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Innocents and Others
Meadow Mori and Carrie Wexler grew up together in Los Angeles, and both became film-makers.
Meadow makes challenging documentaries; Carrie makes successful feature films with a feminist slant. The two friends have everything in common - except their views on sex, power, movie-making and morality. And yet their loyalty trumps their different approaches to film and to life.
Until, one day, a mysterious woman with a unique ability to cold-call and seduce powerful men over the phone - not through sex, but through listening - becomes the subject of one of Meadow's documentaries. Her downfall, and what makes her so extraordinarily moving, is that she pretends to be someone she is not.
Meadow makes challenging documentaries; Carrie makes successful feature films with a feminist slant. The two friends have everything in common - except their views on sex, power, movie-making and morality. And yet their loyalty trumps their different approaches to film and to life.
Until, one day, a mysterious woman with a unique ability to cold-call and seduce powerful men over the phone - not through sex, but through listening - becomes the subject of one of Meadow's documentaries. Her downfall, and what makes her so extraordinarily moving, is that she pretends to be someone she is not.
279 pages, Hardcover
First published March 8, 2016
154 people are currently reading
6392 people want to read
About the author
Dana Spiotta
13 books483 followersScribner published Dana Spiotta’s first novel, Lightning Field, in 2001. The New York Times called it “the debut of a wonderfully gifted writer with an uncanny feel for the absurdities and sadnesses of contemporary life, and an unerring ear for how people talk and try to cope today.” It was a New York Times Notable Book of the year, and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the West.
Her second novel, Eat the Document, was published in 2006 by Scribner. It was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award and a recipient of the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Michiko Kakutani wrote in her review in The New York Times that Eat The Document was “stunning” and described it as “a book that possesses the staccato ferocity of a Joan Didion essay and the razzle-dazzle language and the historical resonance of a Don DeLillo novel.”
Stone Arabia is the title of Spiotta’s third novel. Scribner will publish it on July 12, 2011.
Her second novel, Eat the Document, was published in 2006 by Scribner. It was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award and a recipient of the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Michiko Kakutani wrote in her review in The New York Times that Eat The Document was “stunning” and described it as “a book that possesses the staccato ferocity of a Joan Didion essay and the razzle-dazzle language and the historical resonance of a Don DeLillo novel.”
Stone Arabia is the title of Spiotta’s third novel. Scribner will publish it on July 12, 2011.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 448 reviews
December 30, 2015
Oh gosh.. I thought this book was ghastly... disjointed....and just not enjoyable.
There were positive quotes about this novel....
especially one that talked about identity and the belief that American's can invent or reinvent themselves. I thought it sounded like a great theme. I was
very excited to read this....but was disappointed in "Innocents and Others". I didn't like how it started out at all ...beginning with a 'scene'...I presumed from a screenplay, (a dreadful love story).
Soon we are introduced to Meadow, and Carrie. ( her best friend)
Jumping ahead...
Meadow was the only person in Carrie's entire wedding party. Since Meadow came from a wealthy LA family...( Carrie not so much), .. Meadow's parents sent a hunky check as a wedding gift - but didn't attend themselves.
After the wedding reception was over, Carrie said goodbye to Meadow, grabbed her new husband's hand and couldn't get home fast enough to change out of her dress & shoes and grab a pizza. ( I finally related to this story).... I wanted to go home, kick off my shoes, get comfortable, call it a day...'The End' would have been 'fine' with me...
But... more to read....
I really didn't care if Carrie got fat or not. I also didn't much care about Meadows success or failures with her documentary films.....
Grainy Super 8, amateur film, blown up to 16mm did nothing for this story either.
Filming scenes... editing...watching the playbacks might be exciting as hell when actually making a movie - for those involved -- but it's just way too dry to read
these descriptions in novel form.
There are several minor characters used for film projects.
Jelly with Jack. Jelly with Oz, etc. These characters with 'their' stories were interesting 'enough' ....but, everything seemed awkward ...and disjointed to me.
There is a 'little' glue that holds this novel together ... 'Carrie and Meadow'. Their lives may be a train wreck at times...but their friendship holds strong.
....However,
This book needs a make-over in my opinion. The three way connection from trying to connect the scenes - back to the filmmakers - with the readers expected to take it all in - just doesn't flow well.
Thank You Scribner, ( I'm sorry I didn't connect well with this book), Netgalley, and Dana Spiotta, ( I'd like to read a couple of your previous novels....even your short stories sound good).
There were positive quotes about this novel....
especially one that talked about identity and the belief that American's can invent or reinvent themselves. I thought it sounded like a great theme. I was
very excited to read this....but was disappointed in "Innocents and Others". I didn't like how it started out at all ...beginning with a 'scene'...I presumed from a screenplay, (a dreadful love story).
Soon we are introduced to Meadow, and Carrie. ( her best friend)
Jumping ahead...
Meadow was the only person in Carrie's entire wedding party. Since Meadow came from a wealthy LA family...( Carrie not so much), .. Meadow's parents sent a hunky check as a wedding gift - but didn't attend themselves.
After the wedding reception was over, Carrie said goodbye to Meadow, grabbed her new husband's hand and couldn't get home fast enough to change out of her dress & shoes and grab a pizza. ( I finally related to this story).... I wanted to go home, kick off my shoes, get comfortable, call it a day...'The End' would have been 'fine' with me...
But... more to read....
I really didn't care if Carrie got fat or not. I also didn't much care about Meadows success or failures with her documentary films.....
Grainy Super 8, amateur film, blown up to 16mm did nothing for this story either.
Filming scenes... editing...watching the playbacks might be exciting as hell when actually making a movie - for those involved -- but it's just way too dry to read
these descriptions in novel form.
There are several minor characters used for film projects.
Jelly with Jack. Jelly with Oz, etc. These characters with 'their' stories were interesting 'enough' ....but, everything seemed awkward ...and disjointed to me.
There is a 'little' glue that holds this novel together ... 'Carrie and Meadow'. Their lives may be a train wreck at times...but their friendship holds strong.
....However,
This book needs a make-over in my opinion. The three way connection from trying to connect the scenes - back to the filmmakers - with the readers expected to take it all in - just doesn't flow well.
Thank You Scribner, ( I'm sorry I didn't connect well with this book), Netgalley, and Dana Spiotta, ( I'd like to read a couple of your previous novels....even your short stories sound good).
March 5, 2016
2 1/2 stars. I found myself liking the last third of Innocents and Others, but it was a bit of a slog getting there. I feel like this book was working a bit too hard to be clever, which ended up interfering with some of its strengths. Told in different bits and pieces and from different points of view, it's essentially the story of two women who were teenage friends who grew up to be filmmakers. Their approaches to making films are very different, and this is reflective of their very different personalities. Meadow is hard edged and makes intrusive controversial documentaries. Carrie makes mainstream popular films. There's a certain edginess to the book -- ongoing suggestions that what you just read or read a bit earlier wasn't entirely true. Over time, truth is revealed. Or is it really? A bit like the work of the documentary maker who can control the story with editing and angles. I think I get it. By the end I started enjoying it more, but I'm not sure it was worth it. And I couldn't help comparing Innocents and Others to The Life and Death of Sophie Stark-- a book with a similar theme about a film maker who distorts the lives of her subjects -- that truly knocked my socks off last year. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an opportunity to read an advance copy of Innocents and Others.
March 1, 2016
If you enter the theater of this novel, get set to weather some disorientation as soon as the lights dim. Dana Spiotta’s “Innocents and Others” seems, at first, full of weird tricks, jump-cuts and pretentious posings — and it is — but stay in your seat and pay attention. Soon enough, all her literary chicanery comes into focus, creating a brilliant split-screen view of women working within and without the world of Hollywood.
This is a story about filmmakers and the illusions they shape in the service of some version of truth. Appropriately enough, the novel opens with a convincing lie: Meadow Mori, now known to the world as an avant-garde documentarian, recalls her teenage affair with Orson Welles in the final months of his life. “He did not want anyone to know about us,” Meadow writes on the Women & Film website, “because he felt. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
This is a story about filmmakers and the illusions they shape in the service of some version of truth. Appropriately enough, the novel opens with a convincing lie: Meadow Mori, now known to the world as an avant-garde documentarian, recalls her teenage affair with Orson Welles in the final months of his life. “He did not want anyone to know about us,” Meadow writes on the Women & Film website, “because he felt. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
November 27, 2017
molto più originale di eat the document (col quale condivide una bruttissima resa del titolo in italiano, e sorvolo sulle copertine: spiotta lassù qualche editor ce l’ha con te), questo è un romanzo tipo capsula a cessione ritardata. che nell’arco di una trecentina di pagine parla parecchio di cinema (la formazione di DS è quella lì), molto di rapporti umani, molto o moltissimo di polifoniche sensualità.
l’autrice monta un director’s cut - ci si aspetti quindi, inevitabilmente, qualche lunghezza di troppo - che cambia spesso inquadratura e lunghezza focale, zoomando su più storie e poi allargando a concluderle con una carrellata di ultimi capitoli in cui non ci si riesce a fermare (io comunque non ci sono riuscita).
