{"id":3779,"date":"2023-12-16T12:29:58","date_gmt":"2023-12-16T20:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=3779"},"modified":"2024-05-30T05:31:35","modified_gmt":"2024-05-30T13:31:35","slug":"gene-seymours-favorite-things-in-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=3779","title":{"rendered":"Gene Seymour’s Favorite Things in 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

The preponderance of books and television series cited below suggests that I still don\u2019t get out as much as I should. And while COVID isn\u2019t going away (and did, in fact, bite me sometime earlier in the year), there\u2019s still so much to behold in person as opposed to a screen. Or a page.

Still, I did, for the record, travel more than usual in 2023, mostly to northwesterly places on the continent where I saw bears, moose, elk, glaciers, and geysers. By my count, I still have twelve states in the union to visit in my lifetime and sustain the hope, however faintly it is articulated these days, that there will still be a union for as long as I hope to live.

Still.

If democracy is under siege and things are as bad as cable news networks insist (I don\u2019t think they are, but that\u2019s another discussion for another time), it\u2019s not because culture failed us. The items below, even though they represent a relative sliver of what\u2019s available, all tell eternal truths in up-to-the-minute fashion. Even when they depressed me, they gave me hope. So, the lesson here is a clear one: Stop watching cable news. Watch and \u2013 especially, for the love of God \u2013 read stuff like this. You\u2019ll feel better. You\u2019ll know more. That\u2019s the best I can say. The rest, especially in 2024, is up to you.

Once again, these are in no particular order:

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The Survivalists<\/strong><\/em> \u2013 Another outstanding year for African American fiction \u2013 and, at this point (for varied reasons), why don\u2019t we just say, \u201cAmerican fiction,\u201d period?<\/a> \u2013 began with this silken-swift comedy of manners that\u2019s as dark, rich, and intensely stimulating as the gourmet coffee that, along with heavy artillery, is a major trope in Kashana Cauley\u2019s novel. Its central character is Aretha, a fast-tracking corporate attorney whose peripatetic love life seems finally to have found mooring with Aaron, the dashing founder-proprietor of Terminal Coffee, which roasts and sells coffee from his home base in Brooklyn\u2019s Fort Greene neighborhood. Beyond mutual infatuation, Aretha and Aaron are such kindred spirits in their droll hipness, Type-A impulses, and wily diffidence that she moves into the commodious old rowhouse he shares with two somewhat singular housemates: Brittany, a churlish, taciturn \u201cAngry Flo-Jo\u201d who\u2019s responsible for assembling the backyard bunker, and James, a sullen, pallid ex-reporter fired from the Washington Post for plagiarism. It turns out this motley band is warehousing more than coffee beans. There\u2019s also a deep, wide stash of guns and ammo, part of which they\u2019re hoarding as protection from an as-yet unspecified urban apocalypse while the rest is being sold to all manner of dubious buyers in the Tri-State area. Aretha at first keeps a respectful distance from the gunrunning business. But when her hitherto upward trajectory towards full partnership hits the ceiling, Aretha throws herself into Terminal Coffee\u2019s off-the-books operations \u2013 and becomes scary-good at it. Cauley, herself a lapsed attorney who was once a Daily Show staff writer, nails down rueful insights about cultivating high ambitions in cloistered times and tallies the ironies in striving for space in a future you otherwise fear and loathe. In other words, it\u2019s about living one\u2019s best possible life near the upper reaches (and below the radar) in the 21st century.



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The Bear<\/strong><\/em> \u2013 I\u2019m going to imagine that at some point during the filming of the second season of The Bear<\/em> that the ghost of John Cassavetes somehow made it to the Chicago locations where the series was being shot. He (it?) likely felt very much at home, especially within the intimate, more ramshackle surroundings like the restaurant kitchen being ripped apart to make room for a newer, sleeker, higher-end eatery than the one it\u2019s replacing. So much of him yearns to assume corporeal form even for a minute or two, if only to offer advice, encouragement, maybe a few suggestions, once he can find out the storyline, the schedule, and what the theatrical specifications are. First off, he probably can\u2019t believe this is all being made for television. Then, with sheer wonder, he thinks: These kids really know what they\u2019re doing. He is especially galvanized by Ayo Edebiri, who plays the precocious young chef Sydney. Despite her age, she seems the wisest, worldliest person among her stressed-out colleagues; except for those times when she isn\u2019t, and her own insecurities come at her from unexpected places, like muggers in dark alleys. His attitudes towards The Bear<\/em>\u2019s male leads are more complicated. With both, it\u2019s like staring at a looking glass. Jeremy Allan White\u2019s portrayal of Carmen (\u201cCarmy\u201d or sometimes just \u201cCarm\u201d) Berzato, the perpetually frustrated genius-chef stalked by guilt, haunted by death, keeping fear of failure at bay, is the kind of soulful, belligerent savant Cassavetes used to play all the time. He\u2019d have nailed his role down like an iron fencepost back in his day. The other guy, Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Carmen\u2019s best bud and restaurant manager, is also a role made for him, meaning the self-sabotaging stick-of-dynamite with the short fuse who needs just one more thing to go south for him to blow himself up and everybody else with him. All these three kids with dreams way bigger than they can carry without tripping on the curb are magnificent creations. But Cassavetes knows they\u2019re not even all of it; it\u2019s also the family background, which all comes to a head in that bravura Christmas episode with the Feast of the Seven Fishes. The ghost thinks: That was something I could have never pulled off the way they did. It managed to fire all over the place and still come through ferociously contained. And besides, Cassavetes thinks, even I wouldn\u2019t have had the stones to end the whole episode with the mother driving a car through the living room. And that the mother was played by somebody you only gradually recognize as Jamie Lee Curtis, but in another time and place, could have easily been Gena Rowlands.

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