POW! BANG!
You know how right before the opening credits in most Hollywood movies, there's a huge explosion, or someone getting thrown from a sheer rock face or maybe people having sex? You know how sometimes that first shocker really makes the movie, because after that, you can't help but tense yourself for that next surge of adrenaline?
Well, Jane Smiley's Ten Days in the Hills is all about movies, or at least the people who make them. But in her Hollywood, there aren't nearly as many explosions. Or nearly as many mysterious murders. Or even much glamour at all.
Smiley doesn't even bother to open with movie-style pizzazz. Instead, she starts off with the most tranquil image possible: "Max was still sleeping, neatly, as always, his head framed by the sunny white of his rectangular pillow, his eyelids smooth over the orbs of his eyes, his lips pale and soft, his bare shoulders square on the bed."
Max, a middlebrow director, lies oblivious in his home in the Hollywood Hills on the first morning of Operation Shock and Awe. That rest is his last bit of privacy for a while: the director's relatives and friends soon descend upon his home, and the entire group holes up together for the next ten (long) days.
Max is 58, and he hasn't directed a project in four years. His current girlfriend, Elena, is an obsessive-compulsive who writes how-to books for the hysterical housewife set. His daughter, Isabel, is a 23-year-old know-it-all, who's been sleeping with his agent, Stoney, since she was 15. Her mother, Max's ex-wife Zoe, is a movie star who's wasting her sparkle on Paul, a moocher guru with a mountain-man beard. Zoe's mother, the hyper-controlled Delphine, doesn't even have to leave home to thrust herself into Max's life: she still lives in his guesthouse, busy conducting a close friendship/long-term lesbian love affair with their neighbor Cassie. Even Max's childhood friend Charlie, a blowhard from Jersey, has come to stay. The only lighthearted of the bunch is Elena's son Simon. He's in town to play a penis in a local filmmaker's porno-comedy production, and of course his tense mother wants him out of the house.
The crowd spends its time cooking vegetarian meals, watching old movies, coupling, and talking endlessly about the war. The book recounts ten consecutive days from March 24 to April 2, 2003. During the first seven days, the crew stays at Max's, but for the last three, they head to the gothic palace of a rich Russian intent on wooing Max into directing a period piece.
Ten Days in the Hills relies more heavily on characterization than it does on plot, recounting the ordinary lives of ordinary people who live in an extraordinary place. Smiley's focus on the mundane details of life in a place dedicated to an ephemeral art helps convey her theme: the ephemeral nature of life in general.
Characters repeatedly complain about the ways in which thoughts vanish into the ether or entire ways of being become dated. They search fruitlessly for immortality.
But after a while, their fruitless search starts to drag a little. Maybe they could forget about their existential angst if they suffered from any really timeless human problem: want, fear, whatever. The characters in this book are so self-righteous, spoiled and dry that their philosophizing comes off more as self-indulgent navel gazing than it does a Dostoevskian journey of the soul.
That's not to say, however, that Dostoevesky is entirely out of Smiley's league. Her writing is terrific: clean, clear and nuanced. She lays out a concrete world and imperceptibly guides the reader toward certain conclusions. Smiley's unaffected style allows her words to sink away until all that's left is the version of life that she's created. But the world that's left is distasteful. The people are self-righteous snobs. And the things they do are boring. The fun part of Hollywood is that everything is made over larger than life: the explosions! the desires! the mysteries! But Smiley knocks Hollywood down to size. All we're left with are a bunch of vegetarians talking about old news. It's like she's making us look at the Hollywood sign from behind. Smiley's argument is persuasive: there is no glamour in life like there is on the silver screen. The loves aren't as deep, the meanings aren't as clear, things don't happen like they do in the movies. But that's what makes the movies necessary. That's what makes all art necessary: the escape that it provides from the complex and banal everyday world. And that's why the best part of Smiley's book is when the crew heads to the Russian castle on the cliff: at least there, there's little bit of intrigue, at least there, Smiley isn't quite so faithful to reality.
In Ten Days in the Hills, a steady professional hand guides the reader into what may be interesting sociological and philosophical forays. But it's not a book for moviegoers. It's not a book for real Hollywood types.
