Dancing about dancing

I read recently read two books that had writers as their main protagonists:

Death Of The Author by Nnedi Okorafor, andYellowface by Rebecca F Kuang.

They were both perfectly fine. But I found it hard to get really involved in either narrative. The stakes just never felt that high.

Not that high stakes a pre-requisite for a gripping narrative. I enjoyed the films The Social Network and Like A Complete Unknown. Those stakes couldn���t be lower. One is about a website that might���ve ripped off its idea from another website. The other is about someone who���d like to play different kinds of music but other people would rather he played the same music. It���s a credit to the writers and directors of both films that they could create compelling stories from such objectively unimportant subjects.

Getting back to those two books, maybe there���s something navel-gazey when writers write about writing. Then again, I really like non-fiction books about writing from Ann Lamott, Stephen King, and more.

Perhaps it���s not the writing part, but the milieu of publishing.

I���m trying to think if there are any great films about film-making (Inception doesn���t count). Living In Oblivion is pretty great. But a lot of its appeal is that it���s not taking itself too seriously.

All too often when a story is set in its own medium (a book about publishing; a film about film-making) it runs the risk of over-estimating its own importance.

The most eye-rolling example of this is The Morning Show, a television show about a television show. It genuinely tries to make the case for the super-important work being done by vacuous morning chat shows.