“Quietly Hostile” follows Samantha Irby’s best-selling essay collections  “We Are Never Meeting in Real Life” and “Wow, No Thank You” — but does not live up to them.

Irby, known for her blog and her work as a writer, producer and/or co-host of television shows, including the “Sex and the City” reboot, “And Just Like That,” has proven that she wears many hats in the entertainment industry. She’s a 2021 recipient of the Lambda Literary Award, and is a two-time New York Times best-selling author. I was eager to get my hands on her recent release, but was left underwhelmed with her latest nonfiction work. 

“Quietly Hostile” contains a few notable essays, including The New Yorker-published piece “Please Invite Me To Your Party.” However, while the aforementioned essay succeeds in its succinct wit and self-deprecating humor, the others in the collection fail to reflect Irby’s typical goofy, structured pen. 

The second essay in the collection, “The Last Normal Day,” is a day in the life of Irby right at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than reading as a cohesive inner monologue, the essay reads as a superfluous ramble full of unnecessary details and random tangents, peppered with a million or so question marks and exclamation points. The best parts of the essay — including the bullet point list of erratic purchases Irby struggled to pack up when she fled her Chicago apartment — were obscured by the jumbled thoughts recounted throughout it. I finished the essay unsure of how it started, only able to remember the random corn dog anecdote shared at the end. 

In general, the essays seem to lack substance. One essay, “David Matthews’s Greatest Romantic Hits” is 13 pages long and consists of long-winded spiels about the romantic merit of 14 Dave Matthews Band songs; another piece, “Two Old Nuns Having Amzing [Sic] Lesbian Sex” clocks in at 22 pages, all the while recounting a 39-minute porno Irby has permanently queued. While both of these essays would make for incredible PowerPoint party presentations, they quickly became repetitive and dull in the written form. 

It’s hard to pinpoint a central theme or consistent thread in “Quietly Hostile.” From twenty-plus pages on pornography to a two-page piece on whales, the collection was generating whiplash left and right. Though it is fitting to call the collection an “outrageously funny tour of all the gory details that make up the true portrait of a life,” it is also disappointing to navigate what felt like an unorganized mash-up of internal ramblings. 

That said, Irby is a writer who should be read and whose work should be uplifted. The essays that do work hit the nail right on the head (in terms of humor and pacing), and bring to mind Irby’s past nonfiction work. 

The highlight of “Quietly Hostile” is the essay “What If I Died Like Elvis,” a lively and comical account of the time Irby gave herself a severe allergic reaction while attempting to remove her gel manicure. What begins with a relatable statement on Irby’s issues with being perceived in her everyday life turns into a horror story as Irby suffers the consequences of removing a manicure she didn’t want in the first place. Irby showcases her comedic timing through her writing as she describes her conversation with the hotline nurse and her ridiculous thought process as she prepared to leave for the hospital (stopping to grab a lip balm) and highlights her storytelling abilities in this unforgettable piece. In spite of the other underwhelming essays, “What If I Died Like Elvis” made me want to read more. 

So, no, “Quietly Hostile” shouldn’t be your first Irby read, but it shouldn’t be your last, either. While the overall collection is underwhelming with regard to Irby’s past works, there are a few notable pieces that exhibit her comical and ever-relatable written prowess. Her talent lies in her ability to tell stories, which I hope to read more of in the future. 

Daily Arts Writer Lillian Pearce can be reached at pearcel@umich.edu. 

The post Don’t let ‘Quietly Hostile’ be your introduction to Samantha Irby appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Considering how much I loved Uzma Jalaluddin’s last two books, I was thrilled when she announced a new book, coming out in the summer of 2023. Just as her debut, “Ayesha at Last,” was a loose retelling of “Pride and Prejudice” and her sophomore novel, “Hana Khan Carries On,” was a loose retelling of “You’ve Got Mail,” this newest book, “Much Ado About Nada,” takes a classic love story and turns it on its head with a modest, modern and Muslim twist. The classic story isn’t Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” as you might guess from the title — instead, Jalaluddin turned to a different Jane Austen novel, “Persuasion,” and created another stellar work. 

“Much Ado About Nada” features protagonist Nada Syed as she is reluctantly dragged to an Islamic conference in Canada by her headstrong, confident best friend, Haleema. Her friend thinks she wants to avoid the conference because she’s hesitant to see her old mentor who betrayed her and because she’s not exactly excited by the prospect of a matrimonial dinner (think speed dating but for Muslims). While both of those things are somewhat true, the real reason Nada’s avoiding the Deen&Dunya conference is because she knows she’s going to meet Haleema’s fiancé … and re-meet his brother, Baz, who Nada once had a strong connection with — though that’s a secret she had been keeping for the past few years.

Jalaluddin succeeded in once again creating a three-dimensional female Muslim protagonist in Nada. She’s smart, strong and devout — she’s real. She’s also flawed, but that just makes her more authentic. When the truth comes out about how Nada and Baz once knew each other about halfway into the book, the depth of Nada’s imperfections comes to light. At times, I found myself bemoaning her actions and wondering how and why she came to the decisions that she did, but even when I was frustrated with Nada as a person, I found her fascinating as a character. 

The other characters, like Haleema, Baz and Nada’s family members, all add to the story in considerable ways. Haleema’s outgoing personality nicely balances Nada’s more quietly sarcastic tendencies. Baz is exactly what you would want from a mysterious “second chance” love interest. Nada’s parents are typical Desi parents, wanting what’s best for their children but not always agreeing with them about what that means. In other words, these side characters make the story more complex and interesting, while also allowing readers to see Nada through others’ eyes. 

The best part of “Much Ado About Nada” is that, unlike some romance novels, the “80 percent breakup” isn’t really the turning point of the book. Most romances feature this “80 percent breakup,” where the love interests have some kind of falling out that leads to a period of separation just before the happily ever after we’re all expecting. The falling out still happens, in a way, but the real turning point in Nada’s story is about her. She had faced a huge career setback prior to the events of the novel, and the emotional crux of the story is when she really takes hold of her own narrative and moves forward from the stagnant state she was wallowing in. In her actions, she encapsulates what a Muslim feminist should look like — she’s confident in her own abilities but turns to her faith and her community in times of need. 

“Much Ado About Nada” is another spectacular showing from Uzma Jalaluddin. The romantic drama will keep readers’ attention and ensure that they’re turning the pages, but in the end, the heart of the story is Nada’s growth as an individual. And when you close the book after reading those last words, it’s Nada’s strength and persistence that you’ll remember and take with you. 

Daily Arts Writer Sabriya Imami can be reached at simami@umich.edu.

The post ‘Much Ado About Nada’: An Islamic spin on a classic love story appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

“Wanting to be a writer was somehow loftier of an ambition than being a musician,” shared best-selling author Michelle Zauner on the last stop of her official book tour for “Crying in H Mart.”

In conversation with author Kiley Reid at the Literati Bookstore-sponsored event, Zauner — also known as the lead musician of Japanese Breakfast — discussed the process of writing her acclaimed memoir with a full house at the Michigan Theater on Sunday, April 23. 

“Crying in H Mart” began as an essay. After a year of receiving rejections, Zauner’s piece “Real Life: Love, Loss and, Kimchi” won Glamour Magazine’s 2016 essay contest. “I thought (the award email) was spam,” she laughed. Around the same time, Zauner’s music career began to take off. It wasn’t until her tour for Soft Sounds from Another Planet ended in Seoul in 2017 that she realized she had much more to say. 

