DC's

 

‘One of the presenting symptoms of my Shelley Duvall fandom is amateur numerology. The actress, among the most totemic and inimitable performers of the New American Cinema, was born on the seventh day of the seventh month of 1949. She made seven films with Robert Altman, the director with whom she remains the most closely affiliated. The greatest of their collaborations, 3 Women, was released in 1977.

‘I focus on the dominance of seven in Duvall’s life and profession only to confirm what I already believe about occult signifiers: They mean nothing. Despite the lucky number, a hazy sense of misfortune—of a career that ended too soon, or that never quite matched the incandescence evinced in its first years—has lingered over the actress, who has not appeared in a movie since 2002. (An infamous sit-down in 2016 with an ignoble TV host suggested that she has not been well for some time.) Maybe her setbacks were augured by Altman when he spoke to Cliff Jahr of the Village Voice for an April 1977 profile of Duvall tied to the release of 3 Women, her sixth movie with the director. In the piece, Jahr conjectures that the filmmaker “has unique and untransferable rapport with his actors,” and Altman seems to concur. “I have harmed a lot of them,” he says. “I don’t quite understand it. Ronee Blakley, who got an Oscar nomination for Nashville”—for her portrayal of an unstable country-music superstar in that brilliant ensemble film from 1975—“has not even been able to get an agent to this day.” Later in the article, Altman expresses his deep admiration for Duvall’s talents, but his praise is freighted with anxiety about her fate: “Somebody better pay attention to her now, or they’re all crazy.”

‘It is impossible not to take notice of Shelley Duvall. With her extremely ectomorphic figure, she calls to mind a walking exclamation point. Her long, Modigliani-like face appears taffy-pulled; the focal points of her amazing visage are her enormous, wide-set brown eyes and her two jutting top incisors. If her striking physicality makes the first impression on the viewer, then her demeanor creates the most lasting one. She is unmistakably fey, but her otherworldliness connotes a planet not too far away from our solar system. Duvall is a delight not just to watch but to listen to; her pellucid voice is filigreed by a Houston drawl that she never filed down.

‘She was discovered in that Texas city by Altman’s emissaries, scouting talent for Brewster McCloud (1970). They met Duvall at a party she was throwing with her boyfriend. Charmed by their hostess, the movie men arranged for her to audition for Altman, though she had no idea who the director was (he’d just had a big hit with MASH) or what “reading for a part” meant. Altman was convinced that Duvall’s naïveté was a ruse. “I decided to shoot a test, so I took her out in the park and put a camera on her and just asked her questions,” the filmmaker told David Thompson for the book-length interview Altman on Altman (2005). “I was really quite mean to her, as I thought she was an actress. But she wasn’t kidding; that was her.”

‘Duvall’s untutored wisdom makes her performance one of the few unmitigated pleasures of the antic, exhausting Brewster McCloud. Playing Suzanne, a garrulous tour guide at the Astrodome who deflowers and ultimately betrays the flight-obsessed title character (Bud Cort), Duvall, with her Raggedy Ann eyelashes, emerges as an unorthodox femme fatale. “Hi! Are you trying to steal my car?” Suzanne asks Brewster; the actress delivers the line with vivifying, daffy ingenuousness. In her screen debut, she evokes James Baldwin’s lapidary assessment of the movie legends who held him rapt as a child: “One does not go to see them act: One goes to watch them be.”

‘In pointing out Baldwin’s instructive ontological distinction, I don’t mean to imply that Duvall, especially in her films with Altman, simply presented her unvarnished self—that she took no care when preparing for her roles other than, say, to memorize her lines. Altman, who gave Duvall a small part as a mail-order bride in the western McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Brewster’s immediate successor, insisted that she observe the entire production for “acting lessons.” She demonstrates a noticeable increase in discipline (particularly with regard to her timing and pauses) in her next project with Altman, the Depression-era-set Thieves like Us (1974), in which she plays Keechie, the sweetheart of Bowie, Keith Carradine’s on-the-lam bank robber. But even though her acting may be more polished, Duvall’s performance style isn’t entirely pruned of fascinating idiosyncrasies, such as her strange way of saying “yes”—a word she enunciates with what sounds like a brand-new diphthong—when Bowie asks Keechie if she likes him.

‘If Suzanne and Keechie are characters brought more vibrantly to life by Duvall’s undiluted “essence,” then Millie Lammoreaux—the prating, self-regarding employee of a geriatric rehab center she plays in 3 Women—endures as the apex of her assiduous preparation. Originating in a dream that Altman had, 3 Women traces the shifting dynamics between childlike Pinky (Sissy Spacek) and Millie, who trains the pigtailed recent arrival to Southern California in the basics of hydrotherapy for the elderly. The two coworkers soon become roommates, sharing Millie’s yellow-bathed one-bedroom apartment. Pinky, growing ever more besotted with her new friend, marvels at Millie’s professed sophisticated taste, largely shaped by McCall’s magazine, and at her refined palate, which favors such chemically saturated delicacies as banana pops and penthouse chicken.

‘“I played her like a Lubitsch comedy—people taking themselves very seriously,” Duvall said of Millie in that Voice profile. Blithely ignoring the fact that most people find her to be a nattering, desperate fool, Millie may have unshakable confidence in herself, but her certitude never fully masks her fragility, especially in the second half of 3 Women, when the power balance between Millie and Pinky is inverted. This indelible, richly textured character was largely the creation of Duvall. “Shelley wrote all of [Millie’s] letters, all of those recipes, all of her diary stuff. I don’t know any writer who could have done it better,” Altman told Thompson. (Duvall to Jahr: “Monologues just came out in fifteen minutes.”)

‘A few weeks after 3 Women was released, Duvall could be seen in a bit part in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, her only non-Altman film from the ’70s (not counting a 1976 PBS adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” in which she starred in the title role). Playing Pam, a witless Rolling Stone reporter, Duvall, in the meager screen time allotted her, proves the sole source of buoyancy in a project overpopulated by smug, charmless neurotics, its director-cowriter-star chief among them.We are meant to laugh at Pam’s preferred adjective—“The only word for this is transplendent”—but Duvall locates the dignity in the dippy journalist’s enthusiasms.

‘At the end of the most storied decade of her career, Duvall was cast in the film for which she might be most widely remembered—and for which she endured tremendous distress. In Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), the actress, as Wendy Torrance, the initially sunny mom and helpmate of Jack Nicholson’s aspiring novelist, spends the latter half of the film in abject terror; Wendy continually weeps and shrieks as she tries to save herself and her young son from a psychotic paterfamilias. Duvall gives a shattering performance of ceaseless anguish—a traumatized state that mirrors the suffering she experienced in her clashes with Kubrick during The Shining’s months-long shoot, some of which are featured in the short making-of documentary by the director’s daughter Vivian. (More chilling than anything in The Shining is Vivian’s footage of Duvall, lying on the floor in between takes, saying, of an undisclosed ailment, “It comes and goes. . . . It just got so bad” as a matronly crew member tends to her.)

‘Duvall’s final film with Altman—a live-action version of Popeye, in which she stars as Olive Oyl, opposite Robin Williams as the spinach-loving sailor—came out the same year as The Shining. “Shelley, I want to give you the role you were born to play!” Altman told the actress. But, paradoxically, in this outsize part, Duvall seems diminished, flattened, as does nearly everyone else in the shambolic funny-pages transfer. Yet the movie, aimed at kids, can be thought of as an oblique prologue to Duvall’s signal achievement of not only the ’80s (but all of her post-Altman work): Faerie Tale Theatre, a wonderfully outré anthology television series for children (but with multigenerational appeal) broadcast on Showtime between 1982 and 1987. In addition to creating the program, Duvall executive-produced, hosted, and occasionally starred in FTT, which featured a motley group of talents ranging from Mick Jagger to Gena Rowlands as various Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen principals.

