Joy in Repetition
Double Feature: The Yakuza (1974) and Nostalghia (1983)
by Derek Neal A few days ago I watched The Yakuza (1974), Paul Schrader’s screenwriting debut, and the following day I saw Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia (1983) at the cinema. These two films would never feature on a double bill together, and yet, due to having watched them within 24 hours of each other, they seem…
Pride and Envy in “Andrei Rublev”
Why Do I Keep Writing the Same Essay Again and Again?
More Thoughts on Boredom: Moravia, Sontag, and Schrader
by Derek Neal Alberto Moravia’s 1960 novel Boredom begins and ends with the narrator, Dino, describing his relationship to external reality. He does this, in the first instance, by describing a drinking glass, and in the second instance, by describing a tree. Here are Dino’s thoughts in the prologue: “The feeling of boredom originates for…
On Boredom
by Derek Neal The narrator of Alberto Moravia’s 1960 novel Boredom is constantly defining what it means to be bored. At one point, he says “Boredom is the lack of a relationship with external things” (16). He gives an example of this by explaining how boredom led to him surviving the Italian Civil War at…
Notes Towards a Collection of Essays on Americans in Europe
Against the Internet Novel
by Derek Neal There has been talk in recent years of what is termed “the internet novel.” The internet, or more precisely, the smartphone, poses a problem for novels. If a contemporary novel wants to seem realistic, or true to life, it must incorporate the internet in some way, because most people spend their days…
A Bunch of Strangers Trying to Put a Ball in a Hole; or, Pickup Basketball
by Derek Neal I’ve recently started playing pickup basketball again. When I was younger, I played basketball all the time. At two or three years old, we had a toy hoop with a bright orange rim, white backboard, blue pole, and black base. It was, I believe, a “Little Tikes” brand hoop; I’ve just looked…
Always in the Garden: On Two Recent Films from Paul Schrader
by Derek Neal There is a scene near the end of First Reformed, the 2017 film directed by Paul Schrader, where the pastor of a successful megachurch says to the pastor of a small, sparsely attended church: You’re always in the Garden. Jesus wasn’t always in the Garden, on his knees, sweating drops of blood.…
Stoicism Just Won’t Go Away
by Derek Neal An essay about Stoicism appeared on this website about a month ago. The essay was critical, seeing Stoicism and its contemporary manifestation as a sort of individualistic therapy that excluded the possibility of political and collective action. Instead of attempting to improve society or grapple with its problems, the turn to Stoicism,…
I’m Him!
by Derek Neal In the first round of this year’s NBA playoffs, Austin Reaves, an undrafted and little-known guard who plays for the Los Angeles Lakers, held the ball outside the three-point line. With under two minutes remaining, the score stood at 118-112 in the Lakers’ favor against the Memphis Grizzlies. Lebron James waited for…
Oh No, Not Another Essay on ChatGPT
Men in Confined Space: On “Living,” starring Bill Nighy and written by Kazuo Ishiguro
by Derek Neal According to my father, David Mamet once said that his scripts are about “men in confined space.” I have been unable to verify this quote, but if you look on the internet, there’s an awful lot of writing about Mamet and “confined space.” In particular, I suspect the origin of this apocryphal…
On Peter Handke’s “The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick”
by Derek Neal A few months ago, I wrote about Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Spring and how his focus in this book is the examination of two worlds: the physical world that exists apart from us (the outside world), and the world of meaning and significance that is overlaid on top of this world through language…
The Sad Prince
by Derek Neal If Joan Didion were alive today, she might write an essay about Prince Harry and include it in an updated version of Slouching Towards Bethlehem. She might write a passage like the one she wrote about Howard Hughes: That we have made a hero of Howard Hughes tells us something interesting about…
A Sense of Where You Are: Lionel Messi at the World Cup
by Derek Neal In 1965, John McPhee wrote an article for The New Yorker titled “A Sense of Where You Are.” The piece profiles the basketball player Bill Bradley, at the time a member of the Princeton basketball team. The subtitle of the essay is the question: What makes a truly great basketball player? McPhee…