The memoir is the story of Zauner and her mother, who passed away from cancer when Zauner was only 25 years old. Zauner chronicles the stages of her mother’s sickness, from the diagnosis to her final moments, while she reflects on the past. She describes their strained relationship — the tensions influenced by their disparate upbringings and backgrounds — and how they navigated their challenges: through food.

Zauner explains the role of food in her relationship with her mother at the start of her memoir, writing, “Food was how my mother expressed her love. No matter how critical or cruel she could seem — constantly pushing me to meet her intractable expectations — I could always feel her affection radiating from the lunches she packed and the meals she prepared for me just the way I liked them.” Throughout the night, Reid and members of the audience posed numerous food-related questions, which Zauner happily answered, “Everyone has some sort of food memory that connects them with their family,” she said.

Beyond the foodie interrogation — Reid came up with a food quiz halfway through the night — much of the conversation centered around Zauner’s writing experience. The creation of her memoir was a five-year-long on-again off-again process. “A lot of this book was written in between sound check and show time, in the van, on the plane,” she said. “I wrote really badly for a long time until I hit 90,000 words.”

In response, Reid clarified that a lot of people don’t understand that “writing well requires writing badly,” which was repeated several times throughout the night. “It’s so freeing to go in and write badly and get it out of the way,” Zauner added. Later, when asked by an aspiring writer for advice, again she shared the importance of “allowing yourself the freedom to write poorly,” and to remember that “a lot of what is going to be good (happens) during revision.” 

In addition to sharing tips and details on the writing process, Zauner entertained the crowd with her effortless charm, humor and quick anecdotes — for instance, telling us about the night she embarrassed herself in front of Taylor Swift — and inspired us with her honesty.   

“One part of (the) memoir (genre) that’s interesting is that it forces you to have radical empathy,” Zauner shared. “I was so angry in the first draft, and I didn’t want to tell that story. I don’t think I realized how angry I was until I stepped away from it … I realized it wasn’t fair, and (I knew) I needed to be as fair as possible,” she said. 

“I had a lot of shame before I started writing this book,” Zauner said, in reference to the fraught relationship she and her mom shared when she was a teenager. The two had finally reconnected when her mom fell sick and Zauner added, “The most heartbreaking thing is that we were just returning to each other.”

She speaks to this heartbreak near the end of her memoir with beautiful, lyrical prose: “Thrown as we were on opposite sides of a fault line — generational, cultural, linguistic — we wandered lost without a reference point, each of us unintelligible to the other’s expectations, until these past few years when we had just begun to unlock the mystery, carve the psychic space to accommodate each other, appreciate the differences between us, linger in our refracted commonalities. Then, what would have been the most fruitful years of understanding were cut violently short, and I was left alone to decipher the secrets of inheritance without its key.”

The night reached a fitting conclusion with Zauner answering a question about grief and food. An audience member wondered how Zauner dealt with the inability to recreate a meal exactly how her mother made it, to which she replied, “It’s a good thing that it’ll never taste the same.”

It’s what allows us to remember.

Daily Arts Writer Lillian Pearce can be reached at pearcel@umich.edu.

The post Author of ‘Crying in H Mart’ Michelle Zauner ends book tour at the Michigan Theater appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

For pretty much anyone familiar with the idea of a fandom, fanfiction is far from a foreign concept. Whether you read it or not isn’t as important as understanding the cultural significance of this art form and its contributions to fan culture as a medium through which fans can explore their own niche interests around a specific universe, group or person. While not entirely unproblematic (the ethics surrounding writing fanfiction about real people are truly questionable), fanfiction has been made fun of in popular culture for far too long — and really, in the grand scheme of things people do to express their love as fans, fanfiction is one of the more respectable options, in my eyes. 

Alas, not everyone shares this same mindset. Namely, the protagonist of Esther Yi’s literary debut, “Y/N” — a story quite literally named after the practice of replacing a protagonist’s name with “y/n” (meaning “your name”) in fanfiction. This story follows a similarly unnamed protagonist as her growing obsession with a fictional K-pop star named Moon takes her from Berlin to Seoul in her quest to stalk him down and profess her (spiritual?) love for him. Interspersed throughout the narrative are the occasional excerpt from a y/n fanfic the protagonist begins to write about herself and Moon, detailing their supposed “connected” souls. When she finally meets Moon in person, the protagonist is forced to reconcile the version of him she’s built up in her head with the real man behind the idol. Naturally, commentary ensues.

Unfortunately, the commentary is about all this book has to offer, and it barely makes for a meaningful reading experience. If I squint my eyes, I can sort of see the book trying to criticize the romanticization of celebrities, but even that is lost in the sea of other pointless, pseudo-intellectual musings the main character feels compelled to make throughout the novel. This story, when boiled down, is hardly that. It feels more like reading through an old Tumblr account than a published book. The bare bones of a story are there, sure — there are characters, settings and events that take place. There are even moments that are beautifully written, despite having to shlep through countless unnecessary philosophical rants to get there. But with nothing concrete to give the story shape in a reader’s mind, it loses direction and impact. 

Here is where I have to give “Y/N” credit: I think the seemingly coincidental making of the narrator into a y/n character herself was no coincidence at all. In fact, it would be a rather clever plot device if the rest of the book was pulled off well. That being said, the story seems to miss the mark entirely on what makes real y/n fanfiction compelling in the first place. If the point of this kind of story is to be able to insert yourself as a reader onto the main character, said character needs to be at once dull enough to be relatable and “perfect” enough to be desirable — we want to believe we could simultaneously be this person and also envy them and their life. The main character of “Y/N,” by comparison, falls into the strange realm of being at once unknowable and far too distinct, making her difficult to relate to or attach ourselves to as a character. Moreover, even a lot of the more out-there fanfiction is at the very least still made relatable by the fact that it exists within the universe of a preexisting fandom, allowing many readers (being fans of the fandom itself) to ignore larger issues within the prose and connect with the story. This is not the case with “Y/N,” as Moon and the rest of his bandmates are all fictional. I didn’t find myself wishing I could be in the main character’s place as I read “Y/N” because Moon is not a real person I wish I could meet, nor is he a fictional character I already know and love; the story gave me nothing to grab onto.

This leads to the novel’s second (and arguably more significant) problem: Nothing really happens. Sure, the aforementioned events take place on the page, but these moments don’t really feel like moments given the fact the narrator consistently does nothing to contribute to making them happen. Instead, we’re pushed through a classic “nothing happens” plot by side characters we know nothing about and have no connection to. In these scenes, said side characters appear to be more interested in getting the narrator what she wants (the chance to meet Moon) than the narrator herself does. This doesn’t make sense — who, realistically, becomes this invested in a random stranger’s life? More importantly, in what world would this kind of stan need convincing to do anything that might help them meet their idol? It makes the story less compelling. The only real decisions the main character makes throughout the novel that have any consequence on the plot are initially choosing to become obsessed with Moon as a sort of competition with her own will, flying to Seoul to find him and eventually interacting with him once she does (an encounter that never would have happened, mind you, had one of the side characters not pushed the narrator into it). There’s no sense of dramatic tension sustained throughout the story to make us care about what’s happening, which isn’t surprising, considering it feels like even the narrator herself barely cares (despite the fact she goes on and on about her obsession with Moon in her internal monologue). Time sort of just … passes. 