‘Welcoming viewers to “Rumpelstiltskin,” the second episode of the first season, in which she plays the miller’s daughter, Duvall offers a quasi confession: “And, I must admit, as an actress, Faerie Tale Theatre also gave me an opportunity for some pretty great roles.” When considered more than three decades later, the statement seems to eerily anticipate the imminent attrition of those opportunities. During the fifteen years between the end of FTT and 2002, when she stopped performing altogether, Duvall’s output consisted primarily of small or supporting parts in minor, largely forgotten movies, and assorted TV work. There are some exceptions. Duvall thrills with the few Italian interjections—Mangia! Simpaticissimo!—she utters as Countess Gemini in Jane Campion’s adaptation of The Portrait of a Lady (1996). And she beguiles as Amelia Glahn, a spinster ostrich farmer hopelessly in love with a sadistic mesmerist, in Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997), a pastel-hued fantasia by cult Canadian auteur Guy Maddin. These late-period Duvall performances, just as much as 3 Women, return us to Altman’s command: Pay attention to her.’ — Melissa Anderson, ARTFORUM

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Shelley Duvall @ IMDb
Shelley Duvall: The Shining’s saddest legacy
INTERVIEW WITH SHELLEY DUVALL
A THIN LINE
Stephen King damns Shelley Duvall’s character in film of The Shining
OBVIOUS HISTORY: SHELLEY DUVALL WAS PROPOSITIONED AT 17 TO BE IN A PORNO
Actress Shelley Duvall reveals struggle with mental illness
THE SAD AND HEARTBREAKING REALITY OF SHELLEY DUVALL’S MENTAL HEALTH
Shelley Duvall, An Unlikely Star
SHELLEY DUVALL GROWS UP
Head in the Clouds: Shelley Duvall in 3 Women
Missing From the Movies: Shelley Duvall
SHELLEY DUVALL WAS DRAGGED INTO FILMS

 

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Extras

HELLO, I’M SHELLEY DUVALL !

SHELLEY DUVALL INTERVIEW 1974

SHELLEY DUVALL INTERVIEW @ CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

 

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Interview

ANDY WARHOL: This is a whole new table. I’ve never sat on this side before. Are you staying out in East Hampton most of the time?

SHELLEY DUVALL: Yes, for most of the summer. I come back about two days a week usually.

WARHOL: Son of Sam was on his way out there.

DUVALL: I just heard!

[Son of Sam]

WARHOL: How could a Berkowitz kill a Moskowitz?

DUVALL: That’s the first thing I thought.

WARHOL: It’s too terrible.

BOB COLACELLO: What would you like to eat?

[orders]

WARHOL: Where did you learn French?

DUVALL: Not from my father.

WARHOL: Duvall is a French name.

DUVALL: My father’s half-French and I’m whatever’s left.

WARHOL: Where were you born?

DUVALL: I was born in Fort Worth but I never lived there. I was visiting my grandmother at the time.

WARHOL: I don’t understand.

DUVALL: My mother was visiting my grandmother when I was born. But I grew up in Houston. I lived there until ’73 and then I moved to Los Angeles.

WARHOL: When did we meet?

DUVALL: You met me in 1970 when I’d just finished Brewster McCloud and was about to do McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Bill Worth told me, “Come down to the Factory and meet Andy Warhol,” and we got there and you weren’t there but we looked at pictures. And I remember the time you told me, “I stayed home from Elaine’s birthday party to watch you on Dick Cavett.” I was so flattered!

COLACELLO: You’re such a charmer, Andy.

WARHOL: But it was true.

COLACELLO: So what’s this new movie you’re doing with Jack [Nicholson]?

DUVALL: It’s from a novel written by Stephen King, who wrote Carrie. It’s called The Shining and we start shooting somewhere between December 1 and February 1. Stanley Kubrick’s writing the script now. He’s directing and it’ll be shot in London and Switzerland for 15 to 25 weeks—a long shoot.

COLACELLO: Is it a big cast?

DUVALL: No, it’s Jack and myself and a five-year-old boy, basically. And there’s a psychiatrist and an ex-gardener at the place where we’re caretakers. It’s very frightening. When I first heard of it I was wondering why Stanley Kubrick would want to do this film and then I read the book and it turns out, I think, to be really primal about fears and about the fears that one has in a relationship with another person.

WARHOL: It sounds like it could be a Robert Altman film, too. Three Women was terrific.

DUVALL: Bob knows me very well and he knows my limitations.

WARHOL: That story was fascinating.

DUVALL: I loved that story. That was an actual dream that Bob had. He had the dream on a Saturday night and he called me up on Sunday morning and said, “Shelley. I just had this incredible dream. Part of the dream was that I woke up and told my wife and wrote it all down on a yellow legal pad and called my production assistant and said, ‘I want you to scout locations for me,’” and then he woke up and discovered he hadn’t told his wife and he hadn’t written it down. It’s amazing—within a week he had the money for the film and we started shooting a month later.

WARHOL: Janice Rule is one of my favorite actresses but her style of acting was so different from yours and Sissy Spacek‘s.

DUVALL: I was just going to tell you it was actually just two women in the dream—Sissy and I. But I think someone like Bergman or Antonioni had already done a film called Two Women.

WARHOL: No, it was Sophia Loren. That was the one where she came out of the ocean. She won an Academy Award for it.

COLACELLO: Did you ever think you wanted to be an actress?

DUVALL: Never.

COLACELLO: How did you get started?

DUVALL: It’s a long story but I’ll tell you. I was living with my artist boyfriend at his parents’ house in Houston and we had a lot of parties and people would come who we didn’t know and his parents’ friends would come—they were really good parents—and one day I was giving a party and these three gentlemen came in and I said, “Come in, fix yourself a drink, make yourself at home,” and I continued showing all my friends Bernard’s new paintings, telling them what the artist was thinking. And they said they had some friends who were patrons of the arts who’d like to see the paintings so I made an appointment, brought the paintings up and showed them one by one. I lugged 35 paintings up there. And instead of selling some paintings I wound up getting into a movie.

WARHOL: They were testing you out?

DUVALL: Yes, they said, “How would you like to be in a movie?” and I thought, “Oh, no, a porno film,” because I’d been approached for that when I was 17 in a drugstore.

WARHOL: What did you do?

DUVALL: The guy left me with the bill for the Coca-Cola. So this time I said, “No, thank you,” and they called my parents’ house and got hold of me and after a while we became such good friends that I had no fear. I said, “I’m not an actress.” They said, “Yes, you are.” Finally, I said, “All right, if you think I’m an actress I guess I am.”

WARHOL: But what were they doing there?

DUVALL: They were on location.

WARHOL: But what made them come to the house? Were they just looking for something to do?

DUVALL: Somebody at the party had called them up and told them if they were bored in Houston we gave a lot of parties. When the film was over I thought it was just an interlude in my life. But three months later I started work on McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Actually during Brewster McCloud I’d already signed a five-year contract.

WARHOL: I guess things really do happen at parties.

[contracts]

COLACELLO: But you never studied acting?

DUVALL: I went to Lee Strasberg a few years ago because I’d heard such good things about him but I went to two lessons and it just wasn’t for me. That’s one piece of advice Robert Altman gave me at the very beginning—never take lessons and don’t take yourself seriously.

WARHOL: He’s right. It’s all magic. The problem is knowing how to keep it once you get it.

DUVALL: I make my own decisions. And I never turn down anything without reading it. Other than that… I’m sort of at a loss for words. It was hard to move here, actually.

WARHOL: You mean you’re living here for real?

DUVALL: I moved here in October.