scrive a un certo punto spiotta:
«quando aveva guardato barry lyndon a diciassette anni lo aveva trovato orribile. a diciannove era stupendo. succede così con i film. non sono loro a cambiare. cambi tu. l’immutabilità di un film (o di un libro, di un quadro, di un brano musicale) è qualcosa rispetto alla quale ti misuri. questa è una delle cose che una grande opera d’arte fa. aspetta che torni da lei e ti mostra per come sei adesso, ogni volta un po’ differente».
ecco, questa non sarà una grande-opera-d’arte ma con me è successo esattamente così. dana, a questo giro la tua (s)piotta te la sei proprio guadagnata.
l’autrice monta un director’s cut - ci si aspetti quindi, inevitabilmente, qualche lunghezza di troppo - che cambia spesso inquadratura e lunghezza focale, zoomando su più storie e poi allargando a concluderle con una carrellata di ultimi capitoli in cui non ci si riesce a fermare (io comunque non ci sono riuscita).
scrive a un certo punto spiotta:
«quando aveva guardato barry lyndon a diciassette anni lo aveva trovato orribile. a diciannove era stupendo. succede così con i film. non sono loro a cambiare. cambi tu. l’immutabilità di un film (o di un libro, di un quadro, di un brano musicale) è qualcosa rispetto alla quale ti misuri. questa è una delle cose che una grande opera d’arte fa. aspetta che torni da lei e ti mostra per come sei adesso, ogni volta un po’ differente».
ecco, questa non sarà una grande-opera-d’arte ma con me è successo esattamente così. dana, a questo giro la tua (s)piotta te la sei proprio guadagnata.
February 27, 2022
CRITIQUE:
Polyphonic Spree
There's something polyphonic happening in this novel (but that's not all).
There are multiple protagonists/ narrators, multiple points of view, multiple narratives (film-making, catfishing), multiple timeframes (from 1970 to 2015), and multiple technological frameworks and vehicles (film, TV, phones).
On the other hand, by the last 100 pages, something new occurs, and the novel resolves into a fiction more monologic. The author resumes the control and focus of their singular project. One of the protagonists interviews another for a film project, thus allowing the narratives to merge or cohere.
Making Private Worlds
To start with, in 2014 (although they were best friends at school), there are two independent film-makers. One is Meadow Mori (her name reminds me of Patti Smith's "Memento Mori", which is based on "Apocalypse Now"). The other is Carrie Wexler (her name reminds me of Jerry Wexler):
Then, there's former-phone phreak, Amy Thomas / Nicole Lamphor / Jelly, and blind boy Oz in 1970, and Jack Cusano in 1985. Some years after she broke up with Oz, her friend Lizzie (an actress and part-time house-cleaner) gave her a list with a lot of handwritten Hollywood phone numbers (including Jack's) on it. Jelly phones names on the list, catfishes them, and talks/ listens dirty to them. People soon hear about Nicole on the grapevine:
Seductions, Subversions and Fabules
Nicole/ Jelly's appeal is that she makes seductive private worlds on the phone. They're enough to convince film industry people of her bona fides, but love is the only currency in which she deals.
In 1992, Meadow makes "Kent State: Recovered", which wins some prizes at documentary film festivals. It sounds like her career now has a solid foundation, yet she has an unconventional approach that is unpopular with many cinephiles. They also resent her for allegedly having had an affair with Orson Welles.
In contrast, as a student, Carrie films her cat, Denton, while she reads Camus and Sartre to him in French. Carrie's work differs from Meadow's:
Carrie knows that Meadow didn't really have an affair with Orson Welles, which she had implied in an essay:
Dean & Britta - 13 Most Beautiful Source:
Screen Tests
Meadow goes out with Deke for a while. He does a screen test for her ("Portrait of Deke"), like the tests Andy Warhol shot. After Deke, Meadow spends time with Kyle. Carrie marries Will. They hold their reception at a Polish wedding emporium in Brooklyn.
For me, the story really started to gel when Meadow hears about Nicole at a dinner party at her parents' home, and traces her, in order to persuade her to do an interview for a film. She eventually agrees, when Meadow tells her she has already interviewed Jack Cusano. The film will become "Inward Operator".
Jelly/Nicole and Jack meet on set, but (like their original relationship) it doesn't end happily. Their wounds are too raw. Some time later, when he's ill, he remembers:
It's hard to work out who is innocent, and who is guilty (if that is the other of the title). Perhaps, all of them (all of us?) are both innocent and guilty, at some point in time, in the games we play.
Like catfishing itself, the novel gives us something to think and write about, and, only later (when we're less wounded by the experience), to chuckle about.
You might keep your version of the relationship in your memory, but I have my own version, and I'll keep it with mine.
SOUNDTRACK:
Polyphonic Spree
There's something polyphonic happening in this novel (but that's not all).
There are multiple protagonists/ narrators, multiple points of view, multiple narratives (film-making, catfishing), multiple timeframes (from 1970 to 2015), and multiple technological frameworks and vehicles (film, TV, phones).
On the other hand, by the last 100 pages, something new occurs, and the novel resolves into a fiction more monologic. The author resumes the control and focus of their singular project. One of the protagonists interviews another for a film project, thus allowing the narratives to merge or cohere.
Making Private Worlds
To start with, in 2014 (although they were best friends at school), there are two independent film-makers. One is Meadow Mori (her name reminds me of Patti Smith's "Memento Mori", which is based on "Apocalypse Now"). The other is Carrie Wexler (her name reminds me of Jerry Wexler):
"I suppose that as different as we were, we shared an affinity for solitude, for making private worlds within the real world."
Then, there's former-phone phreak, Amy Thomas / Nicole Lamphor / Jelly, and blind boy Oz in 1970, and Jack Cusano in 1985. Some years after she broke up with Oz, her friend Lizzie (an actress and part-time house-cleaner) gave her a list with a lot of handwritten Hollywood phone numbers (including Jack's) on it. Jelly phones names on the list, catfishes them, and talks/ listens dirty to them. People soon hear about Nicole on the grapevine:
"Nicole? The Nicole? I heard something about you."
Seductions, Subversions and Fabules
Nicole/ Jelly's appeal is that she makes seductive private worlds on the phone. They're enough to convince film industry people of her bona fides, but love is the only currency in which she deals.
In 1992, Meadow makes "Kent State: Recovered", which wins some prizes at documentary film festivals. It sounds like her career now has a solid foundation, yet she has an unconventional approach that is unpopular with many cinephiles. They also resent her for allegedly having had an affair with Orson Welles.
In contrast, as a student, Carrie films her cat, Denton, while she reads Camus and Sartre to him in French. Carrie's work differs from Meadow's:
"I didn't want to challenge anything in dramatic formal ways...I wanted seduction, not challenge. Or maybe I wanted to smuggle the challenge in a little, not subvert the whole form.")
Carrie knows that Meadow didn't really have an affair with Orson Welles, which she had implied in an essay:
"Meadow was creating what she called a fabule, a wish-story about herself, half dream and half fact. Meadow is playful, and she tells her own truth in her own way - you just have to yield to her version of the world to see how it all fits together, surrender to her possibilities...
"She would say film is an art form built on an illusion. Static images shown quickly create the illusion of movement. All of it is a magic trick to Meadow, and that is part of what makes it so miraculous and beautiful: it isn't real life. She didn't ever meet Welles, but she loved him, the idea of him, completely..."
Dean & Britta - 13 Most Beautiful Source:
Screen Tests
Meadow goes out with Deke for a while. He does a screen test for her ("Portrait of Deke"), like the tests Andy Warhol shot. After Deke, Meadow spends time with Kyle. Carrie marries Will. They hold their reception at a Polish wedding emporium in Brooklyn.
For me, the story really started to gel when Meadow hears about Nicole at a dinner party at her parents' home, and traces her, in order to persuade her to do an interview for a film. She eventually agrees, when Meadow tells her she has already interviewed Jack Cusano. The film will become "Inward Operator".
Jelly/Nicole and Jack meet on set, but (like their original relationship) it doesn't end happily. Their wounds are too raw. Some time later, when he's ill, he remembers:
"After their disastrous meeting, and the film's release, he thought he was finally over her...He felt different now, less wounded."
It's hard to work out who is innocent, and who is guilty (if that is the other of the title). Perhaps, all of them (all of us?) are both innocent and guilty, at some point in time, in the games we play.
Like catfishing itself, the novel gives us something to think and write about, and, only later (when we're less wounded by the experience), to chuckle about.
You might keep your version of the relationship in your memory, but I have my own version, and I'll keep it with mine.
SOUNDTRACK:
May 5, 2016
Uh-mazing. So good, it's kind of beyond being a novel. Reminiscent of Rachel Kushner, Janet Fitch and Mary Gaitskill, it's incredibly smart, inventive, stylish and fascinating. Plot- wise it follows two film maker friends from the 80s to present day, along with two other people who kind of get caught up in their films. There's masses of stuff about films and friendship, but really it's the writing that got me. I'm buying all of her books. Also, great cover.
March 14, 2016
This is a bracing niche book, but it explores some universal ideas. At times, it may even seem esoteric, because beyond embracing the love of cinema and filmmaking, it goes deeper, into the technical manipulation of film to convey a narrative message--or, even the veto of a message, or the search for non-bias. It also moved me as a study of observer and subject effect on phenomenon, whether it is film, phone, feminism, friendship, or social responsibility. Spiotta explores the complexity of narratives within the lens of a long-term friendship between two different women and their separate careers in film.
