Not always a Merve Emre head, but I loved the Susan Taubes piece. The best writing about literature makes me want to write--I finished and pulled out my notebook. Sometimes Emre leans on her own prose in a way that feels obfuscatory of ideas or arguments that haven’t been fully cooked or, when scrutinized, reveal fault lines of imprecision, but I thought this showed an exhaustive amount of thought and background reading and the prose was absolutely earned and very satisfying.
I appreciated the Marvel piece, mainly because a) I enjoy "how the media sausage gets made" pieces in general and b) I loathe most superhero movies and in particular Marvel movies and especially the insistence by some fans that they have some kind of deeper meaning.* Maybe this was projection, but I sensed a strong frustration on the author's part that he wasn't able to get anyone who'd actively participated in a Marvel project to say anything substantive, much less critical. It's all, "boy do I love doing Marfel movies" from people whom I'm 100% sure have more nuanced thoughts on the subject but obviously can't bit the hand that feeds. I'd love to hear Timothee Chalamet's personal explanation for why he's rejected Marvel roles (as mentioned in the article) but joined Dune as the lead. How does an A-lister who came down on the side of not signing up with Marvel weigh the costs and benefits of becoming a superhero differently than his peers? How does he see it as different from another SFF franchise?
Defensive postscript: This isn't about bashing comics or "nerd culture" -- as if Marvel even counts as that anymore. I love comics, including very, very dumb shonen manga series that have less "redeeming" artistic & literary value than many American superhero comics. I never got into those -- I think you have to learn how to read them at a young age, and I learned how to read manga instead and still get confused / bored with US-style panel layouts. It's also not about bashing movies that aren't, like, sufficiently sophisticated or artsy or highbrow. I just prefer action movies & thrillers that are honest about their purpose, manage to produce actual narrative tension, contain memorable and/or beautiful action sequences, have a distinctive aesthetic, and offer some kind of idiosyncrasy / originality. John Wick 5 is just as silly as Marvel, but it manages to do all of the above in spades.
*e.g., "They're about trauma" -- every story that includes substantial violence can be said to be "about" "trauma", guys. That doesn't mean it has anything interesting or original or even coherent to say about the subject. Most Marvel movies are dramatically less interesting on the subject of violence and its consequences (and relatedly empire, resistance, etc.) and than, say, Avater the Last Airbender, an actual kid's show. (Incidentally, they are also less visually compelling.)
I agree that Marvel movies are mostly annoying and shallow, and are at their best when they avoid "deeper themes" of, like, trauma -- it often feels like they're self-conscious about producing silly films, but really the best superhero media is very silly, but takes the silliness seriously, instead of trying to graft serious themes to a silly premise. There's way too much "Boy, isn't this weird?" self-consciousness to the whole Marvel project. I feel that the questions you ask of Chalamet were mostly unasked by the piece; I get that Schulman couldn't get good quotes, but to me, it's hard for that to be a strength of a piece unless it's announced and accommodated. (For a good example of that, see the recent Tim Robinson profile in the Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/02/magazine/tim-robinson-i-think-you-should-leave.html)
I also just wanted the piece to be more up-to-date. It felt like "Here's how the media sausage got made five-to-fifteen years ago," to me. The sections on Marvel's recent issues contained noticeably little primary-source reporting -- they were basically news grafted onto a profile.
In re: the lack of interesting quotes - I do agree that it's not a strength! To be clear, I meant that as a value-neutral observation about the piece. I think the fact that I found the article interesting only because I wasn't familiar with all of the old news (having avoided coverage of the MCU) provides further support for your view of it, haha.
Ahhh - gotcha. I don't inherently mind a piece only being interesting to newcomers, I just mind when it gets stuff wrong or half-wrong in service of that.
I'm surprised to see Back from the Dead as your top pick.
Loopy and trippy and a bit too pleased with itself, I was left with a dismembered head as a point of view device, and the unexplained suicide. I had no urge to seek out the books of the author.
For the ignorant, Marvel Effect was an educational reminder about the trajectory of the film industry. The broke to billions background information was useful, I had no idea.
I would have liked more insight to why a DC universe failed, while Marvel became a money making machine.
It's long form journalism, it doesn't have to abide by "the rules" of fiction, does it? Telling, not showing, is perfectly fine for a bread and butter topic.
re show don't tell: In terms of narrative, I agree; when it comes to characterization, though, even in nonfiction it bothers me when people are labeled with their traits instead of shown to possess them.
That's often difficult to do with journalism, without being fanciful or resorting to invention or projection (which I suspect happens more often than not), unless they're spending a lot of time with the subjects, preferably in their natural habitat.
Agree, there wasn't much sense of the people, they were names and roles. You'd think they must be more colorful IRL, and driven. Marvel dominance didn't happen by accident.
I've enjoyed almost everything else Jiayang Fan has written for the magazine but really did not like this essay. It felt like a retread of her previous pieces and the second person perspective felt too obvious. It was the rare piece I stopped reading before the end.
Conversely, I enjoyed "Border Control" more than you did. I've read some but not extensively on this topic and felt that Kahloon presented a good balance of the political, philosophical, and economic dimensions of borders with some interesting historical details.
Agreed that Waldman did a good job with the limited space of that review. I'm almost intrigued to check the book out. Speaking of that, I did get around to read Paved Paradise, the book on Parking reviewed a few issues back. I mentioned that the book felt a little over-exposed in reviews (like the New Yorker's) and podcasts. Was still worth reading as I enjoy the topic, but it is a book that is whose main points are well served by a longform review.
I do find that often the popular-nonfiction books covered by many publications end up not having much to say beyond the points that have been frequently covered. They exist more as canvases for writers to map their own themes onto.