WARHOL: To East Hampton?

DUVALL: No, to New York from L.A. East Hampton’s just a summer place.

WARHOL: Some people live there year-round now

DUVALL: I like that idea. I think it would be just as nice in the spring and fall as in the summer. Our place looks like Japan. It’s got those short needlepines, little pebbles and everything.

WARHOL: Montauk doesn’t have much of a beach but it’s very beautiful. It’s all rocks.

DUVALL: I want to see the lighthouse.

WARHOL: If you’d seen Peter Beard’s place you’d be so sad now. It just burned down last week with all his work inside.

DUVALL: How terrible. Was it lightning?

WARHOL: No, the boiler room.

DUVALL: God, the boiler room! You should read The Shining.

WARHOL: Does it happen in a boiler room?

DUVALL: You’ll see. It’s frightening.

WARHOL: Carrie was so good.

DUVALL: I still haven’t seen it. Scary movies frighten me. I still haven’t seen The Exorcist.

WARHOL: It’s really good. It isn’t even scary. It’s just intelligent.

DUVALL: I like to see just about every movie that comes out that strikes my fancy.

WARHOL: I’m always worrying about bombs in movie theaters, though. My favorite kind of movies are unsuccessful ones because there’s no one there. And then I like…

[TAPE CHANGE]

DUVALL: …The Omen.

COLACELLO: Why did you move to New York from L.A.?

DUVALL: For several reasons. I’d always wanted to move to New York, from the first time I came here. And then I guess Paul [Simon] was an extra added attraction—a New Yorker boyfriend.

COLACELLO: That’s a nice way of putting it. He’s working so much now.

DUVALL: He’s always working. There’s so much energy here. That’s why I like it, despite everything.

[Son of Sam]

WARHOL: How can people see something on TV and then they can’t wait to read about it in the newspaper? Why is that?

DUVALL: Maybe it’s more real.

WARHOL: Maybe.

DUVALL: New Yorkers have a fascination with the daily paper. I could never understand that when I came here. And I could never understand how people get up to see “The Today Show.”

WARHOL: It’s easy if you have a pushbutton. It’s great. And if you turn it on at seven you see the news three or four times which is even better—all the repeats.

DUVALL: I did an interview with Gene Shalit and I never saw it because I could never wake up early enough.

COLACELLO: Would you like some dessert?

DUVALL: I’m looking over at the chocolate mousse but…

WARHOL: I was supposed to go to the pimple doctor this morning and I never went.

[pimple doctors]

DUVALL: Well, everybody’s got something about them. But did you hear about the guy with no feet?

WARHOL: No, who?

DUVALL: I’m just kidding. But here we’re complaining about pimples and…

WARHOL: Oh, I know. We’re so lucky.

DUVALL: We really are.

WARHOL: So many people have so many problems. When you think that health is wealth, you’re so grateful just to be normal, more or less. Aren’t you?

 

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20 of Shelley Duvall’s 57 roles

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Robert Altman Brewster McCloud (1970)
‘One of the things about “MASH” was that people wanted to see it a second time. That’s typical of the recent Robert Altman style; “Brewster McCloud” is just as densely packed with words and action, and you keep thinking you’re missing things. You probably are. It’s that quality that’s so attractive about these two Altman films. We get the sense of a live intelligence, rushing things ahead on the screen, not worrying whether we’ll understand. If anything, “Brewster McCloud” is more complex and more difficult than “MASH.” For one thing, we don’t have the initial orientation we had in “MASH,” where we knew we were in the Army and we knew what the uniforms stood for and what was going on in the operating room. Those hooks helped us unsort the narrative. “Brewster” may not even have a narrative.’ — Roger Ebert

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Robert Altman McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
‘Hailed by critc Pauline Kael as “a beautiful pipe dream of a movie,” Altman’s snowbound western sets its scene in the ramshackle, snowbound Washington State town of Presbyterian, where wandering gambler Warren Beatty decides to stick around after striking up a partnership with Julie Christie’s madam, a fraught but profitable teaming that’s threatened by encroaching corporate interests. A film of indelible atmosphere, thanks to the uniquely foggy photography of Vilmos Zsigmond—achieved by “flashing” the negative before exposure—and the droning vocals of Leonard Cohen on the soundtrack.’ — Metrograph

Excerpt

the entire film

 

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Robert Altman Thieves Like Us (1974)
‘Tewkesbury’s adaptation of Edward Anderson’s novel (also the source material for Nicholas Ray’s They Live By Night) yielded one of Altman’s most slashingly sincere films. Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall are lovers running from the law through the Depression-era South, their fateful romance played out against a backdrop of two-bit gangsterism, Coca-Cola, and (memorably) the near wall-to-wall buzz of vintage radio broadcasts.’ — Metrograph

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Robert Altman Nashville (1975)
‘This cornerstone of 1970s American moviemaking from Robert Altman is a panoramic view of the country’s political and cultural landscapes, set in the nation’s music capital. Nashville weaves the stories of twenty-four characters—from country star to wannabe to reporter to waitress—into a cinematic tapestry that is equal parts comedy, tragedy, and musical. Many members of the astonishing cast wrote their own songs and performed them live on location, which lends another layer to the film’s quirky authenticity. Altman’s ability to get to the heart of American life via its eccentric byways was never put to better use than in this grand, rollicking triumph, which barrels forward to an unforgettable conclusion.’ — The Criterion Collection

Trailer

Watch: Shelley Duvall on ‘Nashville’

 

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Robert Altman Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (1975)
‘Robert Altman turns his cutting gaze towards American myth-making in one of his most blistering satires. Paul Newman plays the booze-soaked William F. Cody (aka Buffalo Bill), the buffoonish, self-aggrandizing proprietor of a hokey Wild West show, who begins to fall apart both personally and professionally following the arrival of the show’s newest performer, Chief Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts). Altman’s contrasting of two legendary American figures proves not only to be rich comedic territory, but also stands as a vicious deconstruction of the romantic vision of the Wild West, showbiz, and history itself. Featuring a dizzyingly great ensemble cast (Harvey Keitel, Will Sampson, Burt Lancaster, Geraldine Chaplin, Shelley Duvall and more), and brimming with verve and wit, BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS, OR, SITTING BULL’S HISTORY LESSON is essential Altman.’ — Drafthouse

Trailer

 

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Joan Micklin Silver Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1976)
‘It’s the hot summer of 1919. Visiting her cousin Marjorie (Veronica Cartwright), sweet-but-dull Bernice (Shelley Duvall) is transformed into a smooth-talking man-trap by her vampish kin. However, the “make-over” works too well, Bernice becomes the belle of the ball, captivating every boy’s interest…even Marjorie’s boyfriend Warren (Bud Cort). The now worldly Bernice has the last laugh…a clever and ironic twist. One of the best screen translations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary work, Bernice also includes the delightful supporting role performances of Dennis Christopher (“Breaking Away”) and Polly Holliday (“Alice”).’ — Kanopy

Excerpt

the entire film

 

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Woody Allen Annie Hall (1977)
‘In Annie Hall, Shelley Duvall played Pam, a Rolling Stone reporter set up with Alvy by their mutual friend, Rob. By 1977, Duvall’s star was on a meteoric rise after she appeared in McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Nashville. A favorite of director Robert Altman’s, Duvall’s unique look and ability to portray women who were at once superficially girly yet full of psychological depth made her an in-demand actor in the ’70s and ’80s. After Annie Hall, Duvall went on to star in The Shining and Time Bandits, and she even appeared in an episode of the hit ’90s show Wishbone.’ — She Knows

