What You Should Know
Book, novels, films, news. 4/20/25.
Gonna reboot my quasi-weekly WYSK feature. I gave it up almost two years ago now — while in the middle of traumatic move and because of total exhaustion and sleep deprivation caused by parenting. But I figured I read so much that I might as well share some of it with you.
To start off, I want to wax a bit nostalgic for the little garden I started cultivating up here in the country. We’re moving back to the city in late summer so I will miss it. I planted some raspberries, a pear tree, as well as a cranberry bush — so those are starting to finally show some leaves. Then there’s the kale and the collard greens and the rapini (aka broccoli rabe) — all have heroically survived the long winter and are coming back to life. The rapini is the toughest plant I’ve seen. Unlike the kale, it emerged from under the snow totally green and alive and is already blooming, despite our long and freezing spring. Everyone should have a garden. Nothing more pleasing than watching life and food coming out of the ground.
We stood in line for an hour and a half to see David Cronenberg’s new film The Shrounds and hear him speak afterwards. Cronenberg is a funny guy and, at 82, is still very sharp. And yet his last few films, including Crimes of the Future, are starting to suffer from an onset of sinility. All the Cronenbergian elements are there and he’s very sure of himself but the film doesn’t quite come together. Things don’t quite make sense, there are big obvious holes in the narrative logic. In the end, it starts to feel almost like a parody of a Cronenberg film. Also I thought The Shrounds would be his take on PKD’s Ubik and half-lifers but it doesn’t go there at all. As Evgenia pointed out the film seems to be about monogamy and true love…
We did an ep on Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future. And, come to think of it, Evgenia wrote a great essay on Cronenberg and “procreation horror” a years ago, right before giving birth.