Why Charlie Kaufman Is Us

[Otto]

"It's Charlie Kaufman's world. We just live in it."

"The day after I first saw Kaufman's movie "Adaptation," my wife and I 
took our daughter to a birthday party. It was mid-December, an afternoon 
of flat white sunlight, washed out in that Southern California winter 
way. At the door, a tangle of balloons announced the festivities in 
orange and blue and red. Inside, kids raced by in groups of twos and 
threes while parents clustered in the corners, trying not to spill their 
coffee, chatting stiffly among themselves. One of the very first things 
you learn about birthday parties is that no one over the age of 6 or 7 
wants to be there, yet when your children are young, you have no choice 
but to stay. So you look for a place to install yourself, and try to 
appear engaged—no matter how uncomfortable you feel. It's a curious 
disconnect between inner and outer reality, not unlike the existential 
tension of a Kaufman film. How did I get here? you keep asking. And more 
important: How do I get out?
(...)
Twenty-some years ago, in the introduction to "Slow Learner," a 
collection of his early short stories, Thomas Pynchon (another American 
allegorist) reflected on what makes fiction resonate. "When we speak of 
'seriousness' in fiction," he wrote, "ultimately we are talking about an 
attitude toward death—how characters may act in its presence, for 
example, or how they handle it when it isn't so immediate." It's a good 
point, but it overlooks the corollary, which is that at the heart of our 
attitude toward death is our attitude toward life. For Kaufman, life is 
chaos, and we have no choice but to make sense of it as best we can."

David Ulin, LA Times, May 14, 2006
http://tinyurl.com/kspzv

	

	
		
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