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Robert Altman 3 Women (1977)
‘By the time 3 Women came out, Duvall was already well known for her unorthodox looks and behavior. In a 1976 interview with Altman for Film Heritage, F. Anthony Macklin asked, “Can the general audience relate to Shelley Duvall externally? Won’t the general audience back in Dayton, Ohio, think she’s kind of freaky and kind of spacey and kind of weirdo?” It’s to Altman’s credit that he can make a potentially off-putting figure like Millie, played by an actor who often seemed (fascinatingly) disconnected from reality, into someone we can empathize with. But it’s Duvall who arouses our compassion. At times, you want to slap her to wake her up from her self-mythologizing (she imagines herself something of a debutante, and often speaks of men throwing themselves at her—contrary to what we see onscreen), but Duvall, with her Breck-girl curl and sunshine-colored dresses, cuts such a likably wacky figure that we can’t help but accept Millie in all her unreality. Her most poignant moments come directly after she’s discovered that a group of dinner-party guests have canceled on her, and thus foiled her plans to serve them her impeccably prepared pigs in a blanket and “chocolate puddin’ tarts.” Here, briefly, Duvall and Altman let us peek behind the flowery curtain and see the plain soul hidden there.’ — The Criterion Collection

Excerpt

Shelley Duvall interview about “3 Women”

Watch the film here

 

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Stanley Kubrick The Shining (1980)
‘Back in the 1980s, Duvall was a movie star in the rise, with a prosperous future ahead of her. However, after her role in The Shining, she almost considered leaving acting for good. The reason? The young actress went through trauma during the filming of Kubrick’s film, facing tremendously difficult requests by the director, such as the legendary 127-takes of the baseball bat scene, ending up dehydrated with raw, wounded hands and a hoarse throat from crying. The director’s “special” requirements went so far that Duvall started losing her hair. According to Horror Media, Duvall’s role was mostly criticized by Stephen King who declared that he hated The Shining very much mainly because of the misogynistic portrait of Wendy Torrance who, in King’s words “was basically there just to scream and be stupid and that’s not the woman I wrote about”.’ — The Vintage News

Excerpt

Shelley Duvall on Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick: Behind The Scenes on the Set of ‘The Shining’

 

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Robert Altman Popeye (1980)
‘As a gawky youngster growing up in Texas, Shelley Duvall used to cringe when kids taunted her with “Nahhh, Olive Oyl! Olive Oyl!” Plus ça change. After playing the bean-pole bombshell in director Robert Altman’s Popeye, the 5’8″ and 106-pound Shelley now reports, “Children grab me around the legs in the grocery store and say, ‘You’re Olive Oyl!’ That’s really, really good. It makes that movie one of the best things I’ve ever done.” Such katzenjammer praise is welcome solace after some snooty adults predicted that she and Robin Williams, who co-stars as Popeye, would take a Bluto-size beating at the box office. Most critics, while praising Duvall, said the movie was spinach and the hell with it. “They treated it like it was War and Peace instead of a cartoon,” Shelley scowls. She’s also miffed that neither she nor the movie got a single Oscar nomination. “They never nominated me for anything before, so I guess I shouldn’t expect it now,” says Shelley, who escaped Jack Nicholson’s ax in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining last summer and whose memorable waifishness has been a staple of Altman films since 1970’s Brewster McCloud. “Of course I was disappointed,” she adds. “I had hoped.”’ — People

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Terry Gilliam Time Bandits (1981)
‘Director Gilliam’s second feature is a lavish concoction of wild and wicked fancy. One fateful night Kevin, an 11-year-old with a passion for history, discovers a time-and-space portal in his bedroom wall and a gaggle of dwarves who teach him how to use it, paying visits to Ian Holm’s Napoleon, John Cleese’s Robin Hood, Sean Connery’s King Agamemnon, and the land of unbounded imagination that is the Time of Legend. A fractured fairy tale that thrilled and delighted every kid who saw it.’ — Metrograph

Trailer

Shelley Duvall on ‘Time Bandits’

 

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Tim Burton Frankenweenie (1984)
‘In this black-and-white short, novice director Tim Burton tells the story of Frankenstein’s monster in suburbia as a children’s fable about tolerance. Loving parents Ben (Daniel Stern) and Susan Frankenstein (Shelley Duvall) encourage their son Victor’s (Barret Oliver) home movies, starring their energetic bull terrier, Sparky. Following a terrible car accident, Sparky is dead and Victor is inconsolable. After an experiment with a frog in his science class, Victor gets the idea to make an electrical experiment of his own. After building a fantastic laboratory with only household items, he reanimates his beloved dog. Unfortunately, the family’s nosy neighbors become fearful of the monster, even though he has done no wrong. The climactic ending acts as an homage to James Whale’s original 1931 film and its sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein.’ — Andrea LeVasseur

the entire film

 

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Fred Schepisi Roxanne (1987)
‘Though Duvall’s screen time is short, her part is pivotal to the updated Cyrano de Bergerac plot. She plays Dixie Smith, the coffee-shop owner and confidante-at-large who facilitates the match between Roxanne (Daryl Hannah), a stunning astronomer, and C.D. Bales (Martin), a small-town fire chief with a nose the size of Pinocchio’s in mid-lie. While Duvall allows that her character “is close to my heart,” it isn’t a role she had to fight and scrape for. “It was just offered to me,” she says. “I didn’t even have to audition for it. I know Steve socially, and he suggested it to me. I did it just to work with him—and just to see if I could still act.”’ — People

Trailer

 

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Steven Soderbergh The Underneath (1995)
‘Rarely does a director go into much detail about what he thinks doesn’t work about one of his own films, but Steven Soderbergh got candid in an interview about his disappointment with his 1995 film The Underneath—which he calls “dead on arrival.” The Underneath is a neonoir Soderbergh made between 1993’s King and 1996’s more personal experiment Schizopolis. Soderbergh says that The Underneath came at a difficult point in his career and that his “heart wasn’t in it.”’ — The Criterion Collection

Watch the film here

 

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Jane Campion The Portrait Of A Lady (1996)
‘Kidman, who was so feisty and wild-eyed in “To Die For,” seems quite repressed here from the get-go, and instead of her character simply lacking depth, she plays out as pretty dumb. (Maybe it should have been called “Portrait of a Stupid Lady.”) Malkovich has played this slimy character too many times before, and Parker is overbearing and obnoxious. Better are Donovan, who at least has some cleverness about him, and especially Hershey, who tries very hard to liven up the proceedings. Winters, unusually subdued, is also notable, and it’s nice to see Shelley Duvall, here playing a flibbertigibit who turns out to be smarter than she lets on.’ — Chris Hicks

Excerpt

 

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Guy Maddin Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997)
‘Twilight of the Ice Nymphs is the dream-struck fantasia of Peter Glahn, a political prisoner returning after several hard years of incarceration, to his homeland of Mandragora where the sun never sets. While traveling by boat, he spends a few precious minutes in the enticing and rarefied company of Juliana (Pascale Bussières), a beauteous young woman with whom he falls desperately and immediately in love. He disembarks to find a veritable ronde of romance brewing in the smouldering passions of sun addled Mandragora: his ostrich-farming sister Amelia (Shelley Duvall) is sick with heartache for the mesmerist Dr. Solti (R.H. Thomson), who with a greedy and voluminous passion, seeks the favours of both Zephyr (Alice Krige), a fisherman’s widow now married to the forest, and the statue of Venus recently uncovered and mounted imperiously on a hilltop. Zephyr gives herself to Peter upon his arrival, but he can think of no other than Juliana and her strange connection to the haughty Dr. Solti. Amelia, driven to distraction by her unrequited passion for the Doctor as well as by the unwelcome attentions and misguided vengeance of her handyman, Cain Ball (Frank Gorshin), loses her reason and spirals into homicidal madness, gravely injuring Cain. Peter is also maddened by his unrequited love for Juliana and the way in which it is constantly thwarted by the wily Doctor, and so the story goes.’ — WFG

