Lifestyle
Everything is the worst in this 'Banal Nightmare'
A book can be many things at once, and sometimes those things can be diametrically opposed.
Halle Butler’s Banal Nightmare is one of those books. Sometimes entertaining and sometimes dull, often hilarious but also relentlessly uncheerful, and packed with brilliant observations as well as tedious arguments plucked from any living room in a small town, Banal Nightmare is full of swinging pendulums that make for a dark, chaotic read that flies very close to the line between fiction and nonfiction.
Moddie is tired. Life feels like a carousel of bad things, and her relationship seems to be the worst of it. Desperate for a change, Moddie leaves her boyfriend and moves back to her hometown in the Midwest. The change is rough, and while Moddie goes to events and parties and spends some time with her old friends, the ennui is still there, accompanied by regret and guilt at leaving her boyfriend and a growing sense that no one likes her and that everyone else is wrong about everything. And she isn’t alone. Every person Moddie meets is fighting a similar battle, both with themselves and with those around them. Moddie and everyone else in this story is experiencing the same profound, nagging sense of dissatisfaction, and that makes dealing with others much harder.
Banal Nightmare is about feeling like everything sucks. At the start of the novel, there is a sliver of hope as Moddie changes her life and finds herself hanging out with her friend Nina, feeling “a deep gratitude for her presence” and slowly “rediscovering a self-assurance that she had buried during her years with Nick in Chicago.” That feeling, however, is short lived. Yes, Nick was annoying and didn’t help around the house. Yes, Moddie needed a change. Yes, going back home was a huge mistake. Unfortunately, the problem is much bigger than that: “The worst parts of Chicago had followed her here, because the worst parts of Chicago had been inside of her.”
Moddie and the rest of the characters in this novel have no redeemable qualities. They are, generally speaking, unhappy, petty, self-absorbed people who spend the entire novel arguing and complaining. This doesn’t mean that they are hard to connect with (let’s face it, we all have bad days where nothing seems to go our way and life feels tiresome), but even when many readers will have no trouble seeing themselves in these characters, they aren’t facing anything serious, so there is no empathy present.
Following Moddie as she writes emails, gets groceries, walks the neighborhood, gets high, watches the television, and thinks about ending it all, craving a cigarette “just so she could put it out on her face, and then maybe burst into flames” is interesting at first. We can feel the darkness, the pressure, the sharp, constant tedium of life slowly crushing every character in the novel. Then, that darkness and pressure morph into something else. As the narrative progresses without a real source of tension, it’s easy to start feeling like the characters, but mostly in relation to the story. Eventually, more than 300 pages of constantly being snappish and grumbling about the “crushing tedium and confounding horrors” of life becomes too much and the book starts to become as flat as a song with only one note.
Despite the dreariness that permeates the narrative, Banal Nightmare still has some shining qualities. The writing is sharp and Butler is a keen observer of the human condition who understands how our worst enemy is sometimes our own brain. There are also many arguments between couples that illuminate the way some relationships turn into circular arguments where everyone feels like a victim but no one does anything about it.
Ultimately, Banal Nightmare is one of those books that will land perfectly with readers who often feel like the characters in the book, and will not land with those who rarely feel that way. “Life was a disappointment through and through and pleasures wilted by the hour.” That line exemplifies the aura of this novel. That line holds a powerful truth at its core. However, more than 300 pages that expand on that line’s sentiment might be too much for most readers.
Gabino Iglesias is an author, book reviewer and professor living in Austin, Texas. Find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @Gabino_Iglesias.
Warner Bros. Discovery said Thursday that it prefers the latest offer from rival Hollywood studio Paramount over a bid it accepted from Netflix.
Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Bloomberg
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The Warner Bros. Discovery board announced late Thursday afternoon that Paramount’s sweetened bid to buy the entire company is “superior” to an $83 billion deal it had struck with Netflix for the purchase of its streaming services, studios, and intellectual property.
Netflix says it is pulling out of the contest rather than try to top Paramount’s offer.
“We’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid,” the streaming giant said in a statement.
Warner had rejected so many offers from Paramount that it seemed as though it would be a fruitless endeavor. Speaking on the red carpet for the BAFTA film awards last weekend, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos dared Paramount to stop making its case publicly and start ponying up cash.
‘If you wanna try and outbid our deal … just make a better deal. Just put a better deal on the table,” Sarandos told the trade publication Deadline Hollywood.
Netflix promised that Warner Bros. would operate as an independent studio and keep showing its movies in theaters.
But the political realities, combined with Paramount’s owners’ relentless drive to expand their entertainment holdings, seem to have prevailed.
Paramount previously bid for all of Warner — including its cable channels such as CNN, TBS, and Discovery — in a deal valued at $108 billion. Earlier this week, Paramount unveiled a fresh proposal increasing its bid by a dollar a share.
On Thursday, hours before the Warner announcement, Sarandos headed to the White House to meet Trump administration officials to make his case for the deal.
The meetings, leaked Wednesday to political and entertainment media outlets, were confirmed by a White House official who spoke on condition he not be named, as he was not authorized to speak about them publicly.
President Trump was not among those who met with Sarandos, the official said.
While Netflix’s courtship of Warner stirred antitrust concerns, the Paramount deal is likely to face a significant antitrust review from the U.S. Justice Department, given the combination of major entertainment assets. Paramount owns CBS and the streamer Paramount Plus, in addition to Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and other cable channels.
The offer from Paramount CEO David Ellison relies on the fortune of his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. And David Ellison has argued to shareholders that his company would have a smoother path to regulatory approval.
Not unnoticed: the Ellisons’ warm ties to Trump world.
Larry Ellison is a financial backer of the president.
David Ellison was photographed offering a MAGA-friendly thumbs-up before the State of the Union address with one of the president’s key Congressional allies: U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican.
Trump has praised changes to CBS News made under David Ellison’s pick for editor in chief, Bari Weiss.
The chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, told Semafor Wednesday that he was pleased by the news division’s direction under Weiss. She has criticized much of the mainstream media as being too reflexively liberal and anti-Trump.
“I think they’re doing a great job,” Carr said at a Semafor conference on trust and the media Wednesday. As Semafor noted, Carr previously lauded CBS by saying it “agreed to return to more fact-based, unbiased reporting.”
‘The Wire’ Star Bobby J. Brown
He’s Trapped Inside Barn Fire!!!
Listen To Dispatch Audio
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Broadcastify.com
Here’s the dispatch audio from the fatal barn fire that killed “The Wire” actor Bobby J. Brown … and you hear dispatchers saying he’s trapped in the building after trying to start an old Cadillac.
TMZ obtained the dispatch audio, which also reveals Bobby’s wife called for help. It sounds like a huge inferno, the barn is 50-feet-by-100 and — by the end of the call — it’s all up in flames.
We broke the story … Bobby died Tuesday from smoke inhalation. The deadly fire started after Bobby entered the barn to jump-start a car. His wife suffered severe burns trying to save him.
Bobby played Officer Bobby Brown on the hit HBO series “The Wire” … and his other credits include “Law & Order: SVU” and “We Own This City.”
He was 62.
Ryland Brickson Cole Tews in Hundreds of Beavers.
Hundreds of Beavers
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Hundreds of Beavers
The streaming service Tubi has become a repository for a wild assortment of movies, TV shows, and original properties. They’re all free to watch, provided you’re willing to sit through some ads. So we asked some Tubi-philes to recommend some great movies that you can find on the service: Hundreds of Beavers, Color Out of Space, Petey Wheatstraw, and Mambo Italiano.
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