Speaking of Egon Schiele and “Adrien Brody,” Jezebel ran an exclusive exposé in November about the novel You Deserve Nothing, by Alexander Maksik.  You Deserve Nothing is about a thirty-something teacher at an American international school in Paris who has an affair with, and impregnates, one of his seventeen-year-old students.  Turns out (according to Jezebel) Maksik was a teacher at an American international school in Paris who had an affair with, and impregnated, one of his seventeen-year-old students.

We can all probably agree that sleeping with a student at the high school where you teach is a significant ethical fail.  (Although apparently not illegal; the age of consent in France, according to Wikipedia, is fifteen.)  However, the Jezebel writer also seems to take the position that it’s reprehensible for Maksik to have written a novel about events based on his own life without asking his former student’s permission first.

I strongly disagree.  Would the former student need to ask Maksik’s permission to write her own novel about the experience?  Of course not.  (I’d like to read that novel, actually.)  That said, if I were her, I’d be upset too.  I’m very happy that no one has ever turned trauma from my personal life into fiction and gotten praised by the New York Times for doing so.  I might pick apart the motives of a person who did something like that, but I would never make the argument that they didn’t have the right to do it.  It’s worth noting that You Deserve Nothing is fairly self-lacerating, and in no way reads like a celebration of or excuse for the protagonist’s behavior.

In any case, I finally read You Deserve Nothing recently.  It’s terrific, rich in language and character, thoughtful and perceptive, sometimes beautiful.  The prose reminded me of James Salter; the characterization and dialogue were more modern and the most apt comparison I can make is maybe to Francine Prose at her best (Blue Angel, for example).  It’s probably the best novel I’ve read in the last couple months.

Dave Bowman as naked girl?

Sleeping Beauty, the mesmerizing, disquieting first film directed by Australian novelist Julia Leigh, was the most psychologically penetrating work in any medium that I encountered this year.  It’s weird how the most impenetrable works can also be the most penetrating.

Leigh seems to get that paradox.  “My vagina is not a temple,” says Lucy, assuring her prospective employer that she has no problem with taking sleeping pills and allowing wealthy men access to her nude, unconscious body.  “Nevertheless, you will not be penetrated,” the madame promises. Like Lucy cares about being penetrated.  We’ve already seen her sit patiently as a medical researcher slowly slides a very long plastic deep down her throat.  You know those clowns who pull scarves from their sleeves and the scarves never seem to end?  The tube is like the scarves in reverse.

And in fact it’s the lack of penetration that seems to amplify Lucy’s discomfort as time passes, her desire to know what exactly these wealthy clients are doing to her while she’s asleep.  If they’re not fucking her, then what?  The absence of the definite inspires dread, reflection, circular thought.  Like Lucy after she leaves the brothel, we’re troubled and curious after we’ve left the theater.

I had (and have) conflicting feelings about whether Leigh should have shown us what happens to Lucy when she’s asleep.  (She does.)  It would have been a more mysterious, austere movie (and it’s already pretty fucking mysterious, pretty fucking austere) had she chosen to leave us in the dark with Lucy.  I think she chose otherwise because that would have aligned us too much with Lucy, and to put us in the position of voyeurs while the protagonist of the film–who looks like a barely pubescent girl, even though both the character and the actress are in their 20s–lies naked and unconscious for long periods of screen time is a radical distancing technique.  Leigh said somewhere or other that her goal was to make a film about “radical passivity.”

The tension between activity and passivity is always alive, and always delicate.  Things are done to Lucy, but she positions herself as a subject.  And the character hums with a kind of controlled hatred; it’s as though she acts violently against the world by putting herself at its mercy.

Emily Browning, as Lucy, is an extraordinary actress.  The film itself is visually one of the most beautiful I’ve seen in years.  It’s also one of the purest of vision.  It got mixed to negative reviews at Cannes; audiences were apparently put off by its coldness, its clinical gaze, and the sometimes-grotesque nudity.  But I think Leigh made something extraordinary.

I got an email from Zoetrope with the subject line: “Fall Preview!  The Horror Issue” and my first thought was, Awesome, I’ll probably have to resubscribe to Zoetrope: All Story.

Then I opened it and read the email’s content:

Zoetrope’s Fall 2011 release is a specially themed horror edition that includes scary stories from Jim Shepard, Karen Russell, Alexandra Kleeman, and Ryu Murakami.

Are you fucking kidding me?  Those are the authors you pick for your horror issue, Zoetrope?  Karen Russell?  Look, I’m not slagging those authors in particular.  Jim Shepard is great.  What I’ve read of Murakami I’ve liked.  Kleeman’s short story in the Paris Review was promising.  I’d be interested/excited to read any of their stories in another issue of Zoetrope.

But for God’s sake, if you’re going to do a horror issue, go for writers who genuinely write literary horror — who represent the genre, who take it to new places, who don’t get reviewed in the NYTBR.  How about Thomas Ligotti, Brian Evenson, Todd Grimson, Peter Straub, Kelly Link…?  Ligotti in particular should be in there.  Who knows, maybe there are some authors like that in there and they’re just using Shepard and Russell to sell the issue to their literary readership.  Maybe I shouldn’t rant.  Just… fucking… missed opportunity.