#nick earls

[idleimages]

Saccharine

[larmoyante]

My head was full of her, because that's what I did. I got crushes, I got big ideas, I got ten steps ahead of myself. I placed any small prospect in a vice-like grip, and I applied the crushing force that broke it.

Nick Earls, The Fix

[readingoals]

Nick Earls is one of those auto-buy authors for me, which means I have just about everything he's written but I've only read like half of it. So it felt really good to make a start on this series of interconnected novellas that I've owned since like 2016.

The first one, Gotham, follows an Aussie journo in New York to interview a rapper. It was good - just a really lovely little book, the ending made me more emotional than I expected and I liked it a lot. I'm interested to see where the rest of the novellas go and how they fit together.

[nostalgiainpages]

Frankie Magazine Issue # 13 Oct/ Nov 2006

Interview with Richard Wilson and Emma Lung who at the time were starring in another one of my faves '48 Shades', based on the book by Nick Earls.

I love this film so much. I love the set design, the vibes, the sensitivity this kid has. Love it all.

For whatever reason, the film was renamed 'Australian Pie: Naked Love', which is a strong misrepresentation of what the film actually is. In other news, the director played the character David Van Arkle in 'Muriel's Wedding' which is cool.

[readingoals]

When I decided to re-read Bachelor Kisses I needed something light and funny. Last year I re-read Zigzag Street also by Nick Earls and since they're sort of linked - the roommate in one is the MC in the other - I figured it'd be a good choice.

I do remember enjoying Bachelor Kisses the first time I read it but I think I was probably a little young (or maybe not young, maybe just too clueless about sex jsfhskdksd) to fully understand a lot of what happened in it last time. But this time I found it so hilarious. So glad I decided to pick it up again, i'll defs have to re-read a few more of Earls' books!

[readingoals]

A little while ago at work we hosted a literary festival which featured a number of local authors, slam poets and illustrators. One of those authors was Nick Earls so it only felt right to read one of his books in the lead up to the event. Those of you who've been following me since fairly early on may recognise this book since I've definitely posted about it before lmao but that's because it's been a favourite of mine for years. What can I say? I love a pathetic man and Richard Derrington is one of the most pathetic men I've read about. Phenomenal.

[praisenorcensure]

#1: 48 Shades of Brown

 by Nick Earls, 1999

I first read this book in either my last year of middle school or early high school. I picked it from the “teen” section of the Archdale Public Library, mostly because of the brightly-colored cover design and the weird duck on the front. By the time I was a senior in high school I had checked it out so many times I had purchased my own copy. The dialogue was witty, the main character was relatable in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time, and there was excessive talk of Romeo and Juliet in a non-derisive way. As a lit nerd in a school where most of my peers spark-noted their way through assignments when they had to and skimmed texts where they didn’t, a book that was sympathetic to analyzing plays was A+ in my book. I periodically returned to this book as a nice afternoon read during my college years; a sort of breath of fresh air in between ethnographies and writing papers, but I did not do much in terms of thinking about it. On New Years Day this year I decided it was time to visit with this book again, and I’m so glad I did. 

This book takes place in Brisbane, Australia, where our narrator Dan Bancroft is spending his final year of high school living with his college-age Aunt Jacq and her roommate, Naomi, as his parents are spending the year in Geneva. The story follows Dan as he grapples with calculus, literary analysis, his increasing differences with his best friend, a crush on Naomi, his aunt coming out to him, and who he is becoming as person as he goes through the transition from high school to whatever comes after. The book deftly manages the blend of teenage-boy inner monologue, rife with masturbation jokes, with deeper questions about how we consciously shape our personalities in accordance with who we think we need or want to be. Dan attempts to become a guy that he thinks Naomi would like (as she remains mostly oblivious to his intentions), to mostly negative results. He makes pesto with dirt in it, blunders when trying to casually mention scientific names of birds he halfway memorized, and gets attacked by an angry goose. Thought the situations themselves are more than a bit far-fetched, who among us hasn’t tried to change to fit a hypothetical ideal to impress someone we liked? 

Dan’s attempts to work out who he is and how he’d like the world to perceive him resonates with me in a way that’s pretty unique in my experience. He is smart, but doubts his ability to translate his intellectual ideas to the real world. For most of the book, he overthinks every plan he comes up without asking himself if the plan is necessary. His triumph at the end of the book is not getting the girl, or becoming the person he envisioned he needed to be; but is instead realizing that trying to become someone else was getting in the way of him being himself. Naomi doesn’t fall in love with him, but he gets a good score on his lit paper and understands more calculus than he did previously. He learns to do his own laundry and how to make pesto (sans dirt), has a deeper appreciation of his family, and realizes that he is cool enough, smart enough, and good enough without forcing it. May we all be so lucky.

Bonus points: I read some of Dan’s internal dialogue to my boyfriend and he was somewhat dismayed that someone was telling his secrets like that.

Also the fish tank scene in the Baz version of R&J is totally as good now as it was when this book was published bye

[janisbalodis]

A coming-of-age fantasy about a young Brisbane man trying to relate to Life, the Universe and Everything. Perfect Skin is, I think, the fifth of his novels to be adapted for … Continue reading Perfect Skin