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This was okay, but my hopes were a bit higher after Evelyn Hugo, which I really liked. Both were by Taylor Jenkins Reid within her “famous women” universe, so I feel compelled to compare them.
This had a lot going for it— it was well written in the oral history style, with nicely distinctive voices for the characters. It also did a thing that interests me a lot, examine and dramatize the creative process. Often times stories depicting artists just show their art kind of springing fully formed into the world, but this actually told a compelling story about the actual development of the meaningful work. I enjoyed that a lot, particularly when a character makes a creative choice that demonstrates growth in the journey they were on. It especially impressed me because the art in question was music, which is a notoriously difficult thing to write about evocatively. One might as well “dance about architecture,” as they say. And I am so music-ignorant— it’s the huge major gap in my genres of artistic knowledge —that I often have a hard time understanding the way people discuss it. But Reid managed to describe songs and the process of creating them very effectively, such that even my dumb ass felt like I could get a sense of what the work was like.
But I think one of the primary reasons I enjoyed Evelyn Hugo more than Daisy Jones (both the books and the characters) was because Evelyn felt very flawed and human, while Daisy just felt kind of archetypical and one-dimensional. Evelyn fights tooth and nail for things, overcomes real challenges, and has deep human flaws like self-centeredness and toxic ambition that influence her choices and make her feel real and human. Daisy is just superhumanly talented and charismatic and falls ass backwards into basically everything she wants, despite not really trying or working— and the one thing she does want but can’t have, the narrative makes it plain she’s basically already got it in all ways but one, and adds like a PS saying “But she can have it in the end!”
I’m realizing how much I dislike Most Special Boy/Girl in the World narratives. Not stories about people who are special, which of course can be fascinating. But when the whole world seems to be in awe of the character and props them up, with no counterpoint, no human frailty to balance and give it depth, or at least with the idea they did something to earn it in a meaningful way.
I’m also not sure how to feel about the heavy reliance on the art created in-universe being autobiographical. I know why writers writing about artists do that— it’s the easiest way to make the art they’re creating comment on the artist-characters’ journeys. And I can’t say that, as an example of that tactic, it wasn’t executed well. But it’s kind of played out to me and feels a bit lazy, rather than trying to make the in-story art speak to the meta journeys more obliquely or indirectly.
In fact, this story kind of DEPENDED on the artist-characters’ work being OBVIOUSLY autobiographical, that you could literally see what was going on in their lives by their public personas and performances onstage. I know that they were modeled on Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham, who may actually have been living out a lot of their own romance in their work and performances. But I actually think that plays into a huge fallacy, of artists in general and famous artists in particular, that you can always interpret their work as authentic representations of themselves. Like, Hollywood is super fake, a matter of persona and construction and carefully crafted imagery to capture imaginations and sell records. Just because that rock star is really good at LOOKING like he’s in love when he sings doesn’t mean he is— if he weren’t, he probably wouldn’t be so famous that you’ve heard of him, and can watch him perform with such a high profile. Evelyn Hugo did a much better job of exposing the falseness famous people adopt to build their careers in the public eye, which felt more real to me.
This had a lot going for it— it was well written in the oral history style, with nicely distinctive voices for the characters. It also did a thing that interests me a lot, examine and dramatize the creative process. Often times stories depicting artists just show their art kind of springing fully formed into the world, but this actually told a compelling story about the actual development of the meaningful work. I enjoyed that a lot, particularly when a character makes a creative choice that demonstrates growth in the journey they were on. It especially impressed me because the art in question was music, which is a notoriously difficult thing to write about evocatively. One might as well “dance about architecture,” as they say. And I am so music-ignorant— it’s the huge major gap in my genres of artistic knowledge —that I often have a hard time understanding the way people discuss it. But Reid managed to describe songs and the process of creating them very effectively, such that even my dumb ass felt like I could get a sense of what the work was like.
But I think one of the primary reasons I enjoyed Evelyn Hugo more than Daisy Jones (both the books and the characters) was because Evelyn felt very flawed and human, while Daisy just felt kind of archetypical and one-dimensional. Evelyn fights tooth and nail for things, overcomes real challenges, and has deep human flaws like self-centeredness and toxic ambition that influence her choices and make her feel real and human. Daisy is just superhumanly talented and charismatic and falls ass backwards into basically everything she wants, despite not really trying or working— and the one thing she does want but can’t have, the narrative makes it plain she’s basically already got it in all ways but one, and adds like a PS saying “But she can have it in the end!”
I’m realizing how much I dislike Most Special Boy/Girl in the World narratives. Not stories about people who are special, which of course can be fascinating. But when the whole world seems to be in awe of the character and props them up, with no counterpoint, no human frailty to balance and give it depth, or at least with the idea they did something to earn it in a meaningful way.
I’m also not sure how to feel about the heavy reliance on the art created in-universe being autobiographical. I know why writers writing about artists do that— it’s the easiest way to make the art they’re creating comment on the artist-characters’ journeys. And I can’t say that, as an example of that tactic, it wasn’t executed well. But it’s kind of played out to me and feels a bit lazy, rather than trying to make the in-story art speak to the meta journeys more obliquely or indirectly.
In fact, this story kind of DEPENDED on the artist-characters’ work being OBVIOUSLY autobiographical, that you could literally see what was going on in their lives by their public personas and performances onstage. I know that they were modeled on Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham, who may actually have been living out a lot of their own romance in their work and performances. But I actually think that plays into a huge fallacy, of artists in general and famous artists in particular, that you can always interpret their work as authentic representations of themselves. Like, Hollywood is super fake, a matter of persona and construction and carefully crafted imagery to capture imaginations and sell records. Just because that rock star is really good at LOOKING like he’s in love when he sings doesn’t mean he is— if he weren’t, he probably wouldn’t be so famous that you’ve heard of him, and can watch him perform with such a high profile. Evelyn Hugo did a much better job of exposing the falseness famous people adopt to build their careers in the public eye, which felt more real to me.
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