But let me go one further. It is also about the reckoning of the self, how maturity can help someone see the flaws of their ambitions, and how a passionate, dogged, relentless single goal can also be your own undoing. And whether this awareness of the self can lead to redemption.
It starts in 1980s Los Angeles, where Meadow Mori, a trust fund teen, meets Carrie Wexler, the daughter of a single mother, at an arty high school. They are both cineastes, and spend their formative teen years in each other’s company watching and analyzing an eclectic multitude of films. Their friendship extends to adulthood, where they both end up with distinguished careers, but on divergent ends of the cinema spectrum. Meadow is a purist who follows the path of edgy documentary films, and Carrie makes feminist mainstream comedies.
Meadow’s chosen artistic medium isn’t always sufficient to braid her art and her perception together: “…no camera or lens she had ever used was very good at capturing the simultaneous long and short view. Nothing like her eyes.”
But she keeps at it, and pushes that envelope further, but the audience she intended to reach may have unanticipated responses. Meadow gets down to the bone, but is that what people want to really see? Or do people want more of a projection of their fantasies?
The subtext of this book is like a fractured romance—the first line is “This is a love story” and then turns to a playfully rendered affair between high school senior Meadow and an unnamed man who may be Orson Welles. It later turns to a woman named Jelly, who has captured the hearts of Hollywood heavies by cold-calling and seducing them, only to vanish rather than meet these men face to face. In later years, she becomes a documentary project of Carrie’s, with unintended consequences.
Meadow is the brilliant progressive that channels her ideas to achieve her goals, but results don’t always satisfy. Carrie has a tamer view in cinematic art, and is just as preoccupied with finding harmony in her personal life as in her life as an artist. Both receive a measure of fame and a measure of emptiness.
The book goes back and forth in time, and slowly reveals more of the minds of Meadow and Carrie, as well as the effect on the subjects that participate in Meadow’s films. The construction is superb, with the story interspersed by transcripts of interviews, the mechanics of filmmaking, essays, and the study of film theories.
At intervals, the book is as disjointed as raw footage, before the edit. Our lives aren’t the fluid, seamless narratives that we may fantasize about in our slanted retrospection. We all splice and dice our memories to validate the idea of our personal narratives, and the author parallels that process in the architecture of this novel and the making of films. As we evolve, so do our narratives, as reliable or unreliable as the limits of our memories and imaginations.
“…I have some ideas. A directive, of sorts. I will work and I will work. I have said this is a love story, and indeed it begins that way: my love of cinema, as pure as I have known.”
But let me go one further. It is also about the reckoning of the self, how maturity can help someone see the flaws of their ambitions, and how a passionate, dogged, relentless single goal can also be your own undoing. And whether this awareness of the self can lead to redemption.
It starts in 1980s Los Angeles, where Meadow Mori, a trust fund teen, meets Carrie Wexler, the daughter of a single mother, at an arty high school. They are both cineastes, and spend their formative teen years in each other’s company watching and analyzing an eclectic multitude of films. Their friendship extends to adulthood, where they both end up with distinguished careers, but on divergent ends of the cinema spectrum. Meadow is a purist who follows the path of edgy documentary films, and Carrie makes feminist mainstream comedies.
Meadow’s chosen artistic medium isn’t always sufficient to braid her art and her perception together: “…no camera or lens she had ever used was very good at capturing the simultaneous long and short view. Nothing like her eyes.”
But she keeps at it, and pushes that envelope further, but the audience she intended to reach may have unanticipated responses. Meadow gets down to the bone, but is that what people want to really see? Or do people want more of a projection of their fantasies?
The subtext of this book is like a fractured romance—the first line is “This is a love story” and then turns to a playfully rendered affair between high school senior Meadow and an unnamed man who may be Orson Welles. It later turns to a woman named Jelly, who has captured the hearts of Hollywood heavies by cold-calling and seducing them, only to vanish rather than meet these men face to face. In later years, she becomes a documentary project of Carrie’s, with unintended consequences.
Meadow is the brilliant progressive that channels her ideas to achieve her goals, but results don’t always satisfy. Carrie has a tamer view in cinematic art, and is just as preoccupied with finding harmony in her personal life as in her life as an artist. Both receive a measure of fame and a measure of emptiness.
The book goes back and forth in time, and slowly reveals more of the minds of Meadow and Carrie, as well as the effect on the subjects that participate in Meadow’s films. The construction is superb, with the story interspersed by transcripts of interviews, the mechanics of filmmaking, essays, and the study of film theories.
At intervals, the book is as disjointed as raw footage, before the edit. Our lives aren’t the fluid, seamless narratives that we may fantasize about in our slanted retrospection. We all splice and dice our memories to validate the idea of our personal narratives, and the author parallels that process in the architecture of this novel and the making of films. As we evolve, so do our narratives, as reliable or unreliable as the limits of our memories and imaginations.
“…I have some ideas. A directive, of sorts. I will work and I will work. I have said this is a love story, and indeed it begins that way: my love of cinema, as pure as I have known.”
January 5, 2016
I wanted to love it, I heard so much hype. Lately I find myself at odds with so many rave reviews, so maybe I am missing something or just not 'hip' to the times... Yes, using the word hip likely confirms my suspicion but my young adult kids think I'm special.
Why I battled with this is because it did not flow for me. But there were lovely sentences.
"What a mystery the way things act on us, like secret messages just to you as you sit in the dark."
"This is what age is to me- that naked worn-out face."
"So now he was trotted out for quips, and sometimes he said disturbing things, uncomfortable things. He couldn't help it. He never learned, and I loved him for it."
The writing isn't bad at all, I just can't stand feeling like I m all over the place, I need to be submerged and I couldn't sink here into the characters. I know there are people who devour this type of pace, but sadly I am not seduced by books written in this vein.
The characters were never truly alive inside of me.
Why I battled with this is because it did not flow for me. But there were lovely sentences.
"What a mystery the way things act on us, like secret messages just to you as you sit in the dark."
"This is what age is to me- that naked worn-out face."
"So now he was trotted out for quips, and sometimes he said disturbing things, uncomfortable things. He couldn't help it. He never learned, and I loved him for it."
The writing isn't bad at all, I just can't stand feeling like I m all over the place, I need to be submerged and I couldn't sink here into the characters. I know there are people who devour this type of pace, but sadly I am not seduced by books written in this vein.
The characters were never truly alive inside of me.
July 9, 2016
This wasn't an easy read -- non-linear, filled with references to obscure films I've never even heard of, centered around women I didn't particularly like. But I love how smart it is, how Spiotta asks tough questions about the stories we tell ourselves and stories we tell others. Best of all she doesn't try to answer all the questions. This novel isn't entirely satisfying as a story, but it definitely got me thinking.
September 11, 2016
I could talk about this book all day. What it does with structure and form is so exciting. What is says about artistry and the process of creativity is insightful and profound. And don't even get me started on the female friendship. Vision/blindness, selfishness/selflessness, subversion/compliance, real/imagined, darkness/light Spiotta is a master of binaries. And good lord can the woman write!
May 19, 2017
Filmmakers Meadow and Carrie are friends in their youth; as adults, both are successful in different ways, but they become estranged, and each has a different story about what happens. Innocents and Others is an enjoyable, meandering journey through the friendship between these two women, the films they make, and the lives of characters peripheral to them. There is much to admire here: it's beautifully written, and the descriptions of films are stirring and vivid. Spiotta describes several of Meadow's documentaries so evocatively that I feel like images from them are stuck in my head. But the story is disjointed, and while this is clearly a deliberate choice – mirroring the process of editing raw footage – it's frustrating. The dialogue, which doesn't flow like natural speech (why do these characters have such an aversion to contractions?), compounds the problem. There's something artificial, too self-consciously unreal, about the people in Innocents and Others. To continue the cinematic theme, I felt a little like they were being played by bad, wooden actors.
A solid start to 2017, but not quite the immersive experience I had hoped. Onwards and upwards!
TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
A solid start to 2017, but not quite the immersive experience I had hoped. Onwards and upwards!
TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
March 11, 2016
My review for the Chicago Tribune:
From the start the essential quality of the Los Angeles novel has been loneliness. It's true across genres, across styles: Raymond Chandler, Charles Bukowski, Joan Didion, Bret Easton Ellis, Janet Fitch, Thomas Pynchon. Is it because of the peculiar sense of fallenness that's only possible in a place where 30 is old? Is it because of Los Angeles' accidental drifting shape, huge yet so rarely intimate? The preeminent novelist currently asking these questions is one of the city's natives, Dana Spiotta.
Spiotta's new novel, "Innocents and Others," concerns three varyingly isolated women in LA — Meadow, Carrie and Jelly — starting around the year 1984. Meadow and Carrie are high school friends who separately become successful filmmakers, Meadow working in experimental documentaries, Carrie in a more conventional style, writing and directing studio comedies. Jelly, meanwhile, is an overweight woman, suffering from temporary blindness, who to fend off her solitude starts phone relationships with influential men, offering them, with her gorgeous voice, a fantasia of youth and beauty. Eventually these storylines merge when Meadow decides to make a film about Jelly.
