... Hawke is... known as the man who cheated on Uma Thurman and offered loutish excuses about the sexual needs of great men like Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and him.Now, some 15 years after all that cosmic embarrassment, Hawke has published a novel called “A Bright Ray of Darkness.” It’s about a young movie star who got caught cheating on his stunningly gorgeous wife. This recycled gossip is tiresome, but what’s most irritating about “A Bright Ray of Darkness” is that it’s really good. If you can ignore the author’s motive for creating such a sensitive and endearing cad, you’ll find here a novel that explores the demands of acting and the delusions of manhood with tremendous verve and insight.
That title! "A Bright Ray of Darkness" — seems like a teenager's idea of profundity, and yet this guy gets his novel published by Knopf and praised like mad in The Washington Post. Clicking to Amazon, I see he got a blurb from Patti Smith. She called it "riveting." Riveting! This towering achievement comes in spite of the burden of being a handsome, rich, white man in America today.
Amazon does not allow us to look inside the book, so I have no opportunity to see what kind of writing is drawing this attention. I search the review for an example of the author's prose. Here: "My life as a performer is at the absolute core of my sense of self-worth. Inside the play it felt possible that I was not a person defined by his adultery, or his unloving parents, or his lies, his failure as a father." You tell me: Is this man held back or pushed ahead by his status as a handsome white male?
"A Bright Ray of Darkness" makes me think of that old song. We were listening to this yesterday: "Darkness, Darkness"...
You know me. If there's one topic I've been avoiding in crazy present-day America, it's the "My Pillow Guy." But jokes were made on hearing that first line: "Darkness, Darkness/Be my pillow...."
ADDED: Speaking of Ron Charles and highly praised white male novelists...
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89 comments:
men like Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and him
That's...not a group I'd want to be in. (Especially since Hawke is older than JFK or MLK when they died.)
He’s from Texas. What do you expect?
The reviewer, Ron Charles, also seems to be a white male, so his sarcasm may reflect his own anguish at elite America's languishing interest in how white men think and feel.
Anguish?
Why would any non-neurotic person need Elite America involved in their thoughts and feelings?
The cultured class has spent too much time in psychotherapy and with crappy therapists as well.
"Why would any non-neurotic person need Elite America involved in their thoughts and feelings?"
These persons are called novelists. They used to have very high stature years ago. Look at who they were.
"Handsome white male", Uma Thurman "stunningly gorgeous"...
Um...before we start talking about sexism, we need to establish a few basic facts.
White men are mostly feeling amusement. They've been deferring to the ladies forever and it's always funny. Women's brains are not like normal brains.
Ann,
I didn't even know look inside still existed.
You can download the first 20-30 pages to your tablet via "download sample"
Won't that work for you?
And how many novelists ever had high stature? Some to be sure but as a percentage of people who made their primary living writing, perhaps 5-15 percent?
Probably not much different today.
Though it would depend on what you mean by "high stature"
I gather you mean something other than well read or highly compensated.
John Henry
his status as a handsome white male?
Are you buying into Whappo's contention that white people should be obsessed with race? Even though they claim that race doesn't exist?
Ethan Hawke need not feel slighted. Homer, Shakespeare, and Steinbeck are all being removed from school reading lists and libraries as we sit here this morning.
Some day some white guy will write a book and it'll seem stunning to the population living then, that any white man could write at all, given that they hadn't been allowed in schools for generations.
"Handsome white male", Uma Thurman "stunningly gorgeous"...
I met my brother in a downtown Minneapolis bar at 5 for drinks. We learned we were both in the city for different business meetings. Into our second drink, a stunningly gorgeous women strolled into the room. Almost every head turned, yes especially the women.
After we all got back to reality, my brother noted. "somewhere there's a guy that dumped her, because he was tired of putting up with her shit."
Hawke is not handsome or much of an actor. Tiresome.
Did Uma Thurman try to make it on looks alone? She didn’t really last as an actress.
This towering achievement comes in spite of the burden of being a handsome, rich, white man in America today.
Well, I’m not at all rich, but otherwise, yes, one learns to suck it up and bear the burden.
The guy complaining about this book describing some white guy's experience at the same time loves the story of that moron loser, Holden Caulfield. I guarantee it.
