Regarding Miranda July
A few years ago, Miranda July made people who like indie movies- you know, the ones that celebrate quirkiness to the Nth degree - like her. She didn’t get “diablo cody’d” like she probably could have, and then I guess disappeared back into that hovel where performance artists go to. It’s a hovel I’ve never been to, nor am i sure I want to go to. Nah, just kidding. It’d be great to never have had a real job and get to do stuff like body paint with honey and such.
Normally I’d gravitate towards someone like July and the film of which I speak of was entitled Me and You and Everyone We Know. July was in it, and despite getting praises from people like me, I thought it was too awkward. It was too uncomfortable, but not in a Larry David sort of way, but more in a forced sort of way. It didn’t seem natural - any of it - and I quickly (and happily) forgot about her. 
Yet this past summer I was reminded of her. That hovel has an internet connection I guess, and she did this website plugging her book that was just her telling us about her book via a dry-erase board. Cool. Arty. It was plugging her collection of short stories, called No One Belongs Here More Than You; stories that mostly had been previously published- but before anyone knew who she was on a large scale. Reviews came in. They again were favorable. I gave her a second shot.
It was a good move. Unlike her silver-screen self, July’s behind the computer-screen self is hauntingly real; the characters she creates are extremely awkward, but in ways that we all know, in ways that we don’t want to know. Not everything is a knockout, but most of it is indeed fascinating. She strings sentences together in ways that seem original, but more so, she’s puts people in ordinary situations, situations that are common place - and doesn’t overstate what anyone is setting out to do, to be, or to feel. But it’s compelling, none the less. Maybe she’s doing another book, I remember thinking, as i was wrapping up. That would be nice.
