Film director, screenwriter, actor, artist and most recently, novelist, Miranda July is a modern day renaissance woman who brings us a body of work that shows off a palpable versatility in the world of art, literature and beyond.
by Sara Driscoll
From her award-winning book of short stories, “No one belongs here more than you” to her interactive sculpture garden, ‘Eleven Heavy Things’ to her App that doubles as a social experiment ‘Somebody,’ July seems to have dipped her toes into every creative pool of genius out there.
Friend to Lena Dunham and advocate of meditation and meeting strangers, July is the cool, confident woman that has a voice and shares it loudly. Her work is comical, sometimes morbid, but it is clear that July wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I was just trying to write a good book that, like all my work, had darkness and humor in it,” she said in an interview with Columbus Alive in November of last year.
Book Review: The First Bad Man
With intriguing characters and an idiosyncratic plot, Miranda July’s debut novel is one to get lost in.
This novel is heavy—not the physical or emotional kind of heavy, the kind of heavy bred from a strange series of characters and events that make answering a friend’s casual question, “What’s the book about?” unusually hard to answer. It’s about so much: sexuality, depression, violence, identity. July packed all this and more into The First Bad Man, a feat which feels like the book equivalent of a first heartbreak.
Cheryl Glickman, is an introvert. She is a lonely, middle-aged woman who spends her days tending to her work at Open Palm, a women’s self-defense organization, and lusting over her co-worker Philip. She is a strange woman, and she is used to living life alone while holding onto the notion that she had much more in the many lives she claims to have lived outside of her fantasies.
Cheryl never narrates her depression, and she doesn’t have to; she deflects this notion by revealing that she has “a system” for when “a person is down in the dumps.” Cheryl describes the downward spiral she will never allow herself to take because she doesn’t allow herself the means to do so, the messes of life that can’t be made because she simply chooses not to be involved with them. “Fewer dishes. They can’t pile up if you don’t have them.”
Cheryl’s boring life and her pathetic, endless fantasies about Philip take a dramatic turn by the third chapter when her supervisors, an eccentric couple obsessed with immersing the office in Japanese culture, ask her to host their 20-year-old daughter, Clee, for a few weeks. Quietly reluctant, Cheryl accepts, and this is where the novel becomes bizarre.
Clee is voluptuous, yet grotesque. She is rude and lazy and does not respect “the system.” She bullies the weak, pitiable Cheryl and suddenly becomes violent. Irony ensues: the longtime self-defense manager becomes defenseless. Soon it is evident that the two get a perverse pleasure from “the game,” and find themselves writhing on the floor, throwing punches.
Meanwhile, Cheryl’s lackluster love life dives further south when Philip reveals he is in love with a sixteen-year-old girl. This twisted revelation leaves Cheryl to console herself in therapy with a doctor whose sessions contain many disturbing, questionable conversations that leave the reader even more confused about Cheryl’s sexuality and state of mind. “It was all very personal; nobody’s game made any sense to anyone,” any sense to anyone,” Cheryl says, clearly lost. But ultimately, she finds herself through the inexplicably powerful relationship she’s developed with Clee.
Many things about this novel are strange. For example, Cheryl feels a strong connection with babies, and has conversations with them in her head. She believes they are all Kubelko Bondy, a neighbor’s baby she held when she was six, and perhaps the only person she has ever felt connected to. A child introduced in the later half of the novel reveals that the void Cheryl was never quite able to fill with her “system” or romantic companionship could only be filled by one thing: motherhood.
Uncomfortable at times but compelling throughout, July’s novel pushes the envelope when it comes to the identity and sexuality stamps that society often plasters on those it doesn’t know much about. The kooky, offbeat narration by Cheryl often prompts consideration about July’s state of mind, and what inspired her to create such an outlandish storyline. Or, even better, how this outlandish storyline seems to work. Though cringe-worthy and off-putting, the dialogue that stems from the fluid prose is so mesmerizing that one may find that July’s debut novel, however un-relatable and uncomfortable, is hard to put down.
Movie Review: Me and You and Everyone We Know
July’s directorial debut, a 2005 Cannes Film Festival Premier, takes a frank look at the connections between lovers and strangers and everyone in between.
Christine Jesperson (Miranda July) is a taxi driver for the elderly, and an aspiring performance artist. Richard Swersey (John Hawkes) is a shoe salesman, and a divorced father of two. The pair meets at the department store where Richard works. The film revolves around their awkward, endearing encounters and the strange things that happen to those around them.
Richard’s children captivate the audience in scenes that affirm the dangers and lurking unknowns that come from online chat rooms. Two adolescent teen girls are exploited by their perverted neighbor, all of this stemming from the girls’ sexual curiosity.
Christine eventually befriends one of her clients, an elderly man whose wife is dying. It is through this relationship that Christine learns about love, and the loneliness that often precedes loss of love.
The dozen or so characters have intermittent encounters that emphasize the notion that the world is intertwined in mysterious, ambiguous ways. The film is odd and uneventful, but charming nonetheless. It touches on topics that come from life’s imperfections.
Movie Review: The Future
30 days can change everything. That’s what Sophie (Miranda July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) realize when they venture out into unknown folds of the world before they are burdened with the permanence of responsibility that comes in the form of a cat named “Paw Paw.”
Stagnant in their prospective jobs, Jason, an over-the-phone technician, and Sophie, a dance instructor for toddlers, anxiously await the month-long recovery of the rescued ashera cat they plan to adopt, However, they come to realize that spontaneous trips and fulfilling their dreams won’t be as possible once they adopt the cat. The wait period becomes a challenge to accomplish all of their goals before a living, breathing creature depends on them
“I thought I would have done more,” Jason tells Sophie as they come to the stark realization that neither of them are where they want to be professionally. Emotionally, their relationship is frustrating to watch. It is one that is simple and docile, revealing that this is yet another area of their lives that is lacking. They both go out and try new things; a volunteer position with a global warming initiative, thirty days of new dance routines, an affair. The whole 91 minutes you are rooting for them, though, because you want them to grow up and find their passions, both in their surrounding worlds and in each other.
July’s film is enlightening. It is strange and deep, but uplifting with a lightness stemming from the realization that despite things not going a certain way in life, it still goes on.
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Sara Driscoll is a student at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. A native of Chicago, Sara loves deep dish pizza and cold snowy days. She’s hooked on phonics, never leaving the house without a book or magazine in her bag. She loves to write, and is interested in pursuing a career as a copy writer in the advertising industry. Check her out on Instagram at sara_driscoll912 and on Twitter @sara_ndipity_.