Ethan Hawk was good in Linklater’s film trilogy which spanned several years. That was stamina. Harder than Uma.
"After we all got back to reality, my brother noted. "somewhere there's a guy that dumped her, because he was tired of putting up with her shit.""
What other old jokes are you under the impression originated with your brother?
"I didn't even know look inside still existed."
I use it all the time, and it's very obvious on the page.
"You can download the first 20-30 pages to your tablet via "download sample""
This is harder to notice on the page, but searching for it, I finally see it. It's something I've noticed sometimes but didn't think about as always available, so thanks.
"Won't that work for you?"
For this purpose, yes. "Look inside the book" lets you search for a particular word.
Wants his cake and eat it too. Duh.
Uma Thurman looks like what a stunningly gorgeous woman would look like if that stunningly gorgeous woman survived an attempt by Batak tribesmen to shrink her head by escaping before the process was half complete.
"Stunningly gorgeous" is trite. It's as bad as "riveting."
Uma Thurman has great and specific looks. If there were more actresses like that, I would watch more movies. Nowadays, they are mostly all surgery-molded into a generic look and I can't tell them apart. I can't be sure from scene to scene if that's the same person! It's better to have an actress where sometimes you wonder if she's beautiful or freakish or even ugly. That's the way I feel about some of the old-time actresses, for example, Bette Davis.
Uma Thurman vs. John Malkovich. Compare and contrast. One had stunning good looks, the other had real acting talent.
It's better to have an actress where sometimes you wonder if she's beautiful or freakish or even ugly.
The Brits are good at this. They give us:
Zoe Wanamaker and
Michelle Gomez.
Good grief there are plenty of vapid authors why focus on hawke, training day was the only role i think he stretched, no i didnt see alive.
If you can ignore the author’s motive for creating such a sensitive and endearing cad, you’ll find here a novel that explores the demands of acting and the delusions of manhood with tremendous verve and insight.
“Artists are assholes, great artists are major assholes” - tim in vermont.
Describing Hawke is difficult. There's just something that's not right. He looks like a big dude who was rescued from a concentration camp and nursed back to health but not all the way back. His face is hollow with a whiff of malnutrition and its attendant bone disorders.
"his sarcasm may reflect his own anguish at elite America's languishing interest in how white men think and feel."
Then again, his sarcasm may reflect his own anguish at quite possibly appearing to violate prog elite standards by validating any interest in how white men think and feel.
@Tim in Vermont: Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole. Not in New York.
Uma looks a bit like Botticelli's Venus. Sandro used the same models in multiple paintings, sometimes using the same model for multiple characters in the same painting. These girls look a bit like the various actresses in many Tarantino pictures.
The writing sample was bleh
You can’t really judge a book by a snippet, but I didn’t see anything too cringeworthy there, and I think I am going to buy it based on the “hate f*ck” reviews. Moby Dick was as much a disquisition on whaling as a novel about obsession. It might be interesting to read an honestly written “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” novel.
Besides, Ethen and Uma once signed a sandwich menu at the local deli and general store down the road from my place in North Bumfuck, Vermont where it remains posted to this day.
Lucid-Ideas said...
Describing Hawke is difficult. There's just something that's not right.
He's got action hero looks, but always seems to come across on screen as something of a wimp. Not purposely, though.
"Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole. Not in New York.
Ask his male friends in Spain who brought their girlfriends with them to have dinner and drinks with him.
The extract you provided reads like a journaling exercise.
Ethan Hawke?
B O R I N G.
the inflated sense of importance hollywood actors give themselves is so repulsive.
Hollywood can drop dead.
Uma Thurman is okay, but she hasn't got Lily Collins' eyebrows. Maybe if she used heavier eyebrow makeup?...Ethan Hawke has been in some good movies, but he doesn't really have a movie star's impact. I had to look him up to remember what he looked like.....That's next level conspicuous consumption. You have a woman like Uma Thurman and you cheat on her. It's like owning a yacht with its own helipad.
Besides, Picasso stoped being a great artist somewhere around 30, based on critical reception of his work and on the relative prices of his paintings today. I may have that age a little bit wrong.
The perfect song for Robert Plant. Almost as good as The Youngbloods' original
The important thing Tim in Vermont is Picasso never stopped being an artist, working up into his 90's.
Also, Guernica was done in his late 50's, so I'm not sure your point is completely accurate.
