different ethnoreligious groups might be treated under Stalinism. Often it is treated like all experiences of soviet hardship were the same.
In addition, it is also a coming-of-age story about a young boy trying to find his "talent" while his loving but pushy parents desperately try to get him into various sports and arts out of worry for his future.
When I was younger, I would often stay with my great aunt on a weekend and she would play the oldies on this crackly little radio in her kitchen. Jim When I was younger, I would often stay with my great aunt on a weekend and she would play the oldies on this crackly little radio in her kitchen. Jim Reeves, Eddy Arnold, Nat King Cole, Patsy Cline, and, of course, Loretta Lynn.
I was always fascinated with Lynn. The fact that she was married at 14 (!) and that she clawed herself up from rural poverty. She could not read or write very well, so she just picked up a guitar and started singing her songs, learned them by heart. When I first heard “The Pill” and pictured this 5’2 southern housewife singing about her sexual freedom, divorce, and faking orgasms to a very conservative 1970s bible belt, I thought she was a hero.
I learned a more nuanced picture over the years. Some of her beliefs are strongly feminist, while others are quite jarringly dated. More recently, to my dismay, she’s been an outspoken Trump supporter. I know I don't get to be surprised that a country singer from rural Kentucky supported Trump, but I can still be disappointed.
Still, her life is quite unbelievable. Because she couldn’t read or write well, she recorded this book on tapes, and George Vecsey transcribed it, leaving in a lot of her vernacular. It feels like Lynn is talking directly to you, which is probably why some others found it badly-written. I really enjoyed the style, though. It added a unique flair that was all Lynn.
This memoir was hard to put down, and it helps a lot that Lynn has just had a very eventful life. Married so young, having six kids, losing her best friend Patsy Cline in a plane crash, and being a seemingly down-to-earth person thrust into the chaos of fame.
She had a lot of radical views for the time and place she was performing in. Some of her views country singers would not dare voice even today. Take this:
I don’t think I could have an abortion. It would be wrong for me. But I’m thinking of all the poor girls who get pregnant when they don’t want to be, and how they should have a choice instead of leaving it up to some politician or doctor who don’t have to raise the baby. I believe they should be able to have an abortion.
She wrote a lot about women and what it's like to have to deal with shitty husbands who cheat and come home drunk. Still, though, she does defend her own husband, Doolittle, a lot in this book, and I'm not sure he deserves it. I know it was a whole different time, but I found it harder to forgive him.
Lynn also spoke out against women who would drag each other down to get to the top. She believed women should work together and make space for each other, instead of treating each other as enemies:
I can remember Patsy Cline and Kitty Wells standing up for me when I came along. So Olivia Newton-John, when you come to Nashville, you give me a call, and I’ll help you any way I can. There’s room for all of us, honey.
I've been meaning to read this book for years, and I'm glad I finally did it. A fascinating portrait of a very fascinating artist....more
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