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I’m the punk novelist and historian Jim Ruland, and as much as I love books, when the temperature rises, I’m discovered in movies. What’s next? A sinister summer reading that breathes sex, death and cinema.
Navid Sinaki’s debut novel, “Medusa of the Roses,” out from Grove Press next week, checks all the boxes. It is a tense love story doomed to failure set in Tehran and crossed by blackish imagist poetry.
When Zal, Anjir’s lover, disappears, she fears the worst, but her studies show complex truths that put her dates and her lives at risk. Anjir’s compulsion to borrow from friends and foes raises the bar, making “Rose Jellyfish” tough. and difficult to repress.
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 bit about your background?
I was born in Tehran, but my parents moved to the United States because of too much bombing in the Iran-Iraq war. My mother blames Saddam Hussein for destroying her collection of mirrors: the inherited dressing table, her father’s antiques with the silhouette of the Shah in the frames, even the Minnie Mouse mirror near my crib (perhaps my first homosexual icon).
Were you going to return to Tehran?
We had a stopover in Iran over the summer, a vacation I hated as a suburban kid worried that I could only take so many books with me. Plus, his burgers tasted like skewers, so I had my prejudices. My last stop was when I was 21 years old, a study excursion for my thesis specializing in Persian films before the Islamic Revolution: B movies, sexual adventures and melodramas of the 1960s and 1970s. The day before this stop in , I had an amazing first date, despite the psychic who had 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 far-fetched to think that militaristic customs officials would search for me by name, I knew there were risks in returning. Although homosexuality is criminalized in Iran (and even punishable by death), the government is helping to subsidize sex reassignment operations. This flaw is anything that has stuck with me. In Rancho Cucamonga, I didn’t feel safe as a gay kid 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 growing up in the suburbs. A certain animosity has set in. Sadomasochistic sex and romantic relationships were mysterious. I learned simultaneity from Jean Genet. I fell for him because I understood in my own way that lust can be simply poetic and perverse, that the court can be simply rural and cruel, and that suffering to stay alive is pleasurable. I am nourished by his acid humor, with his opulent language that twists 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 coming back. I spent countless summer nights near his mausoleum. In Cinespia, another 4,000 people gather at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery to watch movies projected on the façade of a mausoleum. Douglas Fairbanks is nearby through. Cecil B. DeMille is another spectator. Judy Garland and Johnny Ramone are there too. Each screening has a photo booth lit with professional lighting and photographers to give others 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 am on the sidelines: strange folk stories to believe an area for myself; employing DVD menus as diaries, reusing clips from 1960s Persian sexploitation films to tell a trans love story in the form of a film trailer. Cinema allowed me to see myself as a position of discovery, a wandering city. A screen can be an invisible mirror. I also learned to fold my writing. Maybe I’m like Narcissus falling into my own reflection. Instead of blooming into daffodil flowers after drowning, for me, roses sprouted from that death.
Francine Pascal, author of the books “Sweet Valley High,” and Irish novelist Edna O’Brien have 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 Brett Anthony Johnston’s “We Burn Daylight,” a novel that explores the human aspect of the tragedy that sparked the confrontation between the federal government and David Koresh in Waco, Texas.
Leigh Haber analyzes Helen Phillips’ new novel, “Hum,” and suggests that it straddles the line between dystopian fiction and a glimpse into our very near future.
(Note: The Times would likely earn a commission through links to Bookshop. org, the rates of which are at independent bookstores. )
“Sex, death, and movies” isn’t a genre (yet), so I asked some of my favorite Los Angeles writers for their recommendations in that category. Here’s what they had to say:
Melissa Broder of “Death Valley” suggests “Turkish Delight” via Dutchman Jan Wolkers. Originally published in 1969, a new translation through Sam Garrett was published in 2107 through 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 Support”. The one at “Gallows Dome” in Long Beach says: “If you’re a movie buff, this is heaven. »
LA Times Book Prize winner Steph Cha recommends “The Song Is You” by Megan Abbott and “Everybody Knows” by Jordan Harper.
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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