If you need big bold eyebrows, you must not be a fan of natural blondes. Maybe it's just that you don't qualify for a natural blonde. #tallwhiteprivilege #biggusdickus
Thurman's face is shmooshed. Her eyes are too far apart. Her mouth is too small. it looks like someone put a bunch of books on her face to flatten it when she was a baby while her skull was still forming.
It's good thing they stopped when they did otherwise she'd need to take nutrition intravenously.
"We're doing a 'trial separation'."
"You're still wearing a ring?"
"Yes."
She agreed to drive me home.
You're welcome, Ethan Hawke. I'll have to edit it down further in my next draft. Maybe this:
"We're still doing a 'trial separation'"
I saw her glance at my ring.
"Come on. I'll take you home."
The extract reads like a screenplay, which is not surprising. Probably a very entertaining book in the "Hollywood gossipy-trash roman-a-clef" genre (cf. the magnum opuses of Jackie Collins), but my reading backlog extends well past my actuarial death, so I won't be adding it to the queue. In fact, reading this blog is playing hooky from reading books.
Perhaps I'll catch it when I'm reincarnated as a cis white male, or as a cockroach (but I repeat myself).
Blogger Matt said...
"We're doing a 'trial separation'."
"You're still wearing a ring?"
"Yes."
She agreed to drive me home.
You're welcome, Ethan Hawke.
——-
A big improvement but I do think you missed a point he was conveying. She is turned off by his fixation on his wife, not his status as still married. So
"We're doing a 'trial separation'."
"You're still wearing a ring?"
"Yes." I blubbered on about her for a while.
“I'll drive you home.”
But yeah, the man could use Strunk & White
Uma Thurman has great and specific looks. If there were more actresses like that, I would watch more movies. Nowadays, they are mostly all surgery-molded into a generic look and I can't tell them apart. I can't be sure from scene to scene if that's the same person! It's better to have an actress where sometimes you wonder if she's beautiful or freakish or even ugly. That's the way I feel about some of the old-time actresses, for example, Bette Davis.
Me too. And the male actors are often equally as indistinguishable.
I find myself watching more foreign films - even those with subtitles - because there is more diverse choices.
Yet from those flames no light, but rather darkness visible . . .
Did you omit "blah, blah, blah" from the quoted passage?
Serviceable, but hardly Chekhov. To my eyes Chekhov was handsomer, too.
History can set some high walls to climb. Chekhov only made it to 44.
I look forward to reading the rest of the comment thread.
Exactly Lucid Ideas. Then why is she so alluring? I could never figured it out. Of course, Uma is not satisfactory breeding material for those reasons you cite. But still there's an animal magnetism there that I've never been able to explain.
Oh God.
Calling Laslo.
Let me see if I understand the rules.
(1) Whites can't write about anything that isn't disapproved racism because it's trivial.
(2) Whites can't write about people facing disapproved racism because it would be cultural appropriation.
Therefore it seems whites can only write about creating racism.
Didn't the world used to have an ideological system which demanded all art (and everything else) support their political themes? I used to think that didn't work out too well, but now the same ideas are being used to destroy us as well. So an evaluation must admit it works pretty well for the people driving the process. And from their perspective obviously no one else matters.
How fitting that we have an item on Ethan Hawke on the same day we learn John Kerry has to fly on a private jet to Iceland because he's "people like me."
At least Kerry will never be quoted telling us he's a "handsome white male." He only qualifies on two counts.
I'm the same age as Ethan Hawke. I'm just saying that because in the super early 90's, when I was even more pretentious than I am now, someone said that Ethan Hawke is our generation's Sean Penn, and I went with it for years even though I had never seen an Ethan Hawke movie, even the one that all Gen Xer's were supposed to see. Trying to be an "Ethan Hawke type" doesn't pay as well as being Ethan Hawke, and I didn't have cable or a vcr. Eventually I quit trying to be something I wasn't and could afford to take my wife to the movies, and one of those movies had our generation's Sean Penn in it. It was a science fiction movie and the character Ethan Hawke played had to make sure his DNA didn't get spread all over the place, something that both movie Ethan Hawke and Ethan Hawke in real life was unable to do. My wife fell asleep ten minutes in (to be fair, we had a two year old and one in the oven at the time so it may not have been just the boring movie), and by the end of it I realized that Sean Penn is our generation's Sean Penn.