Unfortunately, rather than making any larger point about the problematic nature of idolizing real (and therefore imperfect) people, this book seems more aimed at criticizing fanfiction and the fan culture that surrounds it. Considering the author literally described the act of becoming obsessed with a celebrity as “blissfully stupid” when explaining the inspiration for this book, that doesn’t strike me as too far-fetched an idea. This perspective is really where my big problem with the book lies — it just takes itself too seriously. And while Yi admits in the same interview that her main character is “an intellectual who has a refined, and even pretentious, appreciation of Moon,” that just isn’t a good enough justification for me. Nevermind the fact the main character treats being a K-pop stan like embarking on a religious mission or pursuing a doctorate in philosophy (therefore placing her above all those other basic, surface-level K-pop stans who just casually think their bias is cute), it’s near-impossible for most normal people to read a page without needing to pull out a dictionary. For a book written about fanfiction and K-pop and, in theory, targeted at audiences who might enjoy or be interested in those things, this book feels neither accessible nor relatable. Unless, of course, this book was not targeted at those audiences but rather at those who look down on and assume intellectual superiority over these things.

At the end of the day, even pretentious people have flaws that make them human, but outside of being anti-social and gross (please don’t ask me about the pus scene), this narrator’s only “flaw” is being obsessed with a celebrity. And sure, flying to Korea and finding a pop star is incredibly excessive and wrong (please don’t do this), but it doesn’t feel like this book is trying to say the main character is an exception to the rule — it feels like it’s trying to say she is the rule, and that if every fan was as devoted as she was and had the means, they would do this too. And that’s simply not the case. If you’re someone who thinks of yourself as an intellectual and believes that K-pop, fanfiction and similar interests are below you, this book might be your jam. But if you’re anything like me, and you think laughing at people for simply having interests and expressing them is a practice best left in middle school, maybe it’s best you sit this one out.

Daily Arts Writer Camille Nagy can be reached at camnagy@umich.edu.

The post How to make fanfiction pretentious: ‘Y/N’ by Esther Yi appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

As an avid reader, I am always reluctant to acknowledge that I discovered a book through its movie adaptation. It always feels like an admission of guilt to say that I first experienced “Lord of the Rings” through Peter Jackson instead of Tolkien, or that I nearly cried during Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” but have never once touched the book. Literary adaptations, be they film, television or musical, are often derided or dismissed as both extensions of the original and works in their own right.

So it pains me to confess that it took watching the film version of Michael Chabon’s “Wonder Boys” a full three times before I decided to read the book. In my defense, the adaptation has a lot going for it. There’s the acting, for one. It’s hard to pick out a single standout performance, from Frances McDormand’s  (“Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted”) acerbic wit to the gloomy Tobey Maguire (“The Boss Baby”) to a charming appearance by Alan Tudyk (“Lego Star Wars: All-Stars”). The script is also well-handled. Where possible, screenwriter Steve Kloves lifted whole lines of dialogue from the book, and the result perfectly preserves the loveliness of Chabon’s warm, high-mythologized prose.

What surprised me when I finally read the book was that the main message of “Wonder Boys” — the novel, at least, not its adaptation — wasn’t about writing, hidden love or really anything else that survived into the movie. Instead, it’s a narrative about protagonist Grady Tripp’s search for belonging, held together by a scene that isn’t in the film at all.

On its surface, “Wonder Boys” is a story about writers, plagued by what Grady calls “the midnight disease.” Chabon’s characters are a bundle of self-destructive insomniacs juggling depressive episodes and careers as novelists or publicists. The book begins with a small-time, H.P. Lovecraft-esque author of short stories. Two novels are critical to the plot. It even takes place during Wordfest, a fictional writing conference.

Central to the book is Grady, played on the silver screen by Michael Douglas (“Green Eggs and Ham”), a Pittsburgh English teacher struggling to finish his next novel. Aptly titled “Wonder Boys,” the mammoth creature of the book lurks over Grady’s life, overshadowing the failure of his marriage, the arrival of his editor and the pregnancy of his lover.

About halfway through the book, he escapes the gravity of his novel and leaves Pittsburgh, ostensibly to break off his marriage with his wife, Emily. He soon finds himself pulled into the orbit of Emily’s family, the Warshaws, for what is possibly the most uncomfortable seder dinner in literary history.

The focus of the novel pulls back. It’s no longer about a small cast of writers and the literary scene of Pittsburgh, but a small adopted family of gentiles and converts living in a cramped farmhouse of clashing aesthetics and personalities. This is where the hidden brilliance of “Wonder Boys” lives, divorced from Grady’s career as a professor or novelist.

The richness of the Warshaws’ emotional bonds, which are fraught with the same resentment, joy and loss that undercut any conventional family, serves as a painful reminder of the absence of those in Grady’s own life. His only close friend, his editor, lives in New York City and visits rarely. He seeks out companionship through romantic trysts — Emily is his third wife, not to mention his affair — that have a tendency to implode in on themselves. Most of his days are spent in a solitary, drug-addled haze trying to cobble together an ending for his novel. 

Grady is, in short, lonely. As he confesses, his desire to belong to a family, whether by blood or not, is part of why he married Emily in the first place. His genuine affection for the Warshaws is clear through his lengthy intellectual discussions with Emily’s father and his strange alliance with her sister.

In this regard, he isn’t too different from his student, James Leer, an enigmatic writer with a fixation on Hollywood suicides. James accompanies Grady to the Warshaws’ home and both are taken aback by the family’s ready acceptance of them: Grady because of his mistreatment of Emily — he concedes to pushing her away throughout the course of their entire marriage — and James because of the contrast it strikes from his own supposedly frigid parents.

During dinner, Grady and James find a dubious companionship in each other. This kinship soon falls apart when Grady surrenders James to his mother and father, breaking the trust between the two. Shortly before this, Emily leaves him for good. With these two connections severed, his last chance to remain within the protected circle of the Warshaw family dissipates. Grady returns to Pittsburgh without the friendship of his student or the safety of his found family.

It isn’t until the third act that Grady starts to reclaim that feeling of belonging for himself. No longer burdened by the weight of his manuscript, which flew out the window during a frantic car chase with a mobster (a typical weekend in Pittsburgh, I’m sure), he resolves to marry his lover and raise their child, and the epilogue finds Grady a little older and a little happier. Importantly, it isn’t his writing career that brings this fulfillment, but the bonds he has built with his own little family.

Though Grady’s part in their family is short-lived, with the Warshaws he recognizes his need to “tie (himself) to the artillery sphere of a family.” In the book, his conclusion as a character feels inevitable and satisfying. Without the Warshaws, the film’s epilogue is hokey and contrived, the one blemish on an otherwise “wonder”-ful adaptation.

Daily Arts Writer Alex Hetzler can be reached at alexhetz@umich.edu.

The post The hidden wonder of the Warshaw family in Michael Chabon’s ‘Wonder Boys’ appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Content warning: Mentions of physical and mental abuse, sexual harassment and assault

Love her or hate her, Hollywood’s hottest hotel heiress is an undeniable icon of American popular culture. Synonymous with privilege, parties, paparazzi, white girls gone wild, oversized sunglasses, velour tracksuits and lowrise jeans, and among the likes of Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton (“The Simple Life”) is a staple of the early 2000s. “Paris: The Memoir” is Hilton’s account of her rise to this role, as well as her years fulfilling it, in a bizarrely fascinating and out-of-touch fashion. 