Spiotta is interested in the idea of documentation, and "Innocents and Others" is a blend of interviews, transcripts, and personal reminiscences — precisely the kind of archive at the center of her best novel, "Stone Arabia," which is about an anonymous rock musician who, never making it in real life, painstakingly creates a glory-filled counterfactual history of his career. Meadow's statement of artistic intent in this new novel recalls that strange project; it also sounds like a proxy for her creator's own. "I have always been attracted to afterlives," she says, "codas, postscripts, discursive asides, and especially misdirection."
This taste makes Spiotta a chancy kind of writer. (Even her prose in "Innocents and Others" veers between the superb — a quick lovely flash of "quilted farmland," for example — and the insipid, as when Meadow says of a youthful relationship, "Mostly we were happy, in the way you can be happy when you know something won't last forever. The way you can clutch the moment deeply and without holding back.") Her debut, "Lightning Field," was a spare, dryly funny anatomization of late youth in Los Angeles; its intriguing successor, "Eat the Document," about the aftermath of '70s radicalism, was closer to a failure than a success; "Stone Arabia," mashing up Zoe Leonard and "Play It As It Lays" in thin wild mercury language, had real magic to it.
"Innocents and Others" never quite rises to the same level, unfortunately. The problem is one of conception. The archive at the center of "Stone Arabia" felt like more than a conceit — a perfect manifestation of a certain kind of lost Hollywood dream. In this new book, by contrast, Spiotta's ideas seem to precede her characters and their emotions. It makes for an anemic, aimless narrative.
The character that illustrates this shortcoming best is Jelly, making those calls. Spiotta gathers interesting information about her origins in the community of "phreaking," the old art of conning the phone companies out of long-distance charges, but for the reader neither this subculture nor Jelly's lonely life ever become quite real. Instead they seem didactic, a means to an authorial moral about disconnection, separation, beauty.
Meadow is a more interesting character, particularly the movies Spiotta describes her making, but her raw-boned remoteness again reads as a top-down bestowal rather than a ground-up reality. The book's best scenes belong to its most prosaic character, Carrie, who late on assesses her intense high school friendship with Meadow warmly and intelligently and shrewdly, a flesh-and-blood human at last. Even her passing comments (she calls her wedding day "both too long and too short for her," which is just right) penetrate deeper than Meadow and Jelly's enigmatic gestural lives.
And yet, for all that, I felt glad at the end of "Innocents and Others" that Spiotta had written it. The recent fashions in fiction have favored fine-tuned varieties of realism, from Franzen to Knausgaard to Ferrante. Spiotta, by contrast, remains unswervingly committed to ideas — of spectatorship and simulation, of the potential aloneness of the never-being-alone of modern culture. And thematically she is growing, book-by-book, into an elusive but definite theme, of how much less we know ourselves in middle age than we do during the certainty of early adulthood. The very chanciness of her work, in the end, means that her weaker books can seem like the surest proof, paradoxically, of what a powerful writer she's become.
From the start the essential quality of the Los Angeles novel has been loneliness. It's true across genres, across styles: Raymond Chandler, Charles Bukowski, Joan Didion, Bret Easton Ellis, Janet Fitch, Thomas Pynchon. Is it because of the peculiar sense of fallenness that's only possible in a place where 30 is old? Is it because of Los Angeles' accidental drifting shape, huge yet so rarely intimate? The preeminent novelist currently asking these questions is one of the city's natives, Dana Spiotta.
Spiotta's new novel, "Innocents and Others," concerns three varyingly isolated women in LA — Meadow, Carrie and Jelly — starting around the year 1984. Meadow and Carrie are high school friends who separately become successful filmmakers, Meadow working in experimental documentaries, Carrie in a more conventional style, writing and directing studio comedies. Jelly, meanwhile, is an overweight woman, suffering from temporary blindness, who to fend off her solitude starts phone relationships with influential men, offering them, with her gorgeous voice, a fantasia of youth and beauty. Eventually these storylines merge when Meadow decides to make a film about Jelly.
Spiotta is interested in the idea of documentation, and "Innocents and Others" is a blend of interviews, transcripts, and personal reminiscences — precisely the kind of archive at the center of her best novel, "Stone Arabia," which is about an anonymous rock musician who, never making it in real life, painstakingly creates a glory-filled counterfactual history of his career. Meadow's statement of artistic intent in this new novel recalls that strange project; it also sounds like a proxy for her creator's own. "I have always been attracted to afterlives," she says, "codas, postscripts, discursive asides, and especially misdirection."
This taste makes Spiotta a chancy kind of writer. (Even her prose in "Innocents and Others" veers between the superb — a quick lovely flash of "quilted farmland," for example — and the insipid, as when Meadow says of a youthful relationship, "Mostly we were happy, in the way you can be happy when you know something won't last forever. The way you can clutch the moment deeply and without holding back.") Her debut, "Lightning Field," was a spare, dryly funny anatomization of late youth in Los Angeles; its intriguing successor, "Eat the Document," about the aftermath of '70s radicalism, was closer to a failure than a success; "Stone Arabia," mashing up Zoe Leonard and "Play It As It Lays" in thin wild mercury language, had real magic to it.
"Innocents and Others" never quite rises to the same level, unfortunately. The problem is one of conception. The archive at the center of "Stone Arabia" felt like more than a conceit — a perfect manifestation of a certain kind of lost Hollywood dream. In this new book, by contrast, Spiotta's ideas seem to precede her characters and their emotions. It makes for an anemic, aimless narrative.
The character that illustrates this shortcoming best is Jelly, making those calls. Spiotta gathers interesting information about her origins in the community of "phreaking," the old art of conning the phone companies out of long-distance charges, but for the reader neither this subculture nor Jelly's lonely life ever become quite real. Instead they seem didactic, a means to an authorial moral about disconnection, separation, beauty.
Meadow is a more interesting character, particularly the movies Spiotta describes her making, but her raw-boned remoteness again reads as a top-down bestowal rather than a ground-up reality. The book's best scenes belong to its most prosaic character, Carrie, who late on assesses her intense high school friendship with Meadow warmly and intelligently and shrewdly, a flesh-and-blood human at last. Even her passing comments (she calls her wedding day "both too long and too short for her," which is just right) penetrate deeper than Meadow and Jelly's enigmatic gestural lives.
And yet, for all that, I felt glad at the end of "Innocents and Others" that Spiotta had written it. The recent fashions in fiction have favored fine-tuned varieties of realism, from Franzen to Knausgaard to Ferrante. Spiotta, by contrast, remains unswervingly committed to ideas — of spectatorship and simulation, of the potential aloneness of the never-being-alone of modern culture. And thematically she is growing, book-by-book, into an elusive but definite theme, of how much less we know ourselves in middle age than we do during the certainty of early adulthood. The very chanciness of her work, in the end, means that her weaker books can seem like the surest proof, paradoxically, of what a powerful writer she's become.
December 28, 2019
“...the longed-for moment, the powerful mechanical thing speeding by and dwarfing you. It overwhelmed you, but even in the midst of it you knew it would be over soon. The noise, the movement, the friction of metal on metal: it will all pass you by.” A filmmaker experiences and films a passing train, there is meaning here if she can capture it.
Dana Spiotta is able to capture the delicate, even half-sensed moment and the powerful blows life delivers. Innocents and Others revolves around a lifelong relationship between two filmmakers, Carrie and Meadow. At times seeming polar opposites, what attracts them to each other? Humor for one thing. Being artists for another.
Spiotta’s ability to work with delicate nuance and not break it with heavy-handedness illuminates this friendship and their shared passion for art.
“That is the thing about films. They don’t change. You change. The immutability of the film (or a book or a painting or a piece of music) is something to measure yourself against. That is one of the things a great work of art does. It stays there waiting for you to come back to it, and it shows you who you are now, each time a little different.”
An excerpt of this novel ran in the New Yorker, I was excited, having read her other novel, but was baffled by the piece. It now makes sense in the context of the book. This is a great, tender and memorable novel that affected me deeply.
Dana Spiotta is able to capture the delicate, even half-sensed moment and the powerful blows life delivers. Innocents and Others revolves around a lifelong relationship between two filmmakers, Carrie and Meadow. At times seeming polar opposites, what attracts them to each other? Humor for one thing. Being artists for another.
Spiotta’s ability to work with delicate nuance and not break it with heavy-handedness illuminates this friendship and their shared passion for art.
“That is the thing about films. They don’t change. You change. The immutability of the film (or a book or a painting or a piece of music) is something to measure yourself against. That is one of the things a great work of art does. It stays there waiting for you to come back to it, and it shows you who you are now, each time a little different.”
An excerpt of this novel ran in the New Yorker, I was excited, having read her other novel, but was baffled by the piece. It now makes sense in the context of the book. This is a great, tender and memorable novel that affected me deeply.
Read
March 8, 2016Dana Spiotta is unlike any other writer, and a new book from her deserves a parade and fireworks. This one involves two friends from school, now filmmakers in LA, who cross paths with an intriguing older woman who seduces men through phone sex. Weird, funny, and wild, Innocents and Others is a cutting look at contemporary life filled with unnerving charm and warmth. Seriously, Spiotta is freaking amazing. She's special, like that band that you liked before everyone else liked them.