The two most naturally beautiful women on planet earth are Jessica Alba and Olga Kurylenko. Those are two examples of the fully evolved female pinnacle of the species with none of the simian holdovers you find making inroads again into the aesthetic consciousness. Jessica and Olga ooze femininity and health. That is what peak female looks like.
Maddad said...
2/4/21, 11:11 AM
I remembered liking Gattaca when it came out so when I saw it was available on a streaming service recently I decided to rewatch it. I didn't make it past a the first quarter of the movie. I may try again, just to see if I stopped because I wasn't in the mood for that movie at that time or if it didn't live up to my memory of it. It could be that I liked ideas in and pertaining to the movie more than I had actually liked the movie itself.
Despite having liked the movie originally, I couldn't have told you who was in it.
Hawke is... known as the man who cheated on Uma Thurman
WTF???
the fully evolved female pinnacle of the species
Dead? Chaos (e.g. "evolution") is a progressive process from conception to grave.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
"After we all got back to reality, my brother noted. "somewhere there's a guy that dumped her, because he was tired of putting up with her shit.""
What other old jokes are you under the impression originated with your brother?
Not all tautologies are jokes, honey.
Uma Thurman is okay, but she hasn't got Lily Collins' eyebrows.
I first saw Lily Collins in the film Love, Rosie. She's a pretty good actress and still early in her career.
The two most naturally beautiful women on planet earth are Jessica Alba and Olga Kurylenko.
Jessica Alba in Honey? Unforgettable.
So who is his Falstaff actor supposed to be based on?
For contrast, name an unnaturally beautiful woman.
Well, you mentioned 'My Pillow Guy' so...
He has an amazing story. Literally worked his way out of the gutter after being addicted to cocaine, crack cocaine, and booze.
He worked his ass off after getting sober and is now worth $300M+ and his company employs thousands of Americans.
Instead of people making fun of the guy, they should put him on a fucking stamp.
Talk about the American dream (except for the drugs part) : )
Critic Kyle Smith recently gave a rave review to Rob Lowe's 2011 memoir. Sounds like Hawke's novel would make a good companion piece.
Interesting that Hawke's first marriage reportedly broke up over infidelity with family nanny/babysitter, whom years late he married, and is raising 2 more children with. And she looks like a less photogenic version of his first wife.
"What other old jokes are you under the impression originated with your brother?"
His brother 'noted' it. He didn't say his brother originated it.
Cranky today?
"Stunningly gorgeous" is trite. It's as bad as "riveting."
It's trite but relatable...people know what the speaker means.
I met a woman once (decades ago) who was so beautiful, the first time I saw her I had to reach out and grab onto my desk to keep from actually falling off of the stool I was sitting on. True story.
So 'stunning' in her case was perfectly apt.
@Readering
"For contrast, name an unnaturally beautiful woman."
Jennifer Aniston. Beautiful, but not natural.
Original "Darkness, Darkness, written by Jesse Colin Young and recorded by the Youngbloods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfrVO48HFGQ
Uma, Oprah. Oprah, Uma.
@N.N.
"Dead? Chaos (e.g. "evolution") is a progressive process from conception to grave."
I.E. Its current evolutionary top at present. Yes, it continues to evolve.
Both of those women are a masterpiece of thousands of years of selective breeding with just the right dusting of nurture sprinkled in. So am I but I'm officially taken now. It's a shame too...Olga's and my children would've been worshiped as gods. Fate had different plans.
"Uma Thurman has great and specific looks. If there were more actresses like that, I would watch more movies. Nowadays, they are mostly all surgery-molded into a generic look and I can't tell them apart. I can't be sure from scene to scene if that's the same person!"
One of the reasons I don't watch network TV (especially the crap FBI, Lawyer, Doctor shows, etc.) is that everyone looks like a runway model, men and women alike.
It's hard to take a story seriously when the female rookie cop in a 'gritty' drama looks like she moonlights for Victoria's Secret.
As for lookalikes...exactly! If there are three women in a show and they are about the same age, at least change the hair color of the characters. Or have one be short and one tall, etc.
Casting 3 women of the same age range, same height and weight, making them up with the same hair style, is idiocy and laziness.
