And I dream of the days when work was scrappy,
And rare in our pockets the mark of the mint,
When we were angry and poor and happy,
And proud of seeing our names in print.
-G.K. Chesterton, “A Song of Defeat”
Hi friends,
I’m pleased to have an essay in the third issue of niche literary über-gem Still Alive magazine on prom, memory, and Matthew Barney’s Cremaster cycle.
It begins:
Few phenomena in contemporary American life offer a more reliably compelling narrative blueprint than the high school prom. Its rituals and totems have become so neatly packaged that it is difficult to distinguish which of them originated in life, which in art. This is largely thanks to Hollywood glamor, though not exclusively. The prom plot offers the same irresistible will-they-or-won’t-they tension as its more distinguished older sister, the marriage plot, but with a manifest structural advantage. By resolving in coupling without resorting to marriage itself, the prom plot delivers on perhaps the most satisfying catharsis in the Western literary tradition sans its customary sacrifice: possibility. Prom is akin to the dress-rehearsal for a particularly fascinating play, which is probably not a bad metaphor for adolescence overall.
It is in the context of not only American Pie and She’s All That and Ten Things I Hate About You, but also the films that deliberately subvert such entrenched narrative expectations—Mean Girls, even Carrie—that I’ve been lured into analysis of a more personal kind. Satire, parody, horror: all still rely, fundamentally, on the original blueprint. But I can’t find Artie in any of it. His conspicuous absence and the failure of my mental models, my usual cultural touchstones crumbling to dust—this is why, more than 20 years later, my mind still comes to rest on Artie, and the weekend we spent together in New York City, in lieu of his senior prom.
You can read the rest here, but for the best experience—and to support the sort of quintessentially quite-useless publication that’s increasingly rare—I recommend ordering a copy in print. Issue 03 also features wry essays on Paul Wolfowitz (perfect cover boy, no notes), Dick Cheney, Milan Kundera, and more, as well as a poem by Anne Carson that’s not yet online.
The first two issues are good too! Maybe just get the tote bag bundle.
Enjoy,
ANJ
P.S. I read an excerpt from an early draft of this essay, then titled “The Cremaster Cycle,” almost two years ago on the podcast I’m A Writer But. I wrote it well before that, as a thematic follow-up to “Delusions of Grandeur” (The Common, 2021). Sometimes it takes a while to place stuff—even (especially?) high-quality stuff—but it’s often worth the wait to have your best writing further benefit from professional editorial (thank you Erin!). This newsletter largely exists to share and support work like “Prom,” work measured in years—so I really do hope you’ll read it.
Splendid! "Still Alive" is a treasure, I wish Erin Somers et al. every success.
I’m so happy to see that this got published!