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Russell Mulcahy Tale of the Mummy (1998)
‘Unless you find the idea of killer mummy wraps particularly frightening, chances are you’ll find this direct-to-vid thriller as ridiculous as I did.’ — The Movie Report

Trailer

 

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Josh Klausner The 4th Floor (1999)
‘The 4th Floor is a 1999 mystery thriller film written and directed by Josh Klausner in his directorial debut and starring Juliette Lewis, William Hurt, Shelley Duvall and Austin Pendleton. The film was released in 1999 on Fantasy Filmfest in Germany, but was not released in the US until 2000 when it went direct-to-video.’ — Wikipedia

Trailer

Watch the film here

 

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Scott Goldberg The Forest Hills (2023)
‘The Forest Hills is a psychological horror that descends into the fractured mind of a man tormented by nightmarish visions. But beyond the genre trappings, this film is indelibly defined by one profound truth: it marks the final performance of Shelley Duvall. The Forest Hills is an opportunity for audiences to witness, one last time, the singular, unforgettable brilliance of Shelley Duvall as she makes her final, masterful bow.’ — S.G.

Trailer

Shelley Duvall talks about ‘The Forest Hills’

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Haha, perv! ** Carsten, Hi. Thanks for that festival tip, but, if it just happened, then it’s out of our wheel house, alas. Weird or inspired? I hit the Carrington retrospective yesterday. It’s not giant, but there was a lot of work in the rooms. I can see why you in particular are into her paintings and drawings. The show was impressive, although I still prefer her fiction which isn’t as hook, line and sinker locked into the tropes of Surrealism as her visual work is. But it’s nice to see her finally getting her due. ** kenley, Obviously I seriously recommend you dig into those novels when the mood aligns. I will definitely be down for jokingly destroying that university next time I’m in your hood, although let’s spare the dorms? My weekend has fun aspirations, and it’s up to Paris to meet my needs. Surely there’s fun to be had in Toronto before Monday kills the timeframe. Psst, Derek likes being punished, but hush-hush. ** fish, Hi, fish! Really nice to meet you. Thanks for doing what it takes to get inside here. Weirdly, I have no idea what the entrance requirements are. I think, given your interests, you’ll be glad that you read the Kristof when that someday arrives. Please tell me more about your and/or yours if like. I’m interested. ** HaRpEr //, Yep, yep, those books were huge to me for the reasons you mentioned among others. The trilogy is by far Kristof’s most ambitious and greatest work, but she’s always really interesting. Her other books tend to be very short and spare. ‘Yesterday’ is terrific and slight in a beautiful way. Her memoir ‘The Illiterate’ is very good and not what you expect a memoir to be. I think the short fiction collection ‘I Don’t Care’ might be my favorite of her other books. Yeah, I think, say, my past, my mistakes and accidents and all, are the obstacle course that got me here, and the bad has maybe even turned out to be the best. Thank you so much about ‘God Jr.’. That’s really wonderful to hear. The lack of contacts is the problem with London. I think there must be real interest over there in hosting the film, I just don’t where that interest is or how to reach it. Thank you. ** Steeqhen, If you got through that RE you can’t be too anxious, I don’t think. Being anxious before even playing RE is an oxymoron or something. ** Alice, Mid-morning to you, or maybe it’s still earlyish morning. YouTube, why not, yeah. Nice about the festival acceptance. Have a swell next couple of 24 hour periods. ** Laura, Her work is nothing like Duras’s so naturally that would irk her. It meant the asker was looking for a resemblance rather than paying attention. Thanks for the Hegel wrap up, now I don’t have to feel like I have to try reading him again. Happy birthday! A sentence gift … uh, this will not be exciting because it’s entirely dependent on the context it’s resting in, but my favorite line in our new film script is ‘I can’t even ride a bike’, so you can have that, happy birthday! No, my dreams disappear in a flash and never come back. I wish you would have gone extravagantly dressed up for your birthday, not I would have done that if I were you. What did you do, not just garb-wise but overall? ** Hugo, Hi. Wow, your dad is pretty careful with himself. Best wishes in return. ** Uday, The amount you write has no impact on your value here or to me, just so you know. So happy to have been able to introduce Kristof to you. I’ve had a gun pointed at my twice in my life, both by people who would have pulled the trigger if they hadn’t decided it wouldn’t be worth it. Scary shit. Well, at least he had a holster. Whew. ** Thom, Hi. Super highly recommended like I said. I’ve read, I think, three Krasznahorkai novels, all great to one degree or another. I came to him through his collaborations with Bela Tarr, which I assume a lot of people do. I like ‘Epiphyte’. For the reasons you said. Let it be known that when I was in high school my friends and I made a literary zine that we called ‘Aillusionary Fungus’, and we were perfectly happy with that embarrassing name even, but then again it was the psychedelic 60s. Anyway, blah blah, I like the title, and I’m pretty good with titles now that I’m an adult. I hope the tunes reigned, and enjoy what I hope will be at least a wee bit of a vacation for you. ** Okay. This weekend you lucky dogs get to forage about in the oeuvre of the sublime Shelley Duvall, so make the best of that. See you on Monday.

 

‘This trilogy by Hungarian writer Agota Kristof is simply amazing. I read through the three novels quickly, and I’m still reeling from the story she tells about twin brothers who endured violence and privation in WWII, separation during the Cold War, and a troubling reunion afterward. Certainly, these novels can be read as the story of a divided and reunified Europe. They were written in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Soviet Union was in dissolution and the wall came down in Berlin. How do people talk about a shared experience when they cannot admit out loud or would prefer to forget the details of what happened? How can people who would seem to share so much cross the chasm created by time, physical distance, and isolation? How does one write about and process their own trauma? These are the issues at stake in Kristof’s trilogy.

‘The first novel, The Notebook, is without doubt one of the most disturbing novels I’ve ever read. The narrative point of view is that of young twin brothers who have been sent to their grandmother in a small town near the border during WWII. We do not know the name of the town, nor do we know the brothers’ names. They think and act as one as they process the trauma of separation from their mother, from their home city, from school, and from civilized life. Their grandmother is known locally as “the witch,” and it is assumed that she poisoned her late husband. The woman sounds like a nasty, dirty old crone, and she resents having to take care of her estranged daughter’s sons. Out here near the border, the boys revert to a kind of primal state. They refuse to attend school, with the full support of their grandmother who is wary of authority. They spend their days working on her small farm and vineyard, taking care of her animals, exploring the forest, and spying on the foreign officer who has commandeered a room in grandmother’s house. The boys have their own ethical code, which they enforce without emotion. Kristof’s descriptions of the violence and perversions they witness is extraordinarily uncomfortable to read, but I suspect that at least some of it is based on her own experiences in Hungary during the war. Equally disturbing is her description of how they steel themselves against the pains and injustices of their situation. They practice beating each other so as to withstand pain, they practice going hungry and even sensory deprivation. They also act as a judge, jury and executioner when they witness others behaving in ways that violate their ethical code. Pain and death do not move them when they experience them or witness others experiencing them. By the time the war is over, they are young teens who have seen too much. The foreign army has lost and left, but the next army has arrived (the Russians, although not stated as such) and the border is still dangerous to cross. It is at this point that the boys who have thought and acted as one are separated by their own choice, one headed west, and the other remaining in the small town.

‘The first novel is called The Notebook because among the very few things the brothers brought with them to the small town is a notebook that had belonged to their father. We do not know what it contains, only that it is important to the boys. It is saved and hidden away. The brother who stayed behind is in possession of this notebook, and it is his story that is told in the second novel of the trilogy, The Proof. Here we finally learn the boys’ names — Claus and Lucas. Claus is the brother who crossed the border while Lucas stayed behind.

