I recently discovered a book written in 1890 called The Young Visiters. Daisy Ashford penned the novel as 9 year old and later, in her 20s, shared it for publication, through a rather complicated, but interesting series of circumstances. 

Part of the book's success in selling millions of copies had to do with a child’s bluntness in describing adult vulnerabilities.

What strikes me most is not the book itself (although it is uncannily mature for a child of her age to write, misspellings and all) but what the writer said years later:

 “I can never feel all the nice things that have been said about ‘The Young Visiters’ are really due to me at all, but to a Daisy Ashford of so long ago that she seems another person."

I am by no means a Jane Austen fan, yet I find this book fascinating and actually kind of funny:

from Kindle Highlights:

When I say “ruin,” I don’t mean the way you might, say, ruin a silk blouse by chasing a cat into a juniper bush. I mean the way you might ruin the song “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by telling someone that Bonnie Tyler originally meant it to be about vampires (this is true). I’ve now upended whatever uncomplicated associations you had with this song, and you’ll never be able to hear it without thinking of vampires again, but I’ve made it much more interesting. Anyway, English professors have lots of tools at our disposal for ruining your favorite books, and the way I prefer to ruin Pride and Prejudice is by pointing out how literature trains women to spend their time changing assholes into sensitive men instead of overthrowing the patriarchy.

.....>

my students like me even though I ruin it. They tell me I’m “relatable” and “super sweet and nerdy” (this was in an anonymous online review, and honestly, how very dare you). They also once said I was “the best birth control.” (That was when I was hugely, embarrassingly pregnant. Like, I texted a picture of myself to one of my best friends and instead of responding with “you’re glowing” or even “so excited,” she wrote back, “you look like a UFO.”) The birth control comment is not really related to my habit of ruining Pride and Prejudice, but I think it gives you a sense of what it’s like to study Jane Austen with me. That is, taking a class with me is all fun and games until you’re hugging your roommate in the English department lounge because you realized that you’ve been spending your time and energy and attention on taciturn or emotionally unavailable people, believing they are going to turn out to be slow-burn romantic heroes like Mr. Darcy—when really, they are often just assholes.

For one thing, as she points out, the silencing of women's voices is not exactly a new phenomenon. "If you think about Mary Shelley, how many women - even if they were, y'know, writing under their sewing, like the Brontes or something - could get published in the 19th century? Like, five?! I know there were more than five, but very, very few. That's also the motivation for me to make this, right? I have a lot of things to say, and so does the Bride, so does Jessie, so does Annette."

We accept the point, and we certainly wouldn't want anyone to think that the words

"A #MeToo Movie!" should be emblazoned above the title on the poster. But THE BRIDE! remains a political (with a small p) movie - at the same time as being exuberant fun. -from

SFX magazine

I recently saw Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride!, with Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale, set in 1930s Chicago, the "punk rock feminist reimagining" of Bride of Frankenstein . And I have to confess: I really, really liked it.

The trades have crunched the numbers. According to Deadline, this $80 million monster movie opened to a disastrous $7.3 million domestically and could lose $90 million . Variety called it a bomb. Reason magazine ran a scathing review declaring there's "not a single scene, line reading, or fleeting moment that lands" . The Daily Beast said it's "haphazardly stitched together" and "DOA" .

And yet. 

There I was, completely locked in watching Buckley's Bride, with her frizzed-out hair, that black bile stain on her face, that strange magnetic stillness, trying to figure out who she is in a world that didn't ask for her . There's a moment in the trailer where she asks, "Was I just the same before the accident?" and Bale's Monster replies, "There wasn't any accident. Everything we did, we did it on purpose" . 

Am I crazy? Or is The Bride! exactly the kind of movie that becomes a cult classic years later?

Maggie Gyllenhaal apparently had too many ideas: female empowerment movie, Bonnie & Clyde tragedy, punk rock monster musical, meta-commentary with Mary Shelley's ghost possessing the Bride . Testing indicated she needed to "strip back" the concepts. She didn't . The result? A movie one commenter on Deadline called "one of the worst movies I ever saw" while another in the same comment section said "I fully enjoyed every minute."