The novel starts with a jumbled account of Hilton’s diagnosis with ADHD, or as she wishes to refer to it, her “superpower” in which the “A stood for ass-kicking … the Ds stood for dope and drive (and) the H suggested hell yes.” The writing is all over the place, jumping from thought to thought, as Hilton attempts to display how her brain works in a realistic style that is less-than-suitable for a pleasurable reading experience. It may be how Hilton thinks; however, I have a hard time praising the structure of a story that — in half a page — apologizes for use of racial slurs, discusses the troubled teen industry, “getting wasted,” Hilton’s friends, “living the nightlife,” addiction to partying, PTSD and “running down the mountain, slipping on mossy rocks, disappearing with the remains of the murdered boys.”

This is one of many examples of Hilton’s “real-voice” that we are subjected to for the entirety of this novel. Going beyond confusing structure, the language employed by Hilton attempts to translate her character to the page. Despite claims that this memoir is the real Paris, one finds it hard to believe as she glosses over some of her most well-known moments like her infamous celebrity feuds and numerous arrests, filling their void with poetic prose such as “yaasssss,” “lit af,” “Unicorn trot!” and, of course, “that’s hot.” Perhaps that is what is so uncomfortable about “Paris: The Memoir” — despite its supposed tell-all status and promises to separate “the creation from the creator” and “the brand from the ambassador,” I finished the novel with no clearer picture of who Hilton really is. Yes, she tells previously unshared sides of stories, and yet it quickly becomes clear that we are only hearing what Hilton wants us to hear. The unflattering and unfortunate aspects of Hilton’s career — racial slurs, catty comments, controversial political endorsements and drunk driving to name a few — are acknowledged, but written off and excused by Hilton, who denies full accountability for any of these actions. We are instead offered a contrived image of Hilton, a carefully crafted alternate version of her famous dumb-blonde persona that still protects and projects her brand. 

What is mesmerizing about “Paris: The Memoir” is that in spite of all my complaints about the book, I could not put it down. Hilton is magnetic — despite her composed character, there is still a raw and revealing edge to the memoir. Hidden behind frivolous language and random trains of thought, there is a real story within her memoir. 

Hilton exposes the so-called “troubled teen industry,” which she reveals to be a machine of abusive and manipulative “schools” where she and unknown amounts of other children have been mentally, physically and sexually abused. She describes traumatic and troubling events from childhood, some of which include rape, a “pedophile” teacher and unrestricted access to New York City nightclubs at the ripe age of 14. Her descriptions of PTSD and mental health issues are poignant and an important experience to hear from such an influential figure. Additionally, there is a compelling sort-of redemption arc sold to the audience; Hilton writes of her activism and survivor empowerment efforts in regard to the troubled teen industry — emphasizing her work to pass legislation reforming these harmful institutions and calling for justice for all victims, alive or deceased, of this abusive system. The memoir heavily discusses pre-#MeToo movement Hollywood, with Hilton reflecting on the media harassment she and her female contemporaries faced. In Hilton’s memories of this era, she was a victim of sexual harassment and media assault following the nonconsensual release of her private sex tape to the masses. She also reflects on the struggles of building a career as a woman, remarking that she thought scandals like the sex tape would be the end of her career and that she constantly faced sexism and harassment in professional and media settings. Even the seemingly superficial topics — such as Hilton’s iconic passion for partying — reveal a new side to Paris, as she explains her extensive partying as a form of coping and escape from a troubled home life and past. Additionally, these stories are fun. Hilton has been part of some of the most iconic pop culture moments of the aughts and provides endless entertainment in her, albeit a little excessive in name-dropping, embarrassingly endearing and wild stories of herself and other celebrities of the time. 

“Paris: The Memoir” is as entrancingly entertaining as it is pitifully painful. In a hodgepodge of NFT plugs, out-of-touch endorsements, activist testimonies and Hollywood history, Paris comes to life. On some level, I do not think more could be asked out of a Hilton memoir. This novel encapsulates who Paris Hilton is: a simultaneously out-of-touch and hyper-aware “sliving” socialite.

Daily Arts Writer Kathryn Hemmila can be reached at khemmila@umich.edu.

The post That’s not-so-hot: ‘Paris: The Memoir’ is a delightful disaster appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

As the Earth spins and April becomes home once again, spring offers a burst of beauty and livelihood to our spirits. Suddenly, there is color, life and the type of sunshine that can cut straight to anyone’s heart. April is full of these springtime poetics, making it the perfect time to celebrate National Poetry Month. From The Michigan Daily Book Review to you, here are our loveliest little poetry recommendations.

*For best existential results: Read outside in the early morning or late evening, as the sun rises or sets. Under these conditions, poetry can enter your tender heart with ease.

Senior Arts Editor Ava Burzycki can be reached at burzycki@umich.edu

“Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver” by Mary Oliver 

“How wonderful to be who I am, / made out of earth and water, / my own thoughts, my own fingerprints — / all that glorious, temporary stuff.”

Mary Oliver, above all else, understands what it is to be a soft, tender human and offers an antidote to the whirlwinds of confusing woes within modernity. This is a poetry collection that reminds the reader of the great, wonderful world we live in. It reminds us to slow down, forget the anxieties built into our lives and instead retreat into the small, beautiful moments that make life worthwhile. Her poems come to me in the morning, when I’m staring out the window at the sunrise, drinking a particularly sweet coffee; they come to me at night, when the world becomes suffocating and I need to be reminded of all the possibilities within this one life; they come to me in spring, when sunshine brings the rebirth of the environment and ushers in hope for what the future may hold. 

Senior Arts Editor Ava Burzycki can be reached at burzycki@umich.edu

“Civil Service: Poems” by Claire Schwartz

“You cannot solve time, even with death. / The only clue is pleasure.”

What can the poet do? What obligation do they have, when they see injustice? What are the poet’s and reader’s responsibilities to language? Claire Schwartz forces us to reckon with these and other questions in her 2022 poetry collection “Civil Service: Poems.” The book loosely follows a woman named Amira in a dictatorial society populated by unnamed characters referred to by titles like “the Accountant,” “the Intern” and “the Censor.” In clever, thought-provoking verse, Schwartz critiques modern war, politics and the way language is weaponized in pursuit of violence and oppression. 

Time and language are corporeal in this book; “Amira pulls the hours around her like a shawl” and “A woman feeds time to a meat grinder” are just two examples of the way Schwartz lends materiality and tangibility to concepts and abstractions. Although her writing can sound like parables, she is quick to remind you that this is not a metaphor — it is just an unspecified example of something that is already happening. With lines like “You lust after dental insurance” and “On payday, he takes his wife and son to Shake Shack,” Schwartz never lets you escape the sheer reality of the things she describes, never lets you take comfort in abstraction. 

This book is a masterful, quick, cohesive and thought-provoking read that asks the reader tough questions and, instead of providing easy answers, provides a multitude of them. It reminds us why poets and their writing are important in the first place, and where poetry fits into a society that increasingly seems to devalue its existence. 

“Be Holding: A Poem” by Ross Gay

“reaching to keep / from falling, / and lonely for him / I sometimes will study / my own hands, / which are his hands”

This book is another masterpiece in poetic innovation by the author of “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.” As its subtitle suggests, “Be Holding” is a nearly 100-page-long poem. Not only that, but it’s all one sentence. Gay uses centered couplets with interspersed photographs to focus on this single clip of a baseline scoop by basketball legend Dr. J (Julius Erving). It’s a master class in paying attention, in the art of observing that is so crucial to poetry. Basketball — a subject not usually associated with poetry — is transformed into a lengthy meditation on not only the baseline scoop itself but family, American racism and Gay’s past. 

