It’s Saturday night, and we’re back with another round of suggestions with author Emil Eugensen. Emil is an eclectic writer that I’m so glad to introduce you to! He is the author of Hour of the Jackals, a mildly postmodern adventure featuring a worldwide fascist coup.
Take it away Emil!
What is your Saturday night reading suggestion?
Victor Pelevin. With all the stuff happening everywhere, definitely Victor Pelevin; not least of all as a grounding, anchoring force in times of escalating fragmentation and ideological cocooning. Cuts right through the B.S.
The Sacred Book of the Werewolf (2004) and Empire V (2006) are good entry points.
On the surface one is “a werewolf book” and the other is “a vampire book”, but below the surface playful yet deep examinations of the human condition take place. Indeed, “Empire V” goes beyond. Way, way beyond. Before you know it, the currently prevalent reality simulacrums start getting deconstructed rather mercilessly. But great fun to read, once the style clicks.
What is your Saturday night movie suggestion?
This spring my wife and I are in the mood to watch and re-watch (and re-watch some more) family-friendly animated films such as Hayao Miyazaky’s My Neighbor Totoro (1988), and Ponyo (2008). And when I say “family-friendly”, I mean “the most positive and life-affirming kid films ever”.
An added bonus is that they neither follow the currently mandatory corporate character and story structure tropes, nor do they attempt to animate the narrative via ersatz-emotions based on focus-group derived triggers. Instead, My Neighbor Totoro (1988), and Ponyo (2008) are actually honest and actually real.
A more recent Japanese animated film that’s both delightfully lyrical and visually gorgeous is Your Name (2016), a romantic sci-fi YA adventure.
Especially if you’re one of the souls to whom much of modern entertainment increasingly comes across as lifeless, ungifted, and forced gibberish, I would heartily recommend Japanese anime films. Also Korean dramas. My wife submerges into a Korean drama bender a couple of times a year and upon resurfacing reports being quite reinvigorated.
What is your Saturday night wild card suggestion?
Try neoclassical/neofolk chamber music band Caprice (incredibly, there are two of those, from different countries, so pay attention to album titles).
The songs “Craft” and “Sage” from the album “Six Secret Worlds” are two favorites. Ten-twenty seconds into “Craft” the world starts taking on the subtle enchanted radiance from the best moments of childhood.
Unless you’re in the wrong mood. Then it’s just jolly elevator music.
About the Author, Emil Eugensen
Emil Eugensen loves Shkembe Chorba soup with Zagorka beer. He writes speculative pulps like the 1960s never ended and plays the guitar like the 1990s never ended. He is the author of Hour of the Jackals, a mildly postmodern adventure featuring a worldwide fascist coup. His favorite living writer is Nigerian giant of surreal sleaze horror Wol-vriey.
Emil’s bio is a tangle of political speechwriting; sociological and anthropological research; TV show scripting, directing, and editing; newspaper column writing, PhD thesis and party leader book ghostwriting; translating; lead guitar in metal and postpunk bands.
Emil’s hobbies are focused on Soviet and post-Soviet pop culture, branching out into vintage Italian, French, German, and East Asian pop culture.
Also by Emil:
‘Stroke of Luck’, Teleport Magazine
‘Squishy Ancestors Please Fasten Seatbelts’, Collective Realms
‘Juggler and Znuek’, Aphelion
‘Future’s Cutting Edge’, Siren’s Call
‘Writing Dialogues with Non-Twitchy and Non-Catatonic characters’, Bookish Trisha
Thanks for featuring him!