Why Get Mad When You Can Watch Lee Marvin Get Mad For You?

While the long (and thankfully nearly over) moving process has been helpful logistically, it's stretched out what would normally be a pretty concentrated period of stress to the point where I feel at the end of my tether at least once a week. I hate feeling angry and frustrated not just because they're such negative emotions, but because I often feel like I'm bad at them; that in losing control of my temper, I'm not only embarrassed by the outburst itself, but by how absurd I must seem when I endlessly dwell on it later. This generally helps keep me from blowing my top, but I've gone over my threshold a couple of times in the past few weeks, which made me realize that I need to adapt some more comprehensive coping strategies going forward.

I'm always a little cautious around this type of self-improvement, lest it also change the stuff I like about my life and myself for the worse. Nearly every approach to tackling negative emotions I've seen adopted successfully also requires reining in positive emotions as part of the process of self-regulation, and I generally chafe against that kind of restriction of joy, since it's already such a rare treat. That said, we aren't talking about a frontal lobotomy or chemical straitjacket, just a better method of smoothing out the edges around life's more excitable moments. Hopefully I can find an appropriate Alan Watts seminar or something.

One of my most trusted methods of blowing off steam is by sublimating it with extremely violent media. I was reminded of this the other day when a new video popped up on Criterion's YouTube channel featuring Jim Jarmusch discussing the pleasures of John Boorman's Point Blank. Watching the video, I thought to myself "Ooh, it's been a long time since I've seen that, I should seek it out," which turned out to be easier than expected since the film is on YouTube and came up in the suggested videos tab almost immediately.

I have a weird relationship to crime stories. It's not usually my preferred genre, but when they hit for me, they hit hard. The ones I tend to enjoy are usually about people who get caught up in criminality due to bad circumstances or choices, rather than the ones who revel in it. Don't get me wrong, I love an evil baddie, but if I have to spend a lot of time in someone's head, I'd generally prefer it be someone whose motives I can identify with. It's a difficult thing to pull off, and despite Donald Westlake's obvious talent as a writer, I've never really warmed to Parker as a character because he seems alien to me in a fundamental way. That doesn't stop me from enjoying watching Lee Marvin beat some dudes to death in swinging sixties LA, but I don't love Point Blank the way Jim Jarmusch does, even as I appreciate the craft of the film. I also haven't read the book in quite a while, but the absurdity of "The Alcatraz Run" as a central plot device in the film that is never really explained or explored just doesn't work for me. The one thought I did keep having throughout the movie in relation to the book is that Westlake/Stark's "The Outfit" is a way cooler moniker for the bad guys than the film's "The Organization."

Speaking of crime novels, I've just finished reading Stephen King's Bill Hodges Trilogy, which I enjoyed more than expected. The first and last books in the trilogy were both okay-to-good, and I wasn't sorry I read them, but the middle book, Finders Keepers, is a top tier 2010s King banger. It's sort of about the lost works of a late 20th Century literary giant, sort of an amalgam of J.D. Salinger, Saul Bellow, and (mostly) John Updike, but the way the story unfolds is the real delight, along with watching King gently skewer how silly most mid-century middle class malaise reads 50-60 years on down the road. It's also got the least amount of Holly Gibney of any King novels I know of that feature her. He has said that she fascinates him as a character, but I don't particularly love her with the notable exception of when she's played by Cynthia Erivo.