Last pet peeve. Brothers or sisters, or parents and children that look NOTHING alike.
"Hi, I'm 6'2' athletically-built Joe, and this is my Paul Giamatti-looking brother."
The two most naturally beautiful women on planet earth are Jessica Alba and Olga Kurylenko.
I thought Catherine Zeta Jones and Anne Archer were the most beautiful actresses of my era. But I dropped Anne after finding out she's a Scientologist. Stupidity is unattractive.
Film pitch: I'm Arnold and this is my brother Danny.
This is my brother Darryl and this is my other brother Darryl.
I gotta say Tim, the Vermont farm girl look never gets old. I can't wait for blueberry picking season.
is that everyone looks like a runway model, men and women alike.
I recall Playboy doing a photo shoot using the labs in Pupin Hall (Columbia University) as a backdrop. Seeing all those beautiful people standing in front of racks of electronics was weird, and yet the proper regalia, a dirty erlenmeyer flask sitting on a hotplate and used for making coffee, wasn't used.
The best short stories I read recently were in a book called White Man's Problems by Kevin Morris.
The problem was Howard, that I was sort of friends with her dad. Laslo can probably guess how they got along.
I'll have to edit it down further in my next draft. Maybe this:
"We're still doing a 'trial separation'"
I saw her glance at my ring.
"Come on. I'll take you home.
This reminds me of what screenwriters did the the gorgeous novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being which laid out the stultifying and oppressive stupidity of socialism written by a guy who lived through it in Czechoslovakia, and turned it into soft core porn.
Readering,
For contrast, name an unnaturally beautiful woman.
Viktoria Mullova. By 2021 US standards, too skinny, too gaunt, flat dark-brown hair. Of course, she's neither an actress nor a model, but a classical musician, so you won't have heard of her.
tim in vermont,
Enh, having neither read the book nor seen the movie, I can't speak to either. But a friend of mine was soundtrack consultant for the latter, and picked (and arranged copyright, &c., permissions for) all the Janacek in it.
MDT, thanks for the tip. The name does not ring a bell, but if she has recorded I guess I have heard her play. For nearly two decades I kept my home radio tuned to WQXR, and for nearly three decades have kept my car radio tuned to KUSC. Still comely in her seventh decade, I guess that makes her unnatural.
"Handsome white male", Uma Thurman "stunningly gorgeous"...
Um...before we start talking about sexism, we need to establish a few basic facts.
She was literally cast as the goddess of Love in her debut role:
http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2014/3/10/happy-25th-uma-thurman-in-a-half-shell.html
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“Absolute” seems an unnecessary modifier for “core” (of his being). As with the word “unique,” there are (and can be) no gradations of uniqueness. Something either is or isn’t at the core one’s being, and saying “absolutely” makes the claim sound suspect, or the speaker like a teenager.
Ethan Hawke is like Robert Redford. He's always trying to prove he isn't a pretty face or a rich actor or a privileged White guy by doing things that only prove that he is.
Ordinary Joes aren't getting their vanity novels published or starting film festivals or flying around the world to talk about climate change. Extravagant efforts to be more than just another rich guy are a privilege that only rich guys can afford.
Warren Beatty and Leo Dicaprio are similar, but not as serious or as earnest: they may just be in it to impress women. Campbell Scott fits the same pattern but he seem a little more sincere and modest (as befits his lesser status in Hollywood) and I can sort of respect him.
Uma Thurman was famous for being beautiful without being conventionally pretty (or was it pretty without being conventionally beautiful?), what the English call "the thinking man's crumpet." So it's only naturally that Ethan wants to think himself a "thinking man" and it goes to his head.
Why did Ethan cheat on Uma? I suspect it was to join Robin Williams, Jude Law, Ben Affleck, Mick Jagger and Rob Lowe in the movie industry's most exclusive circle, its equivalent of the Babysitters Club, the Nannyfuckers Club.
P.S. I know people who have seen Uma naked and said it wasn't much to see. Don't ask them to prove it, though, since she was about 7 at the time and we could all go to prison.
I saw Anoushka Shankar in concert twice. The second time (about five years ago), I had front row seats, and I was struck by her radiant beauty.
Besides a possibly self-aware joke that the speaker is a bore, I don't see any merit in the quoted passage.
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