‘The Proof deals with the years immediately after the end of the war, into the 1950s and 1960s when revolution arose in the unnamed country. Lucas continues to live near the heavily guarded border on his deceased grandmother’s land, but he suffers from depression due the separation from his brother. He strikes up a friendship with the local priest, visiting regularly to bring him food and play chess. Lucas eventually comes to the rescue of a young woman with a baby who is contemplating killing the child due to the horrible circumstances of her life. Lucas cares very much for the baby, and he also develops relationships with several people in the town, including a party official, a librarian whose husband was killed by the new regime as a traitor, and the owner of the local bookshop. The bookshop was important to Lucas and Claus during the war, as it was the place where they could get pencils and paper. They both felt it was important to write as a way to process their experiences, and when Lucas has the chance to take ownership of the bookstore, he does so. At the end of this novel, Lucas’ relationships have mostly come crashing down around him, and it seems as though he has disappeared. Yet the notebook and a manuscript are left behind, proof of his existence.

‘The Third Lie is a brilliant novel, full of surprises and sorrow. It is divided into two parts, each narrated by one brother. Claus, now 50 years old and ill, has returned to the small town on a 30-day renewable visa in the hopes of finding his brother. The political situation is such that travel is now possible, and while much of the small town is still familiar to Claus, the place and people have changed. Claus ends up overstaying his visa and is held by local authorities until the embassy for his home country can repatriate him. In this part of the novel, Kristof, via Claus, does not relate events in a linear fashion, and this keeps the reader guessing about what has happened to the brothers over the past decades. I can’t reveal too much without spoiling the story, but once we get to the second part of the novel, all becomes clear. And it is heartbreaking, but what remains constant through the trilogy is the centrality of writing, the importance of being able to process what one has endured, whether it is through factual reporting, poetry, or fiction. And as painful as separations are, reunions can be tricky things, too. Joy and pain can both be present, as well as anger and misunderstanding — for people, for nations.

‘I’m pretty sure I first heard about this trilogy through one of the many book lists I’ve seen over the years, and Kristof’s name was on something like “women writers you should have heard of but haven’t.” The Notebook is the most famous of her works, and it has been turned into a play, but if you read it, please do read the other two books as well. This trilogy is just outstanding.’ — ElCicco

 

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Further

Agota Kristof @ Wikipedia
Ágota Kristóf: “We can never express precisely what we mean”
The art of Agota Kristof (1935-2011)
Deprivation Exercises
‘The Notebook’ is alternately powerful and perplexing
Ágota Kristóf and the Agony of the “Enemy” Language
The Rebel Vocabulary of Ágota Kristóf
‘Ágota Kristóf’s The Notebook awoke in me a cold and cruel passion’, by Slavoj Žižek
“I did not want to name anything”
Review Of Agota Kristof’s “La Trilogie Des Jumeaux”
Ágota Kristóf and the Uses of Illiteracy
The Double Writing of Agota Kristof and the New Europe
Cruelty and Resilience: The Notebook Trilogy by Ágota Kristóf

 

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Extras

Agota Kristof – Documentaire – Extrait – Le Continent K

The dark childhood of Agota Kristof

Beitrag über Agota Kristof im Literaturmagazin (12.11.1989)

 

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Interview
from Music and Literature

 

Riccardo Benedettini: You have had a lot of success with your novels, and your writing is often compared to Thomas Bernhard, Beckett, and Kafka. Do you think certain aspects of your work have been misunderstood, or neglected?

Ágota Kristóf: It pleases me to talk about Bernhard because I just love him (laughs). I don’t know. I don’t like it when people talk about me and Marguerite Duras. I don’t like Duras. Have certain parts of my work been misunderstood? Oh . . . well. I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean by that.

RB: Your books have been translated into twenty languages—

AK: [Interrupts] No . . . Into more than thirty languages.

RB: Excuse me, thirty. What do you make of such a wide-reaching reputation?

AK: Ah, early on it was amazing. What’s interesting is that the books still sell, after more than ten years in print. That is incredible. The Notebook sells a lot. And I often receive requests for adaptations.

RB: I’ve heard that. Has a film adaption been made?

AK: Not yet, but the rights have been sold. The producer is American and the cinematographer will be Danish. It’s to be set in the center of town, of Kőszeg, facing The Hotel, where the bookshop was located. You would have definitely seen both when you went to Kőszeg. The building they’ll use for Grandmother’s house, her house in The Notebook, has already appeared in several other films. And for my book, Yesterday, some Italians have optioned the film.

RB: Your texts are the subject of much literary criticism. What are the aspects of your work that you would like to see critics pay attention to?

AK: I don’t know. It’s all the same to me.

RB: Do you think there is a message to be taken from your books?

AK: Of course not. I don’t want to have a message. No [laughing], not at all. I don’t write like that. I wanted to say a little about my life. That’s how it all started. In The Notebook, it was my childhood that I wished to describe, what I saw with my brother Jeno. It is purely biographical.

RB: Since you have been writing, in what ways have you evolved?

AK: I have evolved a lot, clearly. I started writing when I was thirteen years old, and everything has changed about my style since then. Everything. The poems were too poetic and too sentimental. I don’t like this kind of writing, I don’t like my poems at all, not any more.

RB: When did you realize you were a writer?

AK: I have really always known. In my childhood, I read a lot, especially the Russians. In my childhood, I loved Dostoevsky. He might well be my favorite. I also read a lot of detective novels.

RB: What is your creative process?

AK: In all honesty, I don’t know. I started to write scripts for plays in French. When I was young, and had just come here, in my twenties, I wrote poems in Hungarian. Then, when I started to learn French, I started to write in French. That was enjoyable for me. Yes, I did it to amuse myself a little bit. After that I started to meet theater lovers and directors. I began to write plays and I also worked a lot with theater students. We performed many of my pieces for the radio, although a lot of them weren’t edited. It was fun.

RB: Can we see a link between the theatrical dialogues and the dialogues in The Notebook?

AK: Yes, absolutely.

RB: What do you make of your novels?

AK: Well . . . They are very serious, too sad. Yes, a little too sad.

RB: Which writers are most important to you?

AK: I love Knut Hamsun and another writer . . . but I don’t know how to say his name. It was my editor who had given me a book by this writer, telling me that it resembled my own work a lot. Yes, that novel, very heavy . . . But I didn’t see any resemblance to my work. Now I don’t read a lot. I like Francis Ponge, and George Bataille as well, but I don’t know many contemporary writers.

RB: Do you feel like a spokesperson for a Hungarian national literature, French-Swiss, or truly stateless?

AK: Hungarian, even if I write in French. All my books are about Hungary. Even the fourth one, have you read it?

RB: Yesterday?

AK: Yes. Well, it is set here in Switzerland, but in a refugee neighborhood. It is more or less a true story. It is very autobiographical. I had worked in a factory. The factory was in the fourth village. We had to take a bus. We lived in the first village. I am Line, the character from Yesterday, it was me who got on the bus at the first village. My ex-husband had a scholarship. The character Sandor was a tzigane, a gypsy, who also worked in a factory. We worked together. My first daughter recognized all that. The apartment that I describe, for example. Yes, I think it is the most autobiographical of my novels. Everything I describe really happened, the suicides too. I knew four people who killed themselves after emigrating from Hungary, and that was all I wanted to talk about.

RB: I would like to know the exact date that you left Hungary.

AK: It was in 1956, after the revolution.

RB: Yes, but I want to know which day.

AK: I think it was the 27th of October, but I’m not sure. No, no, it was the 27th of November.

RB: The 27th of November?