Even I, someone who didn’t know anything about basketball legends of the ’80s, was transfixed by this book and ended up watching the clip in question half a dozen times throughout my reading, as Gay described things I’d missed. Describing Erving’s scoop, he writes, “and you notice now before the flash / Doc was probably just intending / to dunk simply though emphatically on his own side of the hoop, / but was compelled to soar like this.” Yet somehow the book is also about everything else: “my body is made of my father / reaching to keep from falling,” “we are talking about destroying the world / for the world,” “war photographs in this gallery / tended by a friendly white woman.” 

Gay transitions seamlessly from topic to topic in ways that are sometimes arrestingly beautiful. He makes the reader care about what he cares about, writing “ — have you ever decided anything in the air — ” about Dr. J, simply capturing the wonder of the moment when, 50 pages in, you’re sure he’d run out of ways to make that moment new.  This book is an example of what poetry can do and how it can teach us to really see the world around us.

“Asylum: A Personal, Historical, Natural Inquiry in 103 Lyric Sections” by Jill Bialosky

“there was a brief sojourn / from the asylum in which the poem was held prisoner”

The subtitle of Jill Bialosky’s latest poetry collection prepares the reader fairly well for what follows in its pages. Bialosky’s poetry covers a range of topics, from global warming to her sister’s suicide to antisemitism, and weaves them together in a way that feels natural. From the beginning (including the cover, which portrays a cross-section of a tree trunk), the metaphor of the tree as the body is clear, and this motif creates a throughline that ties the poem’s sections together. Her writing is strongest when describing and observing the natural world, and she does so in vivid and defamiliarizing detail: “a woman / thrusting her nose into the burst / of a sunflower as if into the face / of God,” “Blossoms are at the very edge / of becoming,” “corpses / of monarchs curled in humble heads of flowers.”

But what makes her perfect for National Poetry Month is her treatment of April itself. April is the month her sister died, but it is also the month when spring begins to assert itself, and Bialosky produces poignant and brutally honest verses that examine the inherent contradiction of life and death that this month holds for her. “Every April a requiem, a re-awakening of dawn, the same chorus / & players,” she writes, going on to reference her sister’s death. She writes, in reference to both T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and Dante’s “Inferno,” “Daffodils, survivors of the cruelest month / tossing their heads in sprightly dance from the ground arise.” For those who find the turn from winter into spring melancholy and bittersweet, Bialosky captures the season’s teetering between life and death in remarkable poetic verse. 

Daily Arts Writer Emilia Ferrante can be reached at emiliajf@umich.edu.

The post The Daily Book Review’s recommendations for National Poetry Month appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Christopher Paolini’s newest novel, “Fractal Noise,” promises a lot: ancient alien civilizations, an eerie, windswept setting and a cast of characters driven to the brink of an earth-shattering discovery by their inner demons. Like the Artificial Intelligence-generated art that graces its cover, the book delivers rich science fiction glamor but lacks any real human touch.

Set in Paolini’s Fractalverse 20 years before his last novel, “To Sleep in a Sea of Stars,” “Fractal Noise” follows a fairly typical “first encounter” narrative. Shortly after their arrival above the planet of Talos VII, scientists discover the first evidence of intelligent alien life: a massive, perfectly circular hole transmitting a signal every 10 seconds that mimics the Mandelbrot set (the titular “fractal noise”). Rather than wait for another crew to steal the glory, an expedition team of four — including protagonist Alex Crichton — steps out on the surface of Talos VII to investigate.

Much like his critically acclaimed “Inheritance” series, which existed well within the neatly charted realm of young adult fantasy, Paolini’s newest novel hardly reinvents science fiction. Its blend of alien mystery and philosophical symbolism includes a few novel ideas but mimics classics across the spectrum of the genre from “Speaker for the Dead” to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” It’s within these comfortable lines that Paolini has always excelled — building stories that manage to feel, if not entirely fresh, exciting and wholly engrossing. 

For an author best known for sprawling, 700-page fantasy epics, “Fractal Noise” feels tight and toned down by comparison. It’s a welcome new direction for Paolini, one that allows for a far more concentrated novel than the rather unfocused “To Sleep in a Sea of Stars.” He brings a kind of small-stakes, high-concept science fiction that is likely to please any hardcore fans of the genre, especially those tired of wide-reaching space operas like “The Expanse.”

It’s unfortunate, then, that the focus of “Fractal Noise” isn’t Paolini’s studious worldbuilding. Instead, the book sets its focus on its rather lackluster cast of characters, offering few distractions from their painfully stilted dialogue and paper-thin relationships.

The problem begins with the protagonist of the novel. Alex is relentlessly obsessed with his wife’s death, and this (while entirely understandable) is gracelessly explored. Paolini’s prose stumbles between mechanical and overwrought, with a few genuinely touching moments scattered throughout. The result feels blunt and voyeuristic; several lines quite memorably miss the mark of painfully poetic and instead feel simply cringe-inducing.

Despite Paolini’s earnest attempt to explore Alex’s grief, his protagonist lacks any real depth or complexity beyond it. His wife is referenced without fail in every chapter, often only to shuffle Alex reluctantly along to the next part of the story. This doesn’t just do her little justice as a character — it leaves Alex with little room to breathe, rendering him one-dimensional and hard to relate to.

The rest of the expedition crew offers a welcome reprieve from Alex’s internal monologue and next to nothing else. Hedonistic Pushkin and religious zealot Talia struggle for power in their little group, forcing Alex and the crew’s chemist, Chen, to pick sides. As the brutal conditions of Talos VII put the expedition crew at risk, there are a few wonderful moments when Talia and Pushkin’s arguments hit a perfect blend of dreamlike insanity, but these are too few and far between — and with very little payoff — to justify their otherwise predictable bickering. Paolini’s attempts to inject some philosophical meaning into their debates likewise feel superficial and pretentious. There are few reasons for the reader to actually care about what happens to them, robbing the book of its desperately needed emotional stakes.

Paolini’s worldbuilding may be only the saving grace of “Fractal Noise” and, for some readers, that might be enough. However, as I kept reading, what drew me in wasn’t trying to discover the many connections to Paolini’s other novels that might be scattered throughout, or even learning more about the aliens that lie (or rather, that should lie) at the center of the book. Instead, I found myself waiting for the protagonist to become anything more than just another sad leading man with a dead love interest.

I waited a long, long time.

Daily Arts Contributor Alex Hetzler can be reached at alexhetz@umich.edu.

The post Christopher Paolini’s upcoming novel is nothing more than ‘Fractal Noise’ appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

To many readers, BookTokers and Michigan Daily Arts writers, Emily Henry is the unquestionable queen of romance. With her complex characters and deep storylines, she masterfully weaves together romance novels that entertain readers and set romantic expectations very high.

Her upcoming novel “Happy Place” is one of the most anticipated books of 2023, which is no surprise after the success of her past three novels — the most recent of which won the 2022 Goodreads Choice Awards for the romance genre.

“Happy Place” is a second-chance romance, where protagonist Harriet and her love interest Wyn are reunited at their friend’s summer house shortly after breaking off their engagement. Their friends are unaware of their breakup, and after receiving upsetting news from their friend group, Harriet and Wyn agree to maintain the facade of their engagement for the course of their vacation so as not to disappoint their friends further. What does that mean? It means that they undertake the classic fake relationship trope. Unsurprisingly, the book follows them as they find their way back to one another.

