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A Few Thoughts on Glenn Close

 I recently had a bad experience working with an "admissions consultation" group. Every time my student would submit a piece, a shadowy group of judges would meet in secret to rip it apart. There seemed to be an unpublished list of rules for writing--and though I didn't have access to this list, I was somehow meant to intuit the gist of the list, and when my magical powers of intuition failed, I (clearly) became a source of extreme irritation.


Once, my student generated a series of questions she had about her future. This was trashed because "rhetorical questions are exhausting for the reader."

Another time, my student was asked to design a research project about a topic that interested her. She answered this in an honest way. This was trashed because "a college doesn't want an answer that has a liberal-arts tone. The research project should have an obvious pre-professional thrust. If the student doesn't know what her ultimate career goal is, she should invent a career goal, and then she should pretend to feel strongly committed to that."

I'm pretty happy not to be working with these people anymore (although I shudder to imagine what college admissions procedures may look like by the time my own children are in high school).

For this reason, I was delighted to read "They Went Another Way," a memoir about writing in Hollywood. Bruce Eric Kaplan, an excellent writer and a veteran of Lena Dunham's "Girls," imagines a romance between a woman in her seventies and a man in his twenties. Glenn Close becomes interested. But Close is an unpleasant person. Perhaps she is upset about her Oscar losses or her declining status in Hollywood. She misses meetings. She dumps on Kaplan's script. She abandons the premise and invents something wholly unrelated--in the middle of a Zoom pitch. Finally, when her friend Pete Davidson turns his back on the project, she simply disappears.

I love contemplating Glenn Close. But I also love Kaplan's voice--whether he is recalling his childhood in Maplewood, his fondness for the Hitchcock film "Saboteur," his difficulties with heating repair people, or his inconsistent response to the series "Love and Beth." (Someone wants to hire Kaplan for the "Beth" show, and Kaplan wants to feel excited, but he can't quite get there.)

I think Kaplan's odd book is not for everyone. If you're not interested in writing or in Hollywood, this is not a purchase to make. But I was enthralled. I wish that Glenn Close would put out a response.

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