A light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period—
When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.
—Emily Dickinson
Greetings from the far left coast, where I am scrambling to compose today's newsletter. Usually I begin cobbling it together two or three days in advance. This week I have been occupied with an essay about the Silicon Valley cognitive elite, network state enthusiasts, and techno-optimists whose antigovernment, antidemocratic ethos, deep feelings of persecution at the hands of liberal tyranny, and hatred of taxation blur over into libertarian and heartland MAGA territory. These luminaries are people of immense wealth and presumably high IQ who sound like they are twelve years old and got their ideas from science fiction I read when I was twelve. The piece needs another round or several of review and revision, concluding paragraph(s), and a title. Coming soon if all goes well.
My friend Greg Bigler's book Rabbit Decolonizes the Forest: Stories from the Euchee Reservation will be published this month by the University of Oklahoma Press.
Gregory H. Bigler (Euchee, enrolled with the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma) is a tribal judge and lawyer who exclusively represents Native American tribes. He devotes much of his time to the Polecat Euchee Ceremonial Grounds and has contributed to Euchee language revitalization efforts for three decades. (OU Press)
Greg is one of the first people I met at my brother Trani's store Tulsa Runner when it was new more than twenty years ago. He is an intrepid long-distance runner. I have run with him.
Rabbit Decolonizes the Forest can be ordered directly from University of Oklahoma Press as well as Powell's Books here in Portland, other bookstores, and the billionaire Jeff Bezos Washington Post Amazon. I recommend ordering from Powell's, your neighborhood bookstore, or directly through OU Press.
I saw the new Coen brother film Drive-Away Dolls on Monday. Written by Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke, identified in two reviews I read as his queer wife, and directed by Ethan. Coen Bros aficionados, of whom I am one, will be familiar with the irreverence and zaniness that is a Coen trademark. There is a good deal of lesbian sex, some of it farcical, but also moments that are tender and moving. Graphic violence is another Coen feature on display here. As with the sex, showing less could have had a deeper impact. But that is my sensibility, not the Coens.
Jamie (Margaret Qualley) is a brash and unabashed lesbian from Philadelphia who has just broken up with her girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), a stereotypical dyke cop. Jamie's friend Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) is the more reserved half of the odd lesbian pairing. Marian's inhibitions do not seem to come from conflict about her sexual identity, with which she appears to be at ease. She may just be a little uptight in the way that humans sometimes are. Unhappy with her office job and dissatisfied with her life, Marian decides to take a break and visit family in Tallahassee. Jamie suggests that the two of them do a road trip in a drive-away car. And they're off.
The adventure begins at the drive-away place when the girls ask for a car to Florida and the owner mistakenly hands them the keys to a car specifically reserved for two other people to deliver to Florida. A flat tire out on the highway leads to the discovery of a mysterious metal briefcase and a box with a head in it in the trunk. Unbeknownst to Jamie and Marian, they are soon being ineptly pursued by a pair of bickering thugs under the direction of a man in a suit who answers to "chief" and works for a Republican family values senator and aspiring presidential candidate desperate to retrieve the briefcase and the box.
It turns out that back in the 1970s (the film is set in 1999), the young man who would become a Republican senator from Florida enjoyed a wild night with a hippie chick who made plaster casts of the best features of men she showed a good time. The senator's is in the briefcase along with four others belonging to prominent individuals, e.g., one the owner of a professional sports team. The senator wants the briefcase to ensure that its contents never become public knowledge. When the girls finally find out what is going on, Jamie hits on the idea of shaking them down for "a million smackeroos."
On the road to Florida the girls detour through Marietta for an interlude with a women's soccer team, this being Jamie's idea. She has a frolicking good time. Marian predictably feels out of place, leaves alone to walk back to their hotel on the highway, and ends up spending the night in a jail cell when she makes a bad impression on a Georgia cop who pulls over to ask where she is going.
The cast, referring here to the actors, is top notch. Qualley's Jamie is a little over the top but still a hoot. Viswanathan as Marian has some wonderful facial expressions and an irresistible deadpan delivery. Feldstein too is spot on, as when she intimidates a male prisoner who merely wants to speak to a lawyer and when she beats the heck out of a thug with a short fuse who tries to get information about the whereabouts of Jamie and Marian by threatening violence. It is a bad move on his part. The only actor whose name I recognize is Matt Damon, who makes a brief appearance at the end.
For all that, Drive-Away Dolls is middling Coen. There is a good deal of what feels like filler for a film that runs only eighty-four minutes. It seemed longer. Arguing against myself somewhat, I seem to be enjoying it more in retrospect, remembering the funny parts and segments that were a wild, almost giddy romp while consigning lesser elements to the dustbin of buried memory. Reviewers at The Guardian and The Bulwark rated it higher.
Once again Donald Trump demonstrated that there is no bar beneath which he will not slither. The multiply indicted, convicted rapist, twice impeached, former president this week took to comparing the prosecution of his crimes with the persecution of Alexei Navalny, who died, or was killed, at an Arctic penal colony on February 16, and declaring himself a dissident to the cheers of MAGA faithful.
New at Portable Bohemia Substack: Protest Gone Off the Rails, February 20, 2024. The practice of taking protest beyond the public square to the homes and private lives of public officials and their families breaks with a long and honorable tradition of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience…read more>>
Keep the faith.
Stand with Ukraine.
yr obdt svt