AK: Yes, I think so. We left late in the night. We were in a group. We arrived in a village, which was already full of refugees. Straightaway, they looked after us. The group was mostly children. We were welcomed into the homes of peasants who were paid to provide us with food and shelter. I don’t know how many days we stayed there. After that, the mayor of the village bought us bus tickets to Vienna. We paid him back later. In Vienna we stayed in a barracks.

RB: You didn’t plan on going to Switzerland? I read that you would have preferred to go to Canada. Is that right?

AK: No, no. Never to Canada. I wanted to go to the United States because I had family there. When we arrived there, they told us we could only stay for six months. After that we returned to Switzerland where there was a scholarship for my husband. He was a history teacher. They really looked after us. They found us the apartment, a job for me, a nursery for the baby. That was why we stayed there. I wanted to go back to the US, but I had to wait. My children are here in Switzerland, and I don’t want to be too far away from them.

RB: When was the first time you returned to Hungary?

AK: Twelve years after I left, in 1968. I still had my parents and my brothers. Now my parents are dead. I only have my brothers and their young children in Hungary. But they don’t live in the little village anymore. My brother Attila, the writer, lives in Budapest. I go back to Hungary often.

RB: Did you have the impression, when you left Hungary, that you were still the victim of those who had stayed under the regime?

AK: I’m not very interested in politics. It was my husband who wanted to leave, because he, on the contrary, is very interested in politics, and if he had stayed he would have been thrown in prison, that is for sure. His friends who stayed did two years in prison. In any case, two years isn’t that long.

RB: But even if we just keep to your novels, Clara, the widow from The Notebook, whose husband is executed, gives us evidence of the injustice of the regime.

AK: Yes, Clara is my mother. She told me about it. Her hair turned white from shock, like Clara’s. It is true, they, the regime, singled people out. All the people who, for example, had had contact with the Yugoslavians were traitors.

RB: Did you have a lot of difficulties when you arrived in Switzerland?

AK: A lot. For five years I couldn’t read. I worked in a factory where we weren’t allowed to speak to each other much. I only knew Russian. My father taught mathematics, but before leaving for the front he taught everything, he was the only teacher in the village. My husband spoke a little bit of French because he was a lot older than me. Not very well, but enough. When he had gone to school, they had still taught French and German, but afterwards it was only Russian. Here I went to university, but I only took courses for foreigners. You had to have a baccalaureate even here.

RB: Did you still write in Hungarian?

AK: No, I spoke Hungarian perfectly, but when I wrote letters or cards I often made mistakes. Very often I put things in the wrong places, like including a silent “e,” for example.

RB: Do you agree with the definition according to which a novel must be based on the incompatibility between the individual and the world around her?

AK: I don’t know. I don’t think about things like that.

RB: The word “trilogy.” What do you think about the choice of this word as the title of the translations of your novels?

AK: It is a word I accept, yes, because it is the same people in all three, and so they go together.

 

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Book

Agota Kristof The Notebook Trilogy
Grove Atlantic

‘Claus and Lucas are twins. Their new life begins when they are left with their grandmother, the ‘Witch’, in a village in an occupied country. It’s wartime. All their actions are based on the necessity to survive. They create an exercise regime to toughen up, and record the results in a notebook. Their angelic looks are deceiving. They are implacable, dangerously ethical; their code of life demands that they help a deserter, or blackmail a priest, or come to the aid of a prostitute, or assist in a suicide. What motivates them is a deeply embedded morality of absolute need.

‘The trilogy — The Notebook (1986), The Proof (1988), and The Third Lie (1991) — follows their stories from the Second World War, through the years of communism and into a fractured Europe. In what could be seen as an allegory of post-war Europe, Claus and Lucas, locked in a tortuous bond, become separated and are isolated in different countries. They yearn to be connected again, but perspectives shift, memories diverge, identity becomes unstable.

‘Written in Kristof ’s spare, direct style, The Notebook Trilogy is an exploration of the aftereffects of trauma and of the nature.’ — Grove Atlantic

Excerpt

OUR TASKS

We have to do certain jobs for Grandmother, otherwise she doesn’t give us anything to eat and leaves us to spend the night out of doors.

But at first we refuse to obey her. We sleep in the garden, and eat fruit and raw vegetables.

In the morning, before daybreak, we see Grandmother leave the house. She says nothing to us. She goes and feeds the animals, milks the goats, then takes them to the edge of the stream, where she ties them to a tree. Then she waters the garden and picks the vegetables and fruit, which she loads into her wheelbarrow. She also puts on to it a basket full of eggs, a small cage with a rabbit, and a chicken or duck with its legs tied together.

She goes off to the market, pushing her wheelbarrow with the strap around her scrawny neck, which forces her head down. She staggers under the weight. The bumps and stones in the road make her lose her balance, but she goes on walking, her feet turned inwards, like a duck. She walks to the town, to the market, without stopping, without putting her wheelbarrow down once.

When she gets back from the market, she makes a soup with the vegetables she hasn’t sold and jams with the fruit. She eats, she goes and has a nap in her vineyard, she sleeps for an hour, then she works in the vineyard or, if there is nothing to do there, she comes back to the house, she cuts wood, she feeds the animals again, she brings back the goats, she milks them, she goes out into the forest, comes back with mushrooms and kindling, she makes cheeses, she dries mushrooms and beans, she bottles other vegetables, waters the garden again, puts things away in the cellar and so on until nightfall.

On the sixth morning, when she leaves the house, we have already watered the garden. We take heavy buckets full of pig-feed from her, we take the goats to the edge of the stream, we help her load the wheelbarrow. When she comes back from the market, we are cutting wood.

At the meal, Grandmother says:

‘Now you know you have to earn your board and lodging.’

We say:

‘It’s not that. The work is hard, but to watch someone working and not do anything is even harder, especially if it’s someone old.’

Grandmother sniggers:

‘Sons of a bitch! You mean you felt sorry for me?’

‘No, Grandmother. We just felt ashamed.’

In the afternoon we go and gather wood in the forest.

From now on we do all the work we can.

 

THE FOREST AND THE STREAM

The forest is very big, the stream is very small. To get to the forest, we have to cross the stream. When there isn’t much water, we can cross it by jumping from one stone to another but, sometimes, when it has rained a lot, the water reaches up to our waist, and this water is cold and muddy. We decide to build a bridge with bricks and planks that we find around bombed houses.

Our bridge is strong. We show it to Grandmother. She tests it and says:

‘Very good. But don’t go too far into the forest. The frontier is nearby and the soldiers will shoot at you. And above all, don’t get lost. I won’t come looking for you.’

When we were building the bridge, we saw fish. They hide under big stones or in the shadow of bushes and trees, whose branches meet in places over the stream. We choose the biggest fish. We catch them and put them in a watering-can filled with water. In the evening, when we take them back to the house, Grandmother says:

‘Sons of a bitch! How did you catch them?’

‘With our hands; it’s easy. You just have to stay still and wait.’

‘Then catch a lot. As many as you can.’

Next day, Grandmother puts the watering-can on her wheelbarrow and she sells our fish at the market.

We often go into the forest, we never get lost, we know where the frontier is. Soon the guards get to know us. They never shoot at us. Grandmother teaches us to know the difference between mushrooms you can eat and the poisonous ones.

From the forest we bring back firewood on our backs, and mushrooms and chestnuts in baskets. We stack the wood neatly against the walls of the house under the leanto and we roast chestnuts on the stove if Grandmother isn’t there.

Once, in the forest, beside a big hole made by a bomb, we find a dead soldier. He is still all of a piece, only his eyes have gone because of the crows. We take his rifle, his cartridges and his grenades: we hide the rifle inside a bundle of firewood, and the cartridges and grenades in our baskets, under the mushrooms.