Tune in to our weekly podcast dedicated to all things new books, All The Books: http://bookriot.com/category/all-the-...
Tune in to our weekly podcast dedicated to all things new books, All The Books: http://bookriot.com/category/all-the-...
April 18, 2016
Tried to like this. Never made it past the first third. I'm very puzzled by all the great reviews. Thought the characters were weird, unappealing, and I couldn't care less about their lives. The extreme details on the equipment, film making techniques, and phone hacking were boring and bogged down whatever story existed. I'm being kind by giving it two stars, in part because many reviews said the last third of the book redeemed it somewhat...never made it that far. Life's too short.
September 3, 2016
I absolutely loved this novel. The complexity of humanity it is able to capture truly inspired me and moved me. Definitely one to read slow and spend some time understanding the depth of each character that Spiotta is able to build. Adding it to my favorites of 2016.
August 8, 2024
Girl!!!!
Second read for the coming uni year and it started bad. I didn’t like Meadow’s initial part cause I thought it felt too #femaleragevibes and reminded me of some recent books I read (Animal, Luster etc.). Also, I didn’t understand the relevance of the Jelly/Oz story… it was not looking good and if this wasn’t for school I would’ve probably DNF’d which would’ve been such a waste.
Innocents and Others (in the latter half) is so unique and a super enjoyable read littered with beautiful writing and an amazing depiction of a difficult female friendship. I LOVED Meadow’s documentaries and reading about how Meadow and Carrie’s lives went on over the years. The different styles (essay, play, internet comments) were all done really well and kept the book interesting. Overall, a true slay!
Second read for the coming uni year and it started bad. I didn’t like Meadow’s initial part cause I thought it felt too #femaleragevibes and reminded me of some recent books I read (Animal, Luster etc.). Also, I didn’t understand the relevance of the Jelly/Oz story… it was not looking good and if this wasn’t for school I would’ve probably DNF’d which would’ve been such a waste.
Innocents and Others (in the latter half) is so unique and a super enjoyable read littered with beautiful writing and an amazing depiction of a difficult female friendship. I LOVED Meadow’s documentaries and reading about how Meadow and Carrie’s lives went on over the years. The different styles (essay, play, internet comments) were all done really well and kept the book interesting. Overall, a true slay!
September 9, 2017
Cinema, cinema, cinema. Due donne, la loro amicizia. Qualche storia collaterale, con un'altra donna in evidenza, strana e affascinante. Riflessioni sull'arte, e in generale sulla vita. Ma soprattutto cinema, cinema, cinema. Ecco: per chi non è grandemente appassionato, c'è un po' troppo cinema in questo romanzo.
April 12, 2016
Published: 12 March 2016 01:30 PM, Dallas Morning News
The last time we were in Paris to visit my in-laws, I watched the kids so my husband could attend a screening at a film festival. He was so exhilarated by the movie that, as it ended, he felt connected to the like-minded cinephiles in the room, and wondered what kinds of chic and savvy Parisians he’d see when the lights came on.
“I looked around,” he said, “and saw I was surrounded by a bunch of old nerds.”
I had a similar feeling of brain communion with Dana Spiotta when I finished "Innocents and Others," a novel packed with references to movies that artfully emulates film-editing technique in its structure. I don’t know if that makes either of us old nerds.
As the book begins, the reader has an experience akin to watching the opening scenes of a skillfully constructed documentary, of being plunged into an engrossing story but not yet knowing what the core of that story is.
Spiotta builds her tale of two distinct female filmmakers and a visually impaired trickster through various narrative techniques — first-person essays, dialogue from films, movie analysis, interviews and third-person narration. Some of this at first seems disconnected, but it gradually becomes linked.
"Innocents and Others" opens with an essay by the fictional filmmaker Meadow Mori on a website called “Women and Film,” about how she fell in love with Orson Welles and went to live with him clandestinely when she was a teenage aspiring director and he was “old and fat.” Spiotta includes the comment thread, featuring a decisive remark by someone posting as thelongcut: “She is pulling your chain.”
Next Spiotta cuts to the story of Jelly and Oz. Nearly blinded by a meningitis infection, Jelly recovers some of her sight, but remains impaired. “She didn’t fully belong in either world, sighted or blind,” Spiotta writes. “She was like a character in a myth, doomed to wander between two places.” Jelly meets Oz, who was born blind, at the Center for the Blind in 1970 and they fall in love. Oz introduces her to “phone phreaking,” his hobby of exploring the telephone network and meeting other phreaks through clever tricks, such as whistling a precise series of tones that instruct the electronic switching system to connect his call. Jelly participates too — which is how she gets her unusual nickname. All phone phreaks use aliases because their activities are illegal.
The romance between Oz and Jelly sputters out and, as Jelly’s sight improves, she takes a job in phone sales. She discovers, however, that she enjoys seducing the men she chats with — not through dirty talk, but through the sheer act of listening intently to them. “To be heard is a gift you can give them, and after, they will then do what you suggest.” Eventually Jelly’s hobby consumes her, and she comes across a cache of movie-industry insiders’ phone numbers. Jelly loves films, and uses her knowledge to develop intimate phone relationships with these men.
Meanwhile, Meadow Mori and Carrie Wexler grow up as best friends at an artsy high school in Los Angeles in the 1980s, determined to become filmmakers. Meadow is drawn to experimental film and works in documentary, while Carrie relishes comedies and becomes an award-wining director in this genre. Spiotta intercuts the story of their friendship and of their work, failures and accomplishments with the Jelly narrative.
Innocents and Others is full of insights about relationships, how we perceive each other based on appearances, and of the practice of making films that can apply to creating any art.
Spiotta shows Meadow hand-splicing film and marking it with wax pencil, trying out ideas and failing until she gets it right. “It sickened her. Some of her ideas would fail no matter how hard she worked.” While Carrie develops a personal life independent from her career, Meadow becomes subsumed by her craft. Through her work as a documentarian, she thinks, “I am just trying to make myself. Out of looking at other people.”
Chapter by chapter, Innocents and Others is endearing, engaging and clever, but it never shows off. In fact I was dazzled by how this seemingly low-key tale about movie lovers hanging out, falling in and out of love, and playing around with their hobbies and their art, turned out to be so moving and brilliant. "Innocents and Others" is a work of art about making art that matters. Even old nerds can get into that.
Jenny Shank’s first novel, The Ringer, won the High Plains Book Award. Her short story “L’Homme De Ma Vie” will appear in the new issue of Barrelhouse.
http://www.dallasnews.com/lifestyles/...
The last time we were in Paris to visit my in-laws, I watched the kids so my husband could attend a screening at a film festival. He was so exhilarated by the movie that, as it ended, he felt connected to the like-minded cinephiles in the room, and wondered what kinds of chic and savvy Parisians he’d see when the lights came on.
“I looked around,” he said, “and saw I was surrounded by a bunch of old nerds.”
I had a similar feeling of brain communion with Dana Spiotta when I finished "Innocents and Others," a novel packed with references to movies that artfully emulates film-editing technique in its structure. I don’t know if that makes either of us old nerds.
As the book begins, the reader has an experience akin to watching the opening scenes of a skillfully constructed documentary, of being plunged into an engrossing story but not yet knowing what the core of that story is.
Spiotta builds her tale of two distinct female filmmakers and a visually impaired trickster through various narrative techniques — first-person essays, dialogue from films, movie analysis, interviews and third-person narration. Some of this at first seems disconnected, but it gradually becomes linked.
"Innocents and Others" opens with an essay by the fictional filmmaker Meadow Mori on a website called “Women and Film,” about how she fell in love with Orson Welles and went to live with him clandestinely when she was a teenage aspiring director and he was “old and fat.” Spiotta includes the comment thread, featuring a decisive remark by someone posting as thelongcut: “She is pulling your chain.”
Next Spiotta cuts to the story of Jelly and Oz. Nearly blinded by a meningitis infection, Jelly recovers some of her sight, but remains impaired. “She didn’t fully belong in either world, sighted or blind,” Spiotta writes. “She was like a character in a myth, doomed to wander between two places.” Jelly meets Oz, who was born blind, at the Center for the Blind in 1970 and they fall in love. Oz introduces her to “phone phreaking,” his hobby of exploring the telephone network and meeting other phreaks through clever tricks, such as whistling a precise series of tones that instruct the electronic switching system to connect his call. Jelly participates too — which is how she gets her unusual nickname. All phone phreaks use aliases because their activities are illegal.
The romance between Oz and Jelly sputters out and, as Jelly’s sight improves, she takes a job in phone sales. She discovers, however, that she enjoys seducing the men she chats with — not through dirty talk, but through the sheer act of listening intently to them. “To be heard is a gift you can give them, and after, they will then do what you suggest.” Eventually Jelly’s hobby consumes her, and she comes across a cache of movie-industry insiders’ phone numbers. Jelly loves films, and uses her knowledge to develop intimate phone relationships with these men.
Meanwhile, Meadow Mori and Carrie Wexler grow up as best friends at an artsy high school in Los Angeles in the 1980s, determined to become filmmakers. Meadow is drawn to experimental film and works in documentary, while Carrie relishes comedies and becomes an award-wining director in this genre. Spiotta intercuts the story of their friendship and of their work, failures and accomplishments with the Jelly narrative.
