WHEN HOLLYWOOD WRITES THE BOOK: ETHAN HAWKE VS. JESSE EISENBERG
Judging the merits of two Oscar-nominated authors, we see which one could consider an exodus from acting
Sometimes when they try to break out of the confines of their craft into, say, music or politics, actors encounter resistance, even skepticism. So what about the rarefied world of literature? This fall sees the publication of two works of fiction by Hollywood A-listers, Ethan Hawke’s Chicken-Soup-for-the-Medieval-Soul type book Rules for a Knight (Knopf), and Jesse Eisenberg’s collection of humour pieces Bream Gives Me Hiccups (Doubleday). Who wins on the page?
Who’s more qualified?
Knight: Hawke has written two novels, Ash Wednesday and The Hottest State. His notable films include Boyhood, Gattaca, Dead Poet’s Society and the Before Sunrise trilogy.
Bream: Eisenberg has written various plays as well as humour pieces for McSweeney’s and The New Yorker. Notable films: The Squid and The Whale and The Social Network.
The Conceit:
Knight: A parable in the form of a letter written on the eve of battle by a Cornish knight who explains the twenty virtues of “a noble life” (gratitude, forgiveness, dedication, etc.) to his four children.
Bream: So many conceits that “conceited” seems like the only appropriate adjective here. Highlights include a series of restaurant reviews written by a privileged nine-year-old; “A Post-Gender-Normative Man Tries to Pick Up a Woman at a Bar;” and letters written by a narcissistic college freshman to her high-school guidance counsellor in which she rants about her roommate.
The voice of a new generation?
Knight: So earnest it almost feels subversive. Almost. With their Buddha-in-chainmail blending of Arthurian-ish etiquette and inclusive New Agey-ness, Hawke’s quips (“Ordinary effort; ordinary result”) would work as well on a medieval castle’s office walls as on the inside of a fortune cookie.
Bream: Coolly ironic, funny, salty yet politically correct. Eisenberg is perfectly “on tone” for the hipster generation. Most Memorable One-Liner:
Knight: The book’s many aphorisms are, overall, equal in their vanilla insipidity, though Hawke’s seeming defence of ignorance in “Sometimes to understand more, you need to know less,” holds some appeal.
Bream: From Eisenberg’s series of Marxist-Socialist jokes: “A Marxist-Socialist walks into a bar and asks the bartender if he’s unionized.”
Should they quit their day job?
Knight: Hollywood is full of insincere phonies: True. But Boyhood was great — real art! — so, while keeping a knight’s second-most-important virtue, humility, front of mind: “You are better than no one, and no one is better than you,” why not take another shot at Oscar? Third time’s the charm!
Bream: Eisenberg is funny, smart and literate enough to make you wonder if his off-putting but entirely convincing turn as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network wasn’t the result of actual talent instead of typecasting. The world’s his oyster, or bream.