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I’m the punk novelist and historian Jim Ruland, and although I love books, when the temperature rises, locate me in the cinema. The next most productive? A sinister summer reading that exudes sex, death and cinema.
Navid Sinaki’s first novel, “Medusa of the Roses,” which will be published by Grove Press next week, ticks all the boxes. It is a tense love story doomed to failure, set in Tehran and crossed by blackish Imagist poetry.
When Anjir’s lover Zal disappears, he fears the worst, but his studies reveal complex truths that endanger their dates and their lives. Anjir’s compulsion to borrow from friends and enemies ups the ante, making “Rose Jellyfish” harsh and difficult to put down.
I caught up with Sinaki, who is also an experimental filmmaker and director of Cinespia at Hollywood Forever, to ask him about his new e-book and about his “quiet, queer, Persian” childhood.
Can you tell me a little about your background?
I was born in Tehran, but my parents moved to the United States due to too many bombings in the Iran-Iraq war. My mother blames Saddam Hussein for destroying his mirror collection: the inherited dresser, his father’s antiques with the Shah’s silhouette in the frames, even the Minnie Mouse mirror near my crib (perhaps my first icon). homosexual).
Were you going to return to Tehran?
We stopped in Iran over the summer, a vacation I hated as a suburban kid worried because I could only take so many books with me. Plus, their burgers tasted like skewers, so I was prejudiced. My last stop was when I was 21, a field trip for my honors thesis on Persian films before the Islamic Revolution: B movies, sex adventures, and melodramas from the 1960s and 1970s. The day before this stop, I had an amazing first date, even though the psychic told me I would never find love as soon as she saw us together. So my last vacation to Iran was a whirlwind of genre films and guesswork.
Did you feel at home on your visits there?
I had started making queer video art. Although it was a stretch to think that militaristic customs officials would look for me by name, I knew that going back was risky. Although homosexuality is criminalized in Iran (and even punishable by death), the government is helping to subsidize sex reassignment. operations. This defect is something that stuck in my mind. In Ancho Cucamonga, I didn’t feel safe as a gay boy encountering his sexuality after 9/11.
How conservative is California?
In the California suburb where I grew up, where street banners salute graduates who have joined the military, I am an awkward kid trying not to draw attention to my difference: quiet, queer, and Persian. The closest thing to a Barnes art section in a museum
Which writers have been a role for you?
9/11 was a real headache for a gay Persian boy coming of age in the suburbs. A certain animosity has set in. Sadomasochistic sex and romantic relationships were strange. I learned about simultaneity from Jean Genet. I fell for his paintings because I understood, in my own way, that lust can be simply poetic and perverse, that courtship can be corny and cruel, and that fighting to stay alive is pleasurable. I flourished in his acid humor, with his opulent language that twisted melancholy, whether rococo or blue.
What’s it like running as director of Cinespia at Hollywood Forever Cemetery?
Me and [silent film star Rudolph] Valentino are going to be back. I spent countless summer nights near his mausoleum. At Cinespia, another 4,000 people gather at the Hollywood Forever cemetery to watch films projected on the façade of a mausoleum. Douglas Fairbanks is close by. Cecil B. DeMille is another spectator. Judy Garland and Johnny Ramone are also there. Each screening has a photobooth lit with professional lighting and photographers to give other people the opportunity to take their own close-ups. I’m guilty of the dreamy paintings behind those booths, which I consider to be art installations rather than scenes copied from movies.
How did your experience as a filmmaker influence the composition of the novel?
As a filmmaker, I’m on the sidelines: weird folk stories to create an area for me; employing DVD menus as diaries, reusing clips from Persian exploitation films from the 60s to tell a trans love story in the form of a movie trailer. Cinema allowed me to see myself as a place of discovery, a wandering city. A screen can be an invisible mirror. I also learned to duplicate my writing. Maybe I’m like Narcissus falling into my own reflection. Instead of blooming like daffodils after drowning, for me, roses sprouted from this death.
Francine Pascal, author of the books “Sweet Valley High”, and Irish novelist Edna O’Brien died.
In his review of Brian VanDeMark’s “Kent State: An American Tragedy,” Chris Vognar discusses the book’s first sentence: “People don’t hide the whole fact unless it’s too hard to bear. “»
Vognar also reviews “We Burn Daylight” by Brett Anthony Johnston, a novel that explores the human aspect of the tragedy sparked by the confrontation between the federal government and David Koresh in Waco, Texas.
Leigh Haber discusses Helen Phillips’ new novel, “Hum,” and suggests that it sits on the border between dystopian fiction and a glimpse into our very near future.
(Note: The Times would possibly earn a commission through links to Bookshop. org, whose fees are independent bookstores. )
“Sex, Death, and Film” is a genre (still), so I asked some of my favorite Los Angeles writers for their recommendations in this category. This is what they said:
Melissa Broder, from “Death Valley”, suggests “Turkish Delight” through the Dutchman Jan Wolkers. Originally published in 1969, a new translation through Sam Garrett was published in 2107 via Tin House.
Matthew Specktor knows a thing or two about movies. The “Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California” chapter recommends Charlie Kaufman’s “Antkind,” which he describes as “wild, challenging, and fun. “
Steve Erickson’s “Zeroville” gets Nolan Knight’s attention. The writer of “Gallows Dome” in Long Beach says, “If you’re a movie buff, this is paradise. “
LA Times Book Prize winner Steph Cha recommends Megan Abbott’s “The Song Is You” and Jordan Harper’s “Everybody Knows. “
Thanks for reading! I enjoyed writing the LA Times Book Club newsletter this summer, and now I’m going to pass the baton to eBook lovers!
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