Innocents and Others is full of insights about relationships, how we perceive each other based on appearances, and of the practice of making films that can apply to creating any art.
Spiotta shows Meadow hand-splicing film and marking it with wax pencil, trying out ideas and failing until she gets it right. “It sickened her. Some of her ideas would fail no matter how hard she worked.” While Carrie develops a personal life independent from her career, Meadow becomes subsumed by her craft. Through her work as a documentarian, she thinks, “I am just trying to make myself. Out of looking at other people.”
Chapter by chapter, Innocents and Others is endearing, engaging and clever, but it never shows off. In fact I was dazzled by how this seemingly low-key tale about movie lovers hanging out, falling in and out of love, and playing around with their hobbies and their art, turned out to be so moving and brilliant. "Innocents and Others" is a work of art about making art that matters. Even old nerds can get into that.
Jenny Shank’s first novel, The Ringer, won the High Plains Book Award. Her short story “L’Homme De Ma Vie” will appear in the new issue of Barrelhouse.
http://www.dallasnews.com/lifestyles/...
May 7, 2016
Michiko Kakutani and I have one thing in common. We both think Dana Spiotta is all that as an author. The illustrious critic has called her “wonderfully gifted” in her review of Lightning Field; declared her second novel, Eat the Document “stunning”; and described her as “immensely talented” for Stone Arabia. I am in complete agreement with all those accolades. Since I don’t review for the New York Times, I can be even more personal and say that every one of her novels resonates with the life I have led as an aging free-love hippy with feminist leanings and an artistic bent. Like Dana Spiotta’s characters, I have never achieved any assured success and have suffered from successive identity crises.
Ms Spiotta’s fourth novel, Innocents and Others, reprises her themes: living in but feeling uncomfortable with American culture, engaging in somewhat fringe activities at large costs, and treading the shaky ground of female friendship. Meadow Mori was the privileged only child of indulgent parents in 1980s Los Angeles. She and her best friend Carrie dive into filmmaking as teens and both go on to creative careers, Mori making edgy documentaries and Carrie becoming commercially successful with feminist slanted women’s pictures. They are both committed to honesty and excellence but competition and professional jealousy threaten the deep bond that grew in their experimental days.
Woven between Meadow’s and Carrie’s chapters is one of Spiotta’s most inventive characters. Jelly (not her real name) began her professional life in a call center selling resort condos but discovered she had a gifted voice on the phone. She could get even the coldest called potential customer to talk and reveal himself, leading to a phenomenal sales record. After developing her own techniques of timing and persuasion but leaving the job out of dissatisfaction and low level guilt, as well as losing her boyfriend, she went on to assuage her loneliness by calling men of midlevel Hollywood fame, making them fall in love with her over the phone, and then bailing out at the moment they ask to meet her in person.
Jelly is in reality a consummate actress with her voice alone, but it is not clear what she is doing in this novel until by chance Meadow learns about her, tracks her down, and makes a documentary including her and a man who fell more deeply than most. In fact, Meadow has the uncanny ability to get her subjects to reveal themselves in ways that are psychologically almost pornographic. Though she wins awards and notoriety, she becomes disturbed by doubts about the morality of what she has produced. Her ultimate reinvention, another of Spiotta’s themes, is the third act in the cinematic plot that is Innocents and Others.
The novel demands quite a bit of the reader, something this reader craves, because of the entwining of lives that are each plots in themselves. Nothing is pat or expected, which leaves you wondering where the story is going. Everything lays outside the apparent veneer of American life so one’s reference points about how life should go are simply missing. When a fourth female character is introduced near the end, she is so not what she appears to be that even Meadow is shaken to the core right along with the reader.
The gifted, stunning, and talented Dana Spiotta did for me what each of her earlier novels have done. Left me aghast with admiration and desperately longing for the next novel right away. Though she had given me enough to ponder meanwhile.
Ms Spiotta’s fourth novel, Innocents and Others, reprises her themes: living in but feeling uncomfortable with American culture, engaging in somewhat fringe activities at large costs, and treading the shaky ground of female friendship. Meadow Mori was the privileged only child of indulgent parents in 1980s Los Angeles. She and her best friend Carrie dive into filmmaking as teens and both go on to creative careers, Mori making edgy documentaries and Carrie becoming commercially successful with feminist slanted women’s pictures. They are both committed to honesty and excellence but competition and professional jealousy threaten the deep bond that grew in their experimental days.
Woven between Meadow’s and Carrie’s chapters is one of Spiotta’s most inventive characters. Jelly (not her real name) began her professional life in a call center selling resort condos but discovered she had a gifted voice on the phone. She could get even the coldest called potential customer to talk and reveal himself, leading to a phenomenal sales record. After developing her own techniques of timing and persuasion but leaving the job out of dissatisfaction and low level guilt, as well as losing her boyfriend, she went on to assuage her loneliness by calling men of midlevel Hollywood fame, making them fall in love with her over the phone, and then bailing out at the moment they ask to meet her in person.
Jelly is in reality a consummate actress with her voice alone, but it is not clear what she is doing in this novel until by chance Meadow learns about her, tracks her down, and makes a documentary including her and a man who fell more deeply than most. In fact, Meadow has the uncanny ability to get her subjects to reveal themselves in ways that are psychologically almost pornographic. Though she wins awards and notoriety, she becomes disturbed by doubts about the morality of what she has produced. Her ultimate reinvention, another of Spiotta’s themes, is the third act in the cinematic plot that is Innocents and Others.
The novel demands quite a bit of the reader, something this reader craves, because of the entwining of lives that are each plots in themselves. Nothing is pat or expected, which leaves you wondering where the story is going. Everything lays outside the apparent veneer of American life so one’s reference points about how life should go are simply missing. When a fourth female character is introduced near the end, she is so not what she appears to be that even Meadow is shaken to the core right along with the reader.
The gifted, stunning, and talented Dana Spiotta did for me what each of her earlier novels have done. Left me aghast with admiration and desperately longing for the next novel right away. Though she had given me enough to ponder meanwhile.
July 20, 2016
My interview with Dana, about INNOCENTS, at Tin House: http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/42733/a-...
August 28, 2017
"Ascolti. Il contrario di questo sono le persone che si mettono a parlare nell'istante stesso in cui uno finisce di dire una cosa, di suonare o di cantare. In pratica si sovrappongono all'altro tanta è la smania di trasformare i propri pensieri in discorso. Non vedono l'ora di mettere le proprie parole dentro la cosa e farla loro. Non sopportano l'idea di non entrarci niente. Passano l'esperienza a formulare una reazione perché è solo alla loro reazione che danno importanza."
Molti spunti, tante riflessioni interessanti.
È un libro fondamentalmente sull'ascolto, sull'ascoltare gli altri, sull'ascoltarsi, sull'ascoltare la realtà circostante. E quindi anche su verità e illusione, sul filtro che applichiamo o non applichiamo alla realtà in ogni momento della vita, talvolta consciamente, altre volte senza accorgercene, e su come ce la ricreiamo. Ed è per questo che c'è tanto cinema.
È un libro intelligente ma discontinuo; sconnesso in modo non riuscito.
Direi quasi sia da leggere più per qualche riflessione che c'entra poco con la trama e per come disseziona e scompone il tema centrale in tante diramazioni, tante angolazioni e sottotrame nella Trama, che tutte approfondiscono e variano uno stesso punto con storie e prospettive diverse. Da leggere quasi per giocare a rintracciarle tutte, queste molteplici declinazioni di un motivo dominante.
Quanto alle parte più propriamente narrativa, c'è qualcosa che non va, non funziona, non si lega. Immagini abbozzate, certe sì di grande interesse, spezzoni, tanto per stare in tema, a volte troppo carichi di dettagli, altre troppo vaghi, quasi abbandonati. E un eccessivo virtuosismo nel passare tra le diverse forme, proprio un po' da scuola di scrittura creativa, in cui la Spiotta effettivamente insegna.
Molti spunti, tante riflessioni interessanti.
È un libro fondamentalmente sull'ascolto, sull'ascoltare gli altri, sull'ascoltarsi, sull'ascoltare la realtà circostante. E quindi anche su verità e illusione, sul filtro che applichiamo o non applichiamo alla realtà in ogni momento della vita, talvolta consciamente, altre volte senza accorgercene, e su come ce la ricreiamo. Ed è per questo che c'è tanto cinema.
È un libro intelligente ma discontinuo; sconnesso in modo non riuscito.
Direi quasi sia da leggere più per qualche riflessione che c'entra poco con la trama e per come disseziona e scompone il tema centrale in tante diramazioni, tante angolazioni e sottotrame nella Trama, che tutte approfondiscono e variano uno stesso punto con storie e prospettive diverse. Da leggere quasi per giocare a rintracciarle tutte, queste molteplici declinazioni di un motivo dominante.
Quanto alle parte più propriamente narrativa, c'è qualcosa che non va, non funziona, non si lega. Immagini abbozzate, certe sì di grande interesse, spezzoni, tanto per stare in tema, a volte troppo carichi di dettagli, altre troppo vaghi, quasi abbandonati. E un eccessivo virtuosismo nel passare tra le diverse forme, proprio un po' da scuola di scrittura creativa, in cui la Spiotta effettivamente insegna.