Christian Bale does a full "Puttin' on the Ritz" number—an homage to Young Frankenstein that apparently lands somewhere between "hysterically brilliant" and "completely baffling" depending on who you ask . Jessie Buckley is running on pure id, playing both the Bride and the ghost of Mary Shelley . Critics agree the acting is committed, the costumes are stunning, the cinematography is gorgeous . The movie looks like a cult classic, even if it doesn't always play like one.

The "Me Too" Climax. I have to mention this: the film's climax literally involves the Bride repeatedly shouting "Me too!" at no one in particular . Is that on-the-nose? Absolutely. Is that also the kind of moment that gets turned into a GIF, gets analyzed in film school essays, gets defended as "actually, it's deliberately Brechtian by fans in 2035? You bet it is.

The thing is, buried under all the "woke nonsense" criticism and the "this is the last vestige of pre-vibe-shift culture" hot takes, there are people who get what this movie was going for . The trailer descriptions emphasized a mix of "anarchy and melancholy," a sense that the Bride "wakes up angry. Awake. Entirely her own." . The Bonnie and Clyde framework, two disfigured outlaws on the run, testing whether love can survive when the world sees you as monsters, is genuinely compelling .

One fan on Celebitchy commented: "It looks wild and out there which isn't a bad thing so I wish it had done better. Female director and female lead role. I do want more of those" .

To be fair, The Bride! had terrible luck. It got pushed from its ideal October 2025 release (perfect for Halloween!) to early March, which is basically cinematic no-man's-land . It also came out soon enough after Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein hit Netflix that maybe audiences felt like they'd already gotten their monster-movie fix at home. 

Plus, there was that whole "Jessie Buckley hates cats" controversy that dominated discourse right when the film opened . (Long story: she allegedly made her husband rehome his cats, then had to do damage control on Fallon. As a huge cat lady, I absolutely despise that she did that, but I still find her acting simply amazing.)

Here's the thing about cult classics: they don't arrive fully formed, they get discovered. They get defended. They get re-evaluated when the cultural moment shifts and suddenly their "flaws" look like "vision."

More spring cleaning and more journal finding yesterday…I found a 2000 journal wedged behind one of my drawers that I have not seen in years and thought I had lost a long time ago.

Sitting down and reading through it I realized it is the most detailed of my diaries and, though I have little confidence in so many things, probably the best written of all the journals I kept.

I had forgotten my early 00s extensive social life and I enjoyed reading about times with my coworkers much earlier on in a job that sometimes doesn't give me as much joy as it used to do. 

Though I tend to remember my times with my niece because they were such happy times I'm glad there are details about those times as well. She was such a delight as a child and I feel blessed that she and I are friends now as adults.

As my diaries move into the late 00s and early 10s they become less event-driven and more internal and more bleak. I regret now not writing about events or things that happened in my life then. There are a few, like the time I saw someone I knew at Whole Foods and hid behind a display because of fear and shame from a decades old event.

Plus, I still find myself wishing I had kept a diary in high school...I think it would help me remember things. I'm not sure it's normal to have complete blank pages in your mind's memory for any time before adulthood.

…on vacation this week and using it to stay home and catch up on things and to clean and hang out with my cat.

In my de-cluttering of my closet I found an old box I didn’t even remember having: it has diaries from the mid to late 00s. 

Looking at them now, I think I was probably more mentally and emotionally off back then than I am now, but in a personal way, not in a political way like I am now.

It’s already my fifth day off and I still have so much to do. Plus, I’ve gotten lost in the world that is Substack and I have a pile of books I still want to finish reading.

The more I see how amazing so many writers online are the more I’m like ‘why write,’ but then I realize I write to try and heal, not because I think I have anything to say. 

There are so many, many good writers in the world and I want more time so I can read them but there are so many other things to be done first though.

That is why I just don’t understand boredom. Boredom seems like such a luxury in a world where free time is hard to come by for a lot of people.