When we get back to Grandmother’s, we carefully wrap these objects in straw and potato sacks, and bury them under the seat, in front of the officer’s window.

 

DIRT

At home, in the Big Town, Mother often used to wash us. In the shower or in the bath. She put clean clothes on us and cut our nails. She used to go with us to the barber’s to have our hair cut. We used to brush our teeth after every meal.

At Grandmother’s it is impossible to wash. There is no bathroom, there isn’t even any running water. We have to go and pump water from the well in the yard, and carry it back in a bucket. There is no soap in the house, no toothpaste, no washing powder.

Everything in the kitchen is dirty. The red, irregular tiles stick to our feet, the big table sticks to our hands and elbows. The stove is completely black with grease and the walls all around are black with soot. Although Grandmother washes the dishes, the plates, spoons and knives are never quite clean and the saucepans are covered with a thick layer of grime. The dishcloths are discoloured and have a nasty smell.

At first we didn’t even want to eat, especially when we saw how Grandmother cooked the meals, wiping her nose on her sleeve and never washing her hands. Now we take no notice.

When it’s warm we go and bathe in the stream, we wash our faces and clean our teeth in the well. When it’s cold, it’s impossible to wash properly. There is no receptacle big enough in the house. Our sheets, our blankets and our towels have disappeared. We never see again the big cardboard box in which Mother brought them.

Grandmother has sold everything.

We’re getting dirtier and dirtier, our clothes too. We take clean clothes out of our suitcases under the seat, but soon there are no clean clothes left. Those we are wearing are getting torn and our shoes are wearing through. When possible, we walk barefoot and wear only underpants or trousers. The soles of our feet are getting hard, we no longer feel thorns or stones. Our skin is getting brown, our legs and arms are covered with scratches, cuts, scabs and insect bites. Our nails, which are never cut, break, and our hair, which is almost white because of the sun, reaches down to our shoulders.

The privy is at the bottom of the garden. There’s never any paper. We wipe ourselves with the biggest leaves from certain plants.

We smell of a mixture of manure, fish, grass, mushrooms, smoke, milk, cheese, mud, clay, earth, sweat, urine and mould.

We smell bad, like Grandmother.

 

EXERCISE TO TOUGHEN THE BODY

Grandmother often hits us, with her bony hands, a broom or a damp cloth. She pulls our ears and catches us by the hair.

Other people also hit and kick us, we don’t even know why.

The blows hurt and make us cry.

Falls, scratches, cuts, work, cold and heat can also cause pain.

We decide to toughen our bodies in order to be able to bear pain without crying.

We start by hitting and then punching one another. Seeing our swollen faces, Grandmother asks:

‘Who did that to you?’

‘We did, Grandmother.’

‘You had a fight? Why?’

‘For nothing, Grandmother. Don’t worry, it’s only an exercise.’

‘An exercise? You’re crazy! Oh well, if that’s your idea of fun . . .’

We are naked. We hit one another with a belt. At each blow we say:

‘It doesn’t hurt.’

We hit harder, harder and harder.

We put our hands over a flame, we cut our thighs, our arms and chests with a knife and pour alcohol on to our wounds. Each time we say:

‘It doesn’t hurt.’

After a while, in fact, we no longer feel anything. It’s someone else who is hurt, someone else who gets burnt, cut and feels pain.

We don’t cry any more.

When Grandmother is angry and shouts at us, we say:

‘Stop shouting, Grandmother, hit us instead.’

When she hits us, we say:

‘More, Grandmother! Look, we are turning the other cheek, as it is written in the Bible. Strike the other cheek, Grandmother.’

She answers:

‘May the devil take you with your Bible and your cheeks!’

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** jay, Hi. You’re already through it, wow. I’m eyeballing it and my finger is trembling near the purchase trigger. Thanks, pal. xo. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Tomorrow is now today. Have an awesome blowout with Machine Girl. I only barely know MG. I’ll dig in deeper. Never been to Morocco either, and it’s not all far away from here. If only they had a film festival that wanted strange films. Wow, that’s killer stuff: your book excerpt. That’s pretty exciting. Don’t lose trust in it. Thank you for the peek. ** Thom, Hi. Coffee is my only recipe for excessive tiredness, and it doesn’t work miraculously. I hope you got some zz’s at least. Zine name … you have semi-inviting options? You can probably imagine what Richard is like when he reads. I quite liked the recent video game-esque Korine movies, or at least that he’s back to using his films to fuck with people. I hope that when you woke up today your eyes had a Disney sparkle that persists. ** Carsten, Right, we’re way inland here in the big P, and our global warming effect so far is just an unusual and unpredictable wavering of what we were used to. I think people who aren’t sluts think their assholes are windows into their souls, and maybe they’re right? ** tomk, No big, man, and I’m glad your kids are better. I wonder why when kids get sick they really get sick. Yeah, it’s strange, we’ve just been banging our heads against a wall when it comes to London and an RT screening. The ICA won’t show it because our ex- but still credited producer fucked them over just like he’s fucked everyone over. Barbican said no. We’re at a loss. It seems like we need contacts or in’s with programers at venues or theaters there, and we don’t have that. I’m starting to think we just might not be able to screen the film in London, which would be weird and depressing. ‘La Medusa’ doesn’t ring a bell. I’ll look it up. Way hopes you get back to the writing soon, man. It’s important! Love, me. ** Steve, Hey. Oh, I really want to read the Akerman memoir. Zac’s reading it, and he said he’ll pass it along. Wow. ** Alice, Hi, Alice. The week hasn’t been too rocky so far. Starting local makes utter sense. Yes, if you find a place to plant your mix, of course I would love to hear it. What in the world re: your university’s back-pedalling of your module. Sorting that stuff out is their job, That sucks, I’m sorry. Voice acting … so your friend’s project is animation, or is it a voice over thing? Fun. ** Steeqhen, Good, upswinging, I can feel that vibrating from your language use. Maybe it’s a book that’ll spiritually intervene in your life impactfully. Have you read the Kristof trilogy up above? It changed me. ** HaRpEr //, I’m so sorry about the mess with your friend. I guess try not to get too regretful. Regret is mostly a dampener, and dwelling on the unsolvable is good for art but not so productive for life. Or so thinks I. When Maddin is on form, he’s such a master. ** Hugo, Cool, notebook back in the fold. I don’t remember what the lost novel was. It was an early attempt to start to the Cycle novels. I’m pretty sure it was crappy. I don’t know what your friend in London is referring to. I’m not friends with anyone who’s a practicing pedophile that I’m aware of. If that’s from an interview I did or something, it was probably in context and I was trying to make some kind of point. If people object to my imagination, there’s nothing I can do about that. Morning of goodness to you. ** Bill, Thank you, thank you, Bill. It really holds up, clearly. ** Laura, Bill did good, yes. That poem excerpt doesn’t ring a bell, sorry. Maybe it’s a deja vu or something? That award they give out at the Baftas looks sort of like a fleshlight. I don’t know, I never use the term rationalist. Something to think about. I just say I’m practical. I tried reading Hegel but it was too thick and tonally uninteresting to me. I only remember my dreams for a split second when I wake up sometimes, and then they disappear. So it depends on what you mean by remembering. Either this morning or never? ** voskat, I guess I’m more of an autocorrect is ultimately more useful than not kind of person. That said, Dutch autocorrect sounds pretty enviable. All bets are off. I read your spoiler because I’m also one of those people who doesn’t really give a shit about plot. So thank you. ** Okay. I’m honestly astonished by myself that I’ve never before trained a spotlight on Agota Kristof’s novel trilogy since it is easily one of my very, very literary works to have been published in my lifetime. I’ve recommended it to so many people over the years. It had a strong impact on my own writing. And, thus, I passionately recommend that you read it if you haven’t. See you tomorrow.