March 9, 2016
Being a huge lover of both film and good novels, Innocents and Others was a delight for me (and let’s not get started on that comforter on the front cover, I have one exactly like it!) I’m not always a fan of books that do not have a concrete narrative, but I didn’t mind the array of essays, internet comments, vignettes, etc that Dana Spiotta uses to make this novel a whole. The first essay grabbed me instantly, and while I think that my favorite part of the book, the rest certainly didn’t disappoint. Realizing a twist about the that first essay I love towards the end of the book is very rewarding as well.
The only reason I’m not giving it 5 stars is because I wanted more from the characters. Spiotta’s writing is rich and enveloping, but I needed more character development. I wanted to know more about the 3 women who circle each other throughout the book. The end left me a bit cold, and with some unanswered questions that are still lingering. However, it is a book that doesn’t adhere to anything I have ever read before, so I suppose I cannot ask for too much in this regard.
A definite recommendation for any book lovers who are also film studies fans. It was released yesterday!
The only reason I’m not giving it 5 stars is because I wanted more from the characters. Spiotta’s writing is rich and enveloping, but I needed more character development. I wanted to know more about the 3 women who circle each other throughout the book. The end left me a bit cold, and with some unanswered questions that are still lingering. However, it is a book that doesn’t adhere to anything I have ever read before, so I suppose I cannot ask for too much in this regard.
A definite recommendation for any book lovers who are also film studies fans. It was released yesterday!
February 5, 2017
I enjoyed "Innocents and Others" immensely. I feel like I knew these women. I can’t think of another novel in recent memory that painted such a true picture of a complicated friendship. The push and pull of relationships as we grow older and apart is something I think about a great deal, and the dynamics between Meadow and Carrie are really sticking with me. The basic premise -- two L.A. childhood friends grow up to be filmmakers, one an avant-garde boundary pusher and the other a people-pleasing mainstream director -- belies its Hollywood trappings and morphs into a much more universal meta narrative not just about friendship, but about privacy and the fictions we make to present ourselves and our ideas to the world. And the damage it does to innocents and others. Beautifully written, with great economy of expression, and yet suffused with the proper amount of emotion. Dana Spiotta is one of the great American writers working today, a true original. I can't wait for her next book. I look forward to reading this one again.
February 18, 2025
Wenn ihr mich über Filme, Schauspieler und allem, was damit zusammen hängt. Ausfragen würdet, müsste ich spätestens ab Ende der 90er kapitulierend die Hände heben und Euch mit einem klaren „Ich bin raus“ deutlich machen, dass ich so gut wie keine Ahnung hab. Doch Bücher übers Filme machen, wie zum Beispiel „Lichtspiel“ von Daniel Kehlmann finde ich reizvoll und interessant. Also stürzte ich mich in diesen Text und landete auf dem Bauch.
Meadow und Carrie sind zwei Filmemacherinnen und außer dass sie die gleiche Profession haben, unterscheiden Sie sich in allem. Während die erste aus privilegierten Verhältnissen stammend, sich dazu entschieden hat, experimentierfreudig die Vielfältigkeit des Handwerks auszuprobieren, geht die zweite solide an die Sache heran. Sie bedient den Mainstream, denn sie braucht das Geld.
Sie sind beide recht erfolgreich, und erobern diese Männerdomäne in einer Zeit, in der das gar nicht so einfach war. (nicht dass es das heute wäre). Wir sind in den 80ern und die dekadente Gleichgültigkeit der spaßzentrieren Szene kommt auch ziemlich gut rüber. Genauso gut tauchen wir in den Ehrgeiz ein, den die beiden Freundinnen an den Tag legen. Eine Beziehung zu einem Mann, der die Geschichte nach seinem Tod über eine der beiden Protagonistinnen an die Öffentlichkeit dringen lassen möchte, spielt auch noch eine Rolle aber tatsächlich nur eine sehr kleine.
Dominiert wird der Plot vom Filme machen und zwar genauso eigenwillig wie die Figuren, die hier auftauchen.
Das passiert in Dialogen, die ins Leere führen, drehbuchartigen Interviews, Kurzgeschichten und Fragmenten. Dazwischen immer wieder seitenweise Handlung, die ich in keinem Zusammenhang mit den kurzweiligen, aber manchmal überzogenen Stilmitteln fand. Wer denkt dass das unglaublich anstrengend klingt der hat meinem Empfinden nach Recht.
Als ich dann merkte, dass die Geschichten von Jelly nicht nur einfach kleine Pointen setzen, sondern ein Teil der Handlung sind ging es mir zwar zuerst ein bisschen leichter, von der Hand, diesen Text zu verstehen, doch schnell verstrickte ich mich wieder in eine Mischung aus Verwirrung und Langeweile.
Ich wusste manchmal überhaupt nicht mehr, wo ich hier dran bin und ihr könnt euch denken, dass meine Freude beim Lesen dadurch nicht größer wurde.
Meines Erachtens hat die Autorin einfach zu viel gewollt. Hätte sie sich fast ausschließlich auf die bunte Mischung an filmischen Ausdrucksmitteln beschränkt und diese locker miteinander verbunden, hätte mir das ganze mehr Spaß gemacht, als dieses immer wieder rausgerissen werden aus der Handlung. Ich hatte manchmal das Gefühl, man wird in einen Shaker gesteckt, mit allem möglichen Text-Schnickschnack durchgeschüttelt und dann wieder ausgeschüttet, dreht sich dann dreimal im Kreis und muss sich wieder neu orientieren.
In einigen Rezensionen steht, dass das Ende sie wieder abgeholt hat. Soweit ist es bei mir nicht gekommen. Hier ist er also mein erster Abbruch eines Rezi- Exemplars. Okay, es geschah erst auf Seite 221 aber dann war die Luft bei mir endgültig raus. Es hat einfach nicht sollen sein.
Trotzdem hat diese Lektüre einen gewissen Reiz und wird deshalb auch nicht bei mir ausziehen. Ich kann mir gut vorstellen, dass ich zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt vielleicht Lust bekomme das Buch noch mal mit anderen Augen zu lesen. Besonders jetzt wo ich weiß, wo der Hase lang läuft.
Ich weiß jetzt gar nicht so recht, wem ich dieses Buch empfehlen kann. Wenn ihr sehr experimentierfreudig und ein absoluter Film Freak seid, dann versucht es vielleicht mal mit diesem Roman.
Meadow und Carrie sind zwei Filmemacherinnen und außer dass sie die gleiche Profession haben, unterscheiden Sie sich in allem. Während die erste aus privilegierten Verhältnissen stammend, sich dazu entschieden hat, experimentierfreudig die Vielfältigkeit des Handwerks auszuprobieren, geht die zweite solide an die Sache heran. Sie bedient den Mainstream, denn sie braucht das Geld.
Sie sind beide recht erfolgreich, und erobern diese Männerdomäne in einer Zeit, in der das gar nicht so einfach war. (nicht dass es das heute wäre). Wir sind in den 80ern und die dekadente Gleichgültigkeit der spaßzentrieren Szene kommt auch ziemlich gut rüber. Genauso gut tauchen wir in den Ehrgeiz ein, den die beiden Freundinnen an den Tag legen. Eine Beziehung zu einem Mann, der die Geschichte nach seinem Tod über eine der beiden Protagonistinnen an die Öffentlichkeit dringen lassen möchte, spielt auch noch eine Rolle aber tatsächlich nur eine sehr kleine.
Dominiert wird der Plot vom Filme machen und zwar genauso eigenwillig wie die Figuren, die hier auftauchen.
Das passiert in Dialogen, die ins Leere führen, drehbuchartigen Interviews, Kurzgeschichten und Fragmenten. Dazwischen immer wieder seitenweise Handlung, die ich in keinem Zusammenhang mit den kurzweiligen, aber manchmal überzogenen Stilmitteln fand. Wer denkt dass das unglaublich anstrengend klingt der hat meinem Empfinden nach Recht.
Als ich dann merkte, dass die Geschichten von Jelly nicht nur einfach kleine Pointen setzen, sondern ein Teil der Handlung sind ging es mir zwar zuerst ein bisschen leichter, von der Hand, diesen Text zu verstehen, doch schnell verstrickte ich mich wieder in eine Mischung aus Verwirrung und Langeweile.
Ich wusste manchmal überhaupt nicht mehr, wo ich hier dran bin und ihr könnt euch denken, dass meine Freude beim Lesen dadurch nicht größer wurde.
Meines Erachtens hat die Autorin einfach zu viel gewollt. Hätte sie sich fast ausschließlich auf die bunte Mischung an filmischen Ausdrucksmitteln beschränkt und diese locker miteinander verbunden, hätte mir das ganze mehr Spaß gemacht, als dieses immer wieder rausgerissen werden aus der Handlung. Ich hatte manchmal das Gefühl, man wird in einen Shaker gesteckt, mit allem möglichen Text-Schnickschnack durchgeschüttelt und dann wieder ausgeschüttet, dreht sich dann dreimal im Kreis und muss sich wieder neu orientieren.
