My Life as a Godard Movie

by Joanna Walsh

Overview

A book-length essay on beauty and revolution as seen through the work of Jean-Luc Godard.

As Joanna Walsh watches the films of Jean-Luc Godard, she considers beauty and desire in life and art. “There’s a resistance, in Godard’s women,” writes Walsh, “that is at the heart of his work (and theirs).” She is captivated by the Paris of his films and the often porous border between the city presented on screen and the one she inhabited herself. With cool precision, and in language that shines with aphoristic wit, Walsh has crafted an exquisitely intimate portrait of the way attention to works of art becomes attention to changes in ourselves. Taut and gem-like, My Life as a Godard Movie is a probing meditation by one of our most observant writers.

My Life as a Godard Movie is part of the Undelivered Lectures series from Transit Books.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781945492648
Publisher:	Transit Books
Publication date:	10/18/2022
Series:	Undelivered Lectures
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	642,928
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Joanna Walsh is a multidisciplinary writer for print, digital and performance. The author of seven books, including Hotel, Vertigo, Worlds from the Word's End and Break*up, she has two new projects coming from Verso in 2022 and 2023, Girl Online and On Screens. She also works as a critic, editor, teacher and arts activist. She is a UK Arts Foundation fellow, and the recipient of the Markievicz Award in the Republic of Ireland. She founded and ran #readwomen (2014-18), described by the New York Times as “a rallying cry for equal treatment for women writers” and currently runs @noentry_arts.

Read an Excerpt

"Mr. Director: can a woman’s beauty be privatized? Once shot, you can sell it, lend it, rent it. The more she shows her beauty, the more its value increases: value that she or you can vend. But being that value she becomes less contained, detaches from her background. You can no longer hold on to the beauty you have made together, which would not exist without the camera."

Editorial Reviews

06/13/2022

Editor Walsh (Vertigo) muses on the work of French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard in this thought-provoking collection. “If, approaching the end of the world, we’re forced to choose a single surviving monument to human art, it won’t be how any particular work looks, but the act of looking,” she writes, and accordingly explores the act of looking in the films. She examines Le Petit Soldat for how “Godard plots are driven by desire,” while a close reading of Masculin Féminin wonders why he clung to “revolutionary potential in beautiful girls.” Indeed, central to Walsh’s take on Godard’s oeuvre is her curiosity about and understanding of the women who appear in them: “they are something the camera finds alien, filmed finding something alien.” Throughout, she uses simple, almost superficial inquiries—“Can there be any cinema at all without beautiful girls?”—alongside deeper contemplations of beauty and womanhood: “Can appearance itself be defemininised? Not how would that look? but how would that feel?” It’s a fascinating mix, and while there’s a melancholy feel throughout, Walsh punctuates the work with occasional touches of humor: “My dilemma, like Godard’s, is: How to critique femininity and still look cute?”. Fans of Godard will find these erudite musings worth a look. Agent: Harriet Moore, David Higham Assoc. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Joanna Walsh is fast becoming one of our most important writers.”—Deborah Levy

“Walsh's writing has intellectual rigour and bags of formal bravery... boldly intellectual work.”—Financial Times

“Luminous, philosophical”—Lauren Elkin

“Steeped in the pure poetics of now…a smart, allusive meditation.”—Colm Tóibín

“Walsh is a sublimely elegant writer … artful and intelligent.”—The New Statesman

"Thought-provoking... Central to Walsh’s take on Godard’s oeuvre is her curiosity about and understanding of the women who appear in them." —Publisher's Weekly

"She articulates the sickening feeling of only ever appreciating one’s body in the rearview mirror with such terrible precision that it stunned me."—Philippa Snow, The New Republic

"It is rare to find a writer who can take such candid pleasure in beauty—the beauty of faces, figures, clothing, and cities—while also querying its injustices. To watch Godard's films through Joanna Walsh's eyes is to see envy and appreciation, longing and disavowal, walking hand in hand. This book is a gorgeous complex gesture of criticism."—Merve Emre, author of The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway

From the Publisher