Similar to her second novel, “People We Meet on Vacation,” “Happy Place” has a dual timeline — we read chapters of Harriet in her “happy place” (moments of time in the past when she and Wyn are happy together) and chapters of “real life” (present day, where Harriet, Wyn and their friends are all struggling with various secrets). This format keeps readers eager to continue reading; in particular, we get little hints here and there about why Harriet and Wyn break up, but it takes reading both past and present storylines to get the full picture and understand just what went down between the two characters.

In a departure from her previous novels, “Happy Place” features far more side characters than readers might typically expect from a Henry novel. “Beach Read” was very insular, focusing primarily on January and Gus, and “People We Meet on Vacation” had a few side characters, but none of them were very important. “Book Lovers” featured a primary character beyond the main couple (Nora’s sister Libby), but “Happy Place” has an entire friend group that frequently appears on the page. The inclusion of a friend group was ingenious — it allowed readers to get a deeper understanding of the characters and the evolution of all their relationships with one another. As a result, we immediately feel more connected to the characters — Harriet in particular. Harriet’s relationship with her best friends Sabrina and Cleo especially adds to her own characterization; she becomes so much more than just another romantic lead when we understand her past and why her friends are like her family.

In terms of the romance, Harriet and Wyn are complicated. Wyn is unlike most of Henry’s literary love interests. He holds a lot of responsibility for their breakup, and that can make it difficult to feel sympathy or forgiveness toward him. In fact, he has a lot to make up for. When reading, I was wholly on Harriet’s side, unsure whether Wyn’s actions would make up for the heartbreak she’s feeling. That being said, in true Henry fashion, both characters make sacrifices for one another and learn more about themselves and each other on the road to repairing their relationship.

In many ways, even if romance isn’t always your preferred genre, Henry’s “Happy Place” should still capture your attention. Her focus on creating detailed characters and pure, platonic friendships contributes to a feel-good book. And if you do like romance, “Happy Place” will certainly be another Henry story that goes down in history. 

Daily Arts Writer Sabriya Imami can be reached at simami@umich.edu.

The post Find your ‘Happy Place’ with Emily Henry appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

In this segment of Arts Talks, writers from the Books and TV beats came together to discuss Amazon Prime’s newest miniseries “Daisy Jones & The Six.” Adapted from the New York Times bestselling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, “Daisy Jones & The Six” follows the rise and fall of a fictional band from the ’70s that was loosely inspired by Fleetwood Mac.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity. 

Ava Seaman, Books Beat Editor: What were your guys’ immediate reactions to the series?

Serena Irani, TV Beat Editor: From the first few episodes alone, I wasn’t that into it. But then as it progressed, I got a lot more invested. I liked Daisy the most and Riley Keough’s (“The Terminal List”) performance. And I thought the music was okay!

Annabel Curran, TV Senior Arts Editor: I think the build-up for it was really crazy. I was so excited for it. I’d been waiting and waiting and waiting and then they released the first two songs and I was like, “I am losing my fucking mind.” But then I watched the first episode and I feel like it was fine. But then when I read the first chapter of the book, I was like, “This is gonna be revolutionary.” So it was like it didn’t live up to my expectations right away. But I don’t know if I will feel the same by the time I get to the finale. I think I like the female characters the best. And then, Sam Claflin (“Love, Rosie”) is hot, but you know, he’s very pretty, but that’s really all. 

Kathryn Hemmila, Daily Arts Writer: I thought it was a little slow at first. I watched the first few episodes and I had a bit of a hard time getting into it, but I liked how it built a lot by the end. I was pretty invested in it, especially because they changed a decent amount from the book. So, I wasn’t actually sure what was going to happen. Most of the time when a book has been adapted, I know where it’s going, but there are a lot of differences (between the book and TV show), so that was kind of cool.

Logan Brown, Daily Arts Writer: I was super excited about it and built it up in my head a lot. Over Spring Break I was like, “I’m gonna sink into the series,” but it was really slow at the beginning which I wasn’t really expecting. You do need to build the storyline because books have a really easy way of doing that, so it’s just so different with different types of media. I thought the characters were cool and I liked how they portrayed the ’70s era but it was definitely not as overwhelmingly intense as I thought it would be in the beginning.

Graciela Batlle Cestero, Daily Arts Writer: I feel the same way. I like the book a lot more in terms of the set-up because, like Logan said, it was constantly really thrilling and gripping. But there were also chapters in the beginning of the book where I was also like, let’s get through this so I can get to the good part. That’s how the first few episodes felt. I also agree that my favorite characters were the female characters. Especially Riley Keough, she’s a perfect casting for Daisy. Sam Claflin is obviously very nice to look at and he portrays Billy very accurately. I was scared of Camila Marrone (“Love Advent”) as Camila because I’m really attached to the character, but I think she did a good job too.

AS: I was pretty underwhelmed at the start. I wasn’t invested until like five episodes in, and then we really got to see the dynamic between Daisy and Billy. I did like the casting, but I didn’t understand why they made Karen English. I understand Suki Waterhouse (“Zaya”) is English but it was just weird. And then when they changed Daisy’s upbringing…

AC: Okay that was dumb.

AS: I was like, her name’s not Margaret. Her name was always Daisy Jones. I do think Claflin played Billy really well because the whole time I just kept thinking “Billy is such a prick, Billy is such a prick” and Claflin’s portrayal was confirming that. However, the dynamic between Camila, Daisy and Billy was really weird in the show. I feel like Camila is such a strong character in the book. I just don’t see her as jealous, and I feel like she came off as insecure and it made me mad. 

AC: Why did they make her look bad? That was unnecessary.

KH: In the book, the whole point of Camila and Billy was that their love is perfect. And she’s very open to knowing that he’s not always going to be faithful, but he loves her the most and he’s going to be loyal to her. And in the show, they made it more like she was telling herself that and it wasn’t this mutual understanding between them. I didn’t like at the end where she leaves him because her whole thing was that she wants this life with him. She wants to raise a family. Her number one priority ends up being her kids. And she’s going to keep the life that she’s built for herself — she’s strong in that way. And I didn’t like that she kind of gave into this “jealous woman” stereotype.

LB: Also, I feel like the dynamic between Daisy and Camila was very different (in the show) than it was in the book. In the book, you can tell they love each other and they really care for each other. But in the TV series, it’s almost like a competition. I feel like the book kind of shows this thing where two women can love the same man, and they don’t have to hate each other for it. And I think that’s really powerful. And that’s what I really liked about the book, but then the series it’s more like they’re fighting over this man. That’s not the main part of what the book was about. 

GBC: There was this really important scene between Daisy and Camila at the end (of the book) that they completely cut out and I was really, really mad about that. There’s a specific line that Camila has in that scene where she tells Daisy, “He’s not going to leave me,” and she knows that. And there’s like parts of that scene where she lowkey comes off as mean, but I didn’t think it was mean, she’s just trying to comfort Daisy but also trying to let her know that she’s not going to sugarcoat this for her. And they gave that line to Billy! Billy was the one who said, “Oh, I’m not gonna leave (Camila).” And I was like, no! Then, in the end, they made Daisy tell Billy to go and look for Camila, and that just didn’t happen in the book. I understand that an adaptation means that some changes are going to be made, but I think the book’s ending would’ve been really easy to portray on screen. It wasn’t something that had to be changed in order for it to translate well to the screen. And it was such an important moment that really concluded the character arcs that Camila and Daisy had both been going through the entire book, and that just sort of ended in another way. That’s why Camila, for me, comes off in a very different way in the show.