Not always a Merve Emre head, but I loved the Susan Taubes piece. The best writing about literature makes me want to write--I finished and pulled out my notebook. Sometimes Emre leans on her own prose in a way that feels obfuscatory of ideas or arguments that haven’t been fully cooked or, when scrutinized, reveal fault lines of imprecision, but I thought this showed an exhaustive amount of thought and background reading and the prose was absolutely earned and very satisfying.
I'm glad you loved it as much as I did. I tried to emulate its beauty a bit in my review.
I appreciated the Marvel piece, mainly because a) I enjoy "how the media sausage gets made" pieces in general and b) I loathe most superhero movies and in particular Marvel movies and especially the insistence by some fans that they have some kind of deeper meaning.* Maybe this was projection, but I sensed a strong frustration on the author's part that he wasn't able to get anyone who'd actively participated in a Marvel project to say anything substantive, much less critical. It's all, "boy do I love doing Marfel movies" from people whom I'm 100% sure have more nuanced thoughts on the subject but obviously can't bit the hand that feeds. I'd love to hear Timothee Chalamet's personal explanation for why he's rejected Marvel roles (as mentioned in the article) but joined Dune as the lead. How does an A-lister who came down on the side of not signing up with Marvel weigh the costs and benefits of becoming a superhero differently than his peers? How does he see it as different from another SFF franchise?
Defensive postscript: This isn't about bashing comics or "nerd culture" -- as if Marvel even counts as that anymore. I love comics, including very, very dumb shonen manga series that have less "redeeming" artistic & literary value than many American superhero comics. I never got into those -- I think you have to learn how to read them at a young age, and I learned how to read manga instead and still get confused / bored with US-style panel layouts. It's also not about bashing movies that aren't, like, sufficiently sophisticated or artsy or highbrow. I just prefer action movies & thrillers that are honest about their purpose, manage to produce actual narrative tension, contain memorable and/or beautiful action sequences, have a distinctive aesthetic, and offer some kind of idiosyncrasy / originality. John Wick 5 is just as silly as Marvel, but it manages to do all of the above in spades.
*e.g., "They're about trauma" -- every story that includes substantial violence can be said to be "about" "trauma", guys. That doesn't mean it has anything interesting or original or even coherent to say about the subject. Most Marvel movies are dramatically less interesting on the subject of violence and its consequences (and relatedly empire, resistance, etc.) and than, say, Avater the Last Airbender, an actual kid's show. (Incidentally, they are also less visually compelling.)
I agree that Marvel movies are mostly annoying and shallow, and are at their best when they avoid "deeper themes" of, like, trauma -- it often feels like they're self-conscious about producing silly films, but really the best superhero media is very silly, but takes the silliness seriously, instead of trying to graft serious themes to a silly premise. There's way too much "Boy, isn't this weird?" self-consciousness to the whole Marvel project. I feel that the questions you ask of Chalamet were mostly unasked by the piece; I get that Schulman couldn't get good quotes, but to me, it's hard for that to be a strength of a piece unless it's announced and accommodated. (For a good example of that, see the recent Tim Robinson profile in the Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/02/magazine/tim-robinson-i-think-you-should-leave.html)
I also just wanted the piece to be more up-to-date. It felt like "Here's how the media sausage got made five-to-fifteen years ago," to me. The sections on Marvel's recent issues contained noticeably little primary-source reporting -- they were basically news grafted onto a profile.
In re: the lack of interesting quotes - I do agree that it's not a strength! To be clear, I meant that as a value-neutral observation about the piece. I think the fact that I found the article interesting only because I wasn't familiar with all of the old news (having avoided coverage of the MCU) provides further support for your view of it, haha.
Ahhh - gotcha. I don't inherently mind a piece only being interesting to newcomers, I just mind when it gets stuff wrong or half-wrong in service of that.
I'm surprised to see Back from the Dead as your top pick.
Loopy and trippy and a bit too pleased with itself, I was left with a dismembered head as a point of view device, and the unexplained suicide. I had no urge to seek out the books of the author.
For the ignorant, Marvel Effect was an educational reminder about the trajectory of the film industry. The broke to billions background information was useful, I had no idea.
I would have liked more insight to why a DC universe failed, while Marvel became a money making machine.
It's long form journalism, it doesn't have to abide by "the rules" of fiction, does it? Telling, not showing, is perfectly fine for a bread and butter topic.
re show don't tell: In terms of narrative, I agree; when it comes to characterization, though, even in nonfiction it bothers me when people are labeled with their traits instead of shown to possess them.
That's often difficult to do with journalism, without being fanciful or resorting to invention or projection (which I suspect happens more often than not), unless they're spending a lot of time with the subjects, preferably in their natural habitat.
Agree, there wasn't much sense of the people, they were names and roles. You'd think they must be more colorful IRL, and driven. Marvel dominance didn't happen by accident.
I've enjoyed almost everything else Jiayang Fan has written for the magazine but really did not like this essay. It felt like a retread of her previous pieces and the second person perspective felt too obvious. It was the rare piece I stopped reading before the end.
Conversely, I enjoyed "Border Control" more than you did. I've read some but not extensively on this topic and felt that Kahloon presented a good balance of the political, philosophical, and economic dimensions of borders with some interesting historical details.
Agreed that Waldman did a good job with the limited space of that review. I'm almost intrigued to check the book out. Speaking of that, I did get around to read Paved Paradise, the book on Parking reviewed a few issues back. I mentioned that the book felt a little over-exposed in reviews (like the New Yorker's) and podcasts. Was still worth reading as I enjoy the topic, but it is a book that is whose main points are well served by a longform review.
I do find that often the popular-nonfiction books covered by many publications end up not having much to say beyond the points that have been frequently covered. They exist more as canvases for writers to map their own themes onto.