In einigen Rezensionen steht, dass das Ende sie wieder abgeholt hat. Soweit ist es bei mir nicht gekommen. Hier ist er also mein erster Abbruch eines Rezi- Exemplars. Okay, es geschah erst auf Seite 221 aber dann war die Luft bei mir endgültig raus. Es hat einfach nicht sollen sein.
Trotzdem hat diese Lektüre einen gewissen Reiz und wird deshalb auch nicht bei mir ausziehen. Ich kann mir gut vorstellen, dass ich zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt vielleicht Lust bekomme das Buch noch mal mit anderen Augen zu lesen. Besonders jetzt wo ich weiß, wo der Hase lang läuft.
Ich weiß jetzt gar nicht so recht, wem ich dieses Buch empfehlen kann. Wenn ihr sehr experimentierfreudig und ein absoluter Film Freak seid, dann versucht es vielleicht mal mit diesem Roman.
Read
March 7, 2024soooo sally rooney-core
April 12, 2016
Start reading a story about a high school film fanatic whose senior project involves aping an urban legend involving her favorite filmmaker. And then, upon successful completion, meets the elderly gent, moves into his house, loves him actually into his final days of life. She steals into the garage for her stowed car on the night that he dies, and no one -- certainly not her parents -- ever knows that she wasn’t in upstate New York recreating films for the summer before college.
Cut to a strangely inserted story about phone freaking, young love, blindness, anonymity, expectation.
What the what. Dana Spiotta’s novel “Innocents and Others” is inexplicable. A series of mismatched chapters and characters that never really clicks into something that feels like a fully-formed big picture. Maybe it’s not you, it’s me. The New York Times called it “brilliant.”
It starts with Meadow watching, re-watching, rewatching again, 20 times, her film idol’s signature piece. Her understanding of the movie changes so many times over three days and afterward, she tells him of her project. They meet up, she moves in, they have a reclusive affair that ends only when he dies and only lives on in his love letters to her. From there she moves to New York and works on the projects she claimed to have been working on while she was really hiding out in a modest Los Angeles home (with its own screening room). Her lifelong best friend Carrie is also interested in films, but more the movie kind. Big hits. Accessible feminism. Not the art-documentaries that Meadow bleeds into from some eccentric living situation far, far from mainstream culture.
Gah. I’m making this sound so good. And parts were!
Except that there are Oz and Jelly. The former is blind, the latter is too -- but her eyesight is improving. During dimmer times, Oz gets her hooked on phone culture. This underbelly of people who find ways around long-distance codes and just spend time … chatting. Jelly, not her real name, starts cold-calling the almost-famous and developing intimate friendships. Not phone sex, but phone intimacy, phone spooning. She gets really caught up with one man, specifically, but when the time comes for a old-fashioned face-to-face, she skips the trip.
This storyline eventually intersects with Meadow’s, but not satisfyingly. More of a “You told me about this for this?!”
There is also a problem with a pretentious filmmaker as protagonist: Describing all the pretentious films. There are obscure references and styles and long descriptions about Meadow’s technique and influences. It’s like, See Meadow Make Salami.
Anyway, Meadow and Carrie go through rough stuff (you don’t like my work-you don’t like my work either bullshit) and so this is also a story about friendship and time and art.
This is another one of those books that rings better in your mind long after you’ve finished it than while you’re slogging through the director’s cut of a fictional documentary.
Full disclosure: I have a problem with lit labels. I want fiction to be invented (exceptions made for celebrity authors) and novels to not be linked short stories. Had this been listed as the latter, I’d be more it-was-fine-I-guess. As is, there were big stretches of huh?
Anyway, I loved her last book “Stone Arabia.”
Cut to a strangely inserted story about phone freaking, young love, blindness, anonymity, expectation.
What the what. Dana Spiotta’s novel “Innocents and Others” is inexplicable. A series of mismatched chapters and characters that never really clicks into something that feels like a fully-formed big picture. Maybe it’s not you, it’s me. The New York Times called it “brilliant.”
It starts with Meadow watching, re-watching, rewatching again, 20 times, her film idol’s signature piece. Her understanding of the movie changes so many times over three days and afterward, she tells him of her project. They meet up, she moves in, they have a reclusive affair that ends only when he dies and only lives on in his love letters to her. From there she moves to New York and works on the projects she claimed to have been working on while she was really hiding out in a modest Los Angeles home (with its own screening room). Her lifelong best friend Carrie is also interested in films, but more the movie kind. Big hits. Accessible feminism. Not the art-documentaries that Meadow bleeds into from some eccentric living situation far, far from mainstream culture.
Gah. I’m making this sound so good. And parts were!
Except that there are Oz and Jelly. The former is blind, the latter is too -- but her eyesight is improving. During dimmer times, Oz gets her hooked on phone culture. This underbelly of people who find ways around long-distance codes and just spend time … chatting. Jelly, not her real name, starts cold-calling the almost-famous and developing intimate friendships. Not phone sex, but phone intimacy, phone spooning. She gets really caught up with one man, specifically, but when the time comes for a old-fashioned face-to-face, she skips the trip.
This storyline eventually intersects with Meadow’s, but not satisfyingly. More of a “You told me about this for this?!”
There is also a problem with a pretentious filmmaker as protagonist: Describing all the pretentious films. There are obscure references and styles and long descriptions about Meadow’s technique and influences. It’s like, See Meadow Make Salami.
Anyway, Meadow and Carrie go through rough stuff (you don’t like my work-you don’t like my work either bullshit) and so this is also a story about friendship and time and art.
This is another one of those books that rings better in your mind long after you’ve finished it than while you’re slogging through the director’s cut of a fictional documentary.
Full disclosure: I have a problem with lit labels. I want fiction to be invented (exceptions made for celebrity authors) and novels to not be linked short stories. Had this been listed as the latter, I’d be more it-was-fine-I-guess. As is, there were big stretches of huh?
Anyway, I loved her last book “Stone Arabia.”
May 15, 2016
I enjoyed reading this book which centers around two female film makers who meet in high school: Meadow, an avant-garde documentarian and Carrie, who is a more main stream director, but with a subversive streak. Twisting throughout their narratives are two potential subjects for Meadow’s documentaries: Jelly, a woman who uses the phone to befriend rich and famous men and Sarah, a woman in prison for killing her boyfriend and child.
I thought it was interesting how the novel was structured and how the author chose to reveal the women’s individual stories. In some ways The Innocents and Others; reminded me of Rachel Kushner’s The Flame Throwers; , another novel about art, but it didn’t set me on fire the way The Flame Throwers; did. I am not sure I really grasped what this novel was about or what it set out to achieve. I think it might be about truth vs. fiction and how a person can be manipulated by being shown a carefully edited version of truth. I also think it is also about the difficulty conveying truth in art because the medium (canvas, film, notes, clay, stone etc.) constrains the idea; the idea has to be edited to fit within the medium, which may limit or in fact modify the original intention. In any case, the book made me think a little about this quote from Nietzsche (which I read in The Goldfinch; not like I actually read Nietzsche or anything): "Wir haben die Kunst, damit wir nicht an der Wahrheit zugrunde gehen." "We have art so we do not perish from reality."
I thought it was interesting how the novel was structured and how the author chose to reveal the women’s individual stories. In some ways The Innocents and Others; reminded me of Rachel Kushner’s The Flame Throwers; , another novel about art, but it didn’t set me on fire the way The Flame Throwers; did. I am not sure I really grasped what this novel was about or what it set out to achieve. I think it might be about truth vs. fiction and how a person can be manipulated by being shown a carefully edited version of truth. I also think it is also about the difficulty conveying truth in art because the medium (canvas, film, notes, clay, stone etc.) constrains the idea; the idea has to be edited to fit within the medium, which may limit or in fact modify the original intention. In any case, the book made me think a little about this quote from Nietzsche (which I read in The Goldfinch; not like I actually read Nietzsche or anything): "Wir haben die Kunst, damit wir nicht an der Wahrheit zugrunde gehen." "We have art so we do not perish from reality."
April 15, 2016
Innocents and Others has some of the best chapters I've read this year. There's the first chapter where a filmmaker, Meadow, describes her might or might not have happened teenage love affair with a film legend. There's the story of Jelly who captivates men over the phone using only her voice. Eventually Meadow makes a documentary about Jelly, and we are treated to a merging of Jelly's vocal art, Meadow's visual art and Spiotta's written art. In part, the novel is about the artistic process and the blinders artists must wear to produce their product. It is full of interesting episodes in the lives of Meadow, Jelly and Meadow's oldest friend Carrie.
Unfortunately, I found that the book petered out in the last 60 or so pages. I just couldn't understand why I should find this course of events interesting. Real life may peter out in this manner, but a larger-than-life novel - which this most certainly is - needs to deliver on the expectations it has set up.
Unfortunately, I found that the book petered out in the last 60 or so pages. I just couldn't understand why I should find this course of events interesting. Real life may peter out in this manner, but a larger-than-life novel - which this most certainly is - needs to deliver on the expectations it has set up.
September 30, 2019
There were some interesting ideas about the narratives we construct for ourselves and how those personal journeys can manifest through art (particularly film / documentaries in this case). However, I felt like the characters lacked the depth / self-exploration that I usually need to feel really compelled by a story. They all seemed to be kind of moving through time and space without any real motive or reflection to their actions. Still, not a bad read.
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