But I also had a friend tell me that she liked the TV version of Camila because she thought that the version of Camila in the book was too good to be true. Like, no woman is that trusting, no one is okay with everything or self-assured. So, I don’t know, that’s also something I considered.

SI: I agree. I think that the ending scene with Camila and Daisy was important. But I kind of liked how in the show, Daisy is the one that comes to her own realization that she needs to get help for herself, that it’s more of her decision to leave the band and go to rehab because she knows that it’s what’s best for herself right now. I also felt like Camila, to me, doesn’t have as much of a presence in the book. In the book, she kind of just chimes in when it’s relating to Billy and whatnot. But in the show, I felt like she was present more and had more screen time, which was nice. 

AS: Do you think that it translated well from page to screen? This book is really unique in the way that it’s set up as interviews and discussions between (spoiler!) Billy’s daughter and the rest of the people related to the band. But the TV show was mostly scenes and not the interviews. And I don’t know if the TV show did TJR’s book justice. 

GBC: I was also kind of thrown off by that, but I sort of made peace with it by thinking about how, in the book, every single character is an unreliable narrator. They’re all telling Billy and Camila’s daughter, Julia, what they want to tell her to preserve their image and reputation. For example, I had a friend tell me that they thought that Camila’s responses to certain events in the book seemed really calculated and really well thought out, but at the moment, people normally don’t have the time to think about things so thoroughly. In the TV show, I got the impression that they were sort of trying to show what really happened instead of just what every character thought happened, because if they did that they would have to record the scenes a thousand times because everyone had a different opinion about everything.

LB: I really like in the book how contradicting all of the different accounts were, and I’m not sure if that’s picked up as much in the series. I wish they would have cut from interview to interview where they say completely different things because I think that was so comical in the book. They showed that a bit with Graham (Will Harrison, “Madam Secretary”) and Karen’s ending, but they didn’t show it a lot throughout the series. It would have been fun to see a little bit more of the unreliable narrators that were shown throughout the book.

KH: I liked how with a screen adaptation, you can obviously get the visual aspects and I think we dove a lot more into some of the side characters of the book in the TV show that I really liked. One of my favorite parts of the TV show was Graham and Karen’s relationship and then I even liked Warren a lot. Although I didn’t really like him, it was also cool seeing a lot more of Eddie (Josh Whitehouse, “Poldark”) and his character development, and we got to see more of his motivations behind disliking Billy and his attitude toward the band in general. I thought that was a good addition because it made it seem like they were real people in the band versus just being there mostly for the development of Daisy, Camila and Billy.

AC: If we’re going to talk about side characters then where the hell was Pete? Why did they cut him out? Like, no one really cares about Pete that much, but I was just kind of annoyed because it’s Daisy Jones and the Six. Where are the six? There are five! It is just not adding up. But I digress.

AS:  Something that threw me off was the fact that Eddie liked Camila. That was so weird. It’s such an easy way out in a TV show because of course there had to be some random backstory about how Billy “stole” his girl. That wasn’t true in the book. 

GBC: At first, I liked that Eddie was in love with Camila because it gave me more of a reason to not hate Eddie. Billy is like a really, really bad person. But there’s a way in which, in the book, you sort of start caring for him in some ways because every person is layered. I think TJR does a really good job of making her characters very layered. So seeing Eddie be so annoying all the time made me mad while reading the book. And I really liked that scene where Warren put him in his place. I definitely understand Eddie in the sense that Billy is really controlling, like when he goes and changes the entire album without telling any of them because that’s obviously infuriating, it’s their work as well. But there wasn’t really much substance to that hate that Eddie had. He was just mad that he wasn’t the band’s lead. 

But then it was weird that Eddie liked Camila because it made the whole Camila, Daisy and Billy love triangle a lot more complicated in a bad way. At the end, I was really mad because Camila told Billy that no other woman will love him like she loved him. But she did a very similar thing by cheating on Billy with Eddie, so it’s like you can’t really blame Billy because of the amount that she was blaming him in the show. They were trying to make her check herself by making her say, “Oh, we’ve both done things,” but it just wasn’t enough redemption I guess.

KH: I think there were some changes in dynamics in the relationships with Camila, Billy and Daisy that I didn’t appreciate that much in the TV show. I didn’t like that they made Billy and Daisy have an actual, physical relationship in the show. I didn’t want them to kiss because I think (the lack of a kiss) was so powerful in the book. They have this magnetism, they’re drawn to each other and there’s so much tension that never gets fulfilled because they don’t fully act on it. And there’s so many moments where one of them almost does and then the other one breaks away, saying “we can’t do this.” I think that expresses how much they can’t be together, but they should be and shouldn’t be. Having them actually act out on their feelings took away from their dynamic. As Ava was saying, it’s just the easy way out again. 

AC: I feel like the tension between them is due to the fact that they never got to act on (their feelings toward each other), but it’s what drove the plot of three-quarters of the book. So to have them resolve it so early, took away from the relationship that they had which is that they understood each other so well intellectually and emotionally, but also they were both lowkey shitty people and connected on that. To turn their almost-obsession with each other into this straightforward romantic relationship felt odd and not true to what I thought it should be. 

SI: Okay, I feel like a real contrarian. I like that they actually got together. I felt like in the book, it was very obvious that they didn’t talk about it, but I assumed that they definitely cheated at some point. Considering both of their characters — and Daisy’s lack of impulse control — to say that she wouldn’t have even tried with Billy, I don’t know. I get that the first kiss was kind of out of place, but the later ones made sense. Billy was at a low, Daisy was at a low.

AS: Actually, they were both quite high. 

SI: They both have such volatile personalities. If they’re spending all this time with each other and you put them in a room together, of course something’s gonna happen. It would have been weirder for the show not to have anything happen. And like Graciela was saying, if we consider the show to be like what really happened and not just their accounts of it…

GBC: In the end of the book, when you find out that Julia is the interviewer, it obviously changes a lot of things and it makes you reflect. If you reread the book, you’re like, “Oh, this specific scene is funky.” In the show, we get to see their first kiss, but if you look at Billy and Daisy’s separate interview scenes, they’re both silent. Julia asked Billy, “What did you do to make her sing like that?” And he doesn’t say anything. Then, there’s a shot of Daisy being interviewed after the scene happens, and she’s just grinning — she doesn’t say anything. So maybe that is what happened, but they just didn’t say it. 

AS: What did you guys think of the music? Did you have any favorite songs or favorite performances that stood out? What was your reaction to it coming out before the show?

AC: They released the two singles first, and I thought it was cool that when you look at the songs on Spotify — it’s as if Daisy Jones & The Six is a real band. I really liked that. I thought that was really cool. I was kind of tickled I guess that it was out, I was like, “Oh my god, they’re like a real band.” But then when the first two singles came out, I was like, this is good. “Look At Us Now (Honeycomb)” was really, really good — that’s my favorite. “Regret Me” was good except I really don’t like that they took out the line that says, “When you think of me, I hope it ruins rock ’n’ roll.” Dude, that line was killer, why did they do that?

And when I listened to the rest of (the album), I could hear the inspiration. I could hear the connections to those ’70s bands like Fleetwood Mac. I don’t know what I expected it to sound like and I think I have my favorites and my least favorites. Overall, I think it was all good. But it’ll never live up to what’s in my head. It’s not like I was like making up songs but I feel like it’ll never hit the same. I want to see them live or something. You know what I mean? But I did love that they had the real music to go with it and released it like a whole album format and I thought it was cool.

LB: I got really excited and I think it did its job — it hyped people up for this series. I got really into it; with every new drop, I was listening to (the new song) a lot. I wish in the series, though, that they would have played more of the songs because I feel like they didn’t really highlight all of them. And I haven’t really listened to the album that much, so I really only know the lead songs that they always played — it was a bit repetitive. I really liked “The River”; the last performance was excellent. In general, I thought (the album) was a really pleasant surprise because I never really read the songs when I read the book. I kind of just skipped over them because I couldn’t hear them in my head. So it’s cool to have something to actually think about now when I’m reading the book.

KH: In the book, it’s supposed to be like, one of the best albums of all time. As I’m listening to it, I have a hard time believing this was like the songs of the summer or the defining music of the ’70s in this universe. What is so magical about the (book’s) album is that you’re never going to be able to recreate that or formulate that, like, specific vibe. 

GBC: I had a whole moment when “Regret Me” was released and I made a chart and started highlighting everything that was the same between the book version and the recorded version of the song. The only thing that was the same was the line, “Regret me.” I was like, this is … interesting. But in the end, I really liked the music. I’ve been listening to it a lot, but I definitely do have my favorites and I think that the show plays a role in that because they feature certain songs over others, like, “The River,” for example. I also like “More Fun to Miss” but my thing is that it’s supposed to be the equivalent to, “Impossible Woman,” which in my mind was a slow ballad, like a really heartbreaking “Silver Springs” type of song. I think it’s a great song and her voice sounds insane, but it’s just a different vibe than what I expected. And then the same with “Regret Me.” When it first came out, I was like, this is fully a duet; this is not Billy’s backing vocals like they made it seem in the book — he is singing with her. So I did enjoy that the show kept in the fact that the band recorded the song without Billy, but the song itself does sound a lot more like a duet. 

I can’t really believe that (the album) is the Rumours equivalent, but it’s good. And it’s impressive because (the cast) learned how to sing and play their instruments.

AC: Does anyone know if Claflin is actually singing on the songs? I have a hard time believing that he is. 

GBC: I’m pretty sure he is. But why did he try to eat the microphone anytime he was singing? Why was he making out with the mic? 

AS: When (Daisy and Billy) were sharing the mic, they were so close! And I was like, how do you feel comfortable with someone on your cheek? 

GBC: I felt like I was intruding on something.

SI: It would have been more subtle if they just made out right there on stage. I loved Daisy’s performances though — Keough did such a great job with that. Every time Daisy would come on stage, I couldn’t really pay attention to anything else — she was a star.

AC:  I feel like that’s how it’s supposed to be: her star quality that she has. That’s why I didn’t love the way that they changed her upbringing and her backstory. In the show, she was scrimping and saving and I didn’t love that they changed her name. Maybe it’s unrealistic to have her be striking and amazing but the whole thing is she is that girl, she’s just so cool. She’s the reason that Daisy Jones & the Six ever happened; she just totally took everyone by storm. In some ways (the changes) made it a better story because maybe it’s just not super believable that this girl just has everyone wrapped around her finger right away, and it’s just too perfect. But that’s just who she is, like she’s just crazy talented and she just has this way about her. I wish that they captured that part of her essence or personality.

GBC: A thing that I did like that they changed about her was that when she was writing her songs in the book, she was very stubborn to accept changes or be challenged. She walked away from Teddy like a thousand times because he kept saying she needed to change things and that her songs weren’t complete — she was always really mad. In the show, she was very hard working in terms of her music and she was constantly reworking her songs. And I think that justified the fact that she was so intent on participating in the songwriting process for Aurora. In the book, I loved her because she’s just the insufferable character that you’re gonna love no matter what, but I kind of didn’t understand her entitlement to participate in the songwriting process.

SI: I think (the show) established her better.

AS: I did like Daisy and how she was portrayed, but I felt like she was a little too smiley. 

GBC: Her speaking voice was really, really sweet and kind. 

AC: Like, don’t you know this girl is a bitch? And we love that about her. 

AS: Yeah! She was supposed to be a broken and beautiful girl who was never sober. In the show, we didn’t get the crazy Daisy, which I felt like was integral to her character. The portrayal of the drugs and the smoking was very explicit, I was shocked. I was like, is it legal to show that many people smoking cigarettes these days? 

Something I did like about the show was Simone’s character. 

GBC: I really enjoyed her arc, it made her much more of a substantial character instead of just Daisy’s friend. In the book, I didn’t like that she existed solely to be there for Daisy. I liked the addition of her sexuality as well. I also liked that they made Warren (Sebastian Chacon, “Penny Dreadful: City of Angels”) Latino. Representation is always nice. 

SI: What did you guys think about the change in the timeline? 

GBC: The show was really good at accurately setting the scene, it looked very ’70s. But they went cheap on the 20-years-in-the-future thing. The character eliminations were sort of cheap too. I know it was stalled with COVID-19 but the set was so insane, so I feel like they could’ve gone the extra mile. I was happy that they kept Camila’s ending. But I didn’t like how they left it up to viewers’ discretion what illness she had. In the book, it was very clear she died from lupus. In my mind, it was important for them to include that because there’s a lack of representation for invisible illnesses like that. 

LB: It’s interesting that you can see that Camila looks a little sick throughout the interviews, but I think they did a really good job at hiding it and letting you see why by the end. The end of the show was a bit rushed, it wasn’t as satisfying as I thought it would be. Maybe I built it up because I love the book so much. 

KH: In the TV show, they have Billy follow through on the “call Daisy up” thing. In the book, Camila’s final message to her daughters is to give their dad some time but then to go call Daisy Jones. And the reader is left with, “Did he call her?” I like that it’s open-ended and you don’t know what happens. But in the TV show, they show Billy following through with that. It would’ve been very on par with Billy’s character not to call Daisy because he can’t stand her. I didn’t see a point in changing the ending. 

AC: To me, the ending of the book is definitive because even if Billy did call Daisy, it never would’ve lasted. 

LB: The ending was less satisfactory because Camila and Daisy’s relationship wasn’t as strong. Why would she tell him to go to Daisy when they didn’t have a bond? They were barely friends, so I didn’t believe it as much as I did in the book.

AC: Right, they build Camila up as this jealous woman, but then she’s like, “I guess you can call your ex-girlfriend!” No one would say that. 

KH: Billy calls Daisy his twin flame in the book but Camila is his water to survive. In the show, Daisy and Camila just have dueling personalities and it’s as if he could work with either of them, which is odd. They also imply that Billy and Camila weren’t together for a few years after the band broke up and that he had to win her back. It’s probably more realistic, but in the book, Camila’s confident in the fact that they’ll never leave each other. Even though their relationship wasn’t perfect, they stuck together.

LB: The book portrayed Camila as the support system. She’s a strong woman behind the fragile band they’ve created, which has obviously broken apart after just a few years. But in the show, it’s all about Daisy and Billy. In the book, it’s about love and family. It was an interesting difference between the two. 

AS: That concludes our “Daisy Jones & the Six” Arts Talks. 

Daily Arts Writers Kathyrn Hemmila, Logan Brown and Graciela Batlle-Cestero, Books Beat Editor Ava Seaman, TV Beat Editor Serena Irani and Senior Arts Editor Annabel Curran can be reached at khemmila@umich.edu, loganvb@umich.edu, gbattlec@umich.edu, avasea@umich.edu, seirani@umich.edu and curransa@umich.edu.

The post Arts Talks: ‘Daisy Jones & The Six’ appeared first on The Michigan Daily.