Picked the right two weeks to start reading, and be enchanted by, “Middlemarch.” 📚
Just finished Assembly by Natasha Brown. A sharp, slim, piercing novel narrated by a young Black British woman, working in finance, preparing to attend a garden party at her boyfriend’s family estate. Here’s an evening work scene, from the opening:
After the Digestif, He Gets Going
She understood the anger of a man who himself understood in his flesh and bones and blood and skin that he was meant to be at the head of a great, hulking giant upon whom the sun never set. Because it was night, now, and he was drunk. He felt very small, perhaps only a mouth. A lip or a tooth or a rough, inflamed bud on a dry white tongue slick with phlegm at the back, near the throat. The throat of a man with a sagging gut and thinning hair cropped so short. So , when that mouth opened up and coughed its vitriol at her, making some at the table a little uncomfortable, she understood the source of its anger, despite being the target. She waited for the buzz of her phone to excuse her and — in the meantime — quietly, politely, she understood him.
Orlando Whitfield: The Feel of Wealth
Thursday, January 16, 2025
From the author’s terrific memoir “All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art”:
There is a rootlessness to the very wealthy in the twenty-first century, a floating ease in both place and time that is mirrored, or perhaps emboldened, by a certain kind of space. Oases devoid of responsibility or obligation allow one an escape from reality that is almost womb-like in its comfort. In the Connaught Bar, if you can bag a table (it was named ‘Best Bar in the World’ by a panel of so-called experts in 2020, the year in which, as I recall it, everyone had to stay home in order to get a load on), you will be surrounded by an international array of players united by one thing only: money.
As you walk in you will be greeted by a server in a school-uniform grey dress, black-patent-leather-belted primly at the waist. You’ll note the way piped music seeps into the room like an odorless gas, and the way the lighting, which manages somehow to maintain a crime scene luster whatever the weather outside, pools between the tables and chairs and glances off the glass table tops and brass fittings and the painted silver paneling. Think air travel in the 1960s with a touch of netherworld glamour. You’ve seen it in a movie. Have you got a reservation? We’re rather full tonight.
The guests are ensconced in cashmere and softly shrugging leather; crisp, dark denim in stark juxtaposition to the falsetto glint of diamonds and the low-energy glow of rose gold. Their torpor is somehow moribund, Bourne of the ennui that will always affect those for whom any kind of satisfaction is gratuitously imminent. The room shimmers non-Don status – the financial equivalent of diplomatic immunity — and they talk of elsewhere, always elsewhere, as if the present moment were fraught with some kind of difficulty.
Another superb Atlantic piece: “Walk on Air Against Your Better Judgment," in which Caitlin Flanagan writes beautifully about her own family’s connections to Seamus Heaney. Still grateful for the college semester I spent in the early 90s exploring Heaney’s striking poetry.
Year in Review: 2024
Friday, December 27, 2024
As I’ve done for the past few decades, I’m ending the year with a look back at some cultural highlights I found most fulfilling during the past 12 months:
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Hitting the road with the kids: 2024 was a special year for family travel — an early summer trip to stay with relatives in San Francisco (a moment from there above), then a late summer stay with my sister just outside of D.C. Muir Woods, Presidio Tunnel Tops, the de Young, the Glenstone, MLK Memorial, National Gallery, and so much more. Great ages for the kids to experience both. Fortunate to have been able to do it.
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Nonfiction books: “The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight," by Andrew Leland; “The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983 – 1992” by Tina Brown; “All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess” by Becca Rothfeld; “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” by David Graeber and David Wengrow; “The Message” by Ta-Nehisi Coates; “Kafka: Diaries” (translated by Ross Benjamin); “To Fall in Love, Drink This” by Alice Ferring; “Lovely One: A Memoir” by Ketanji Brown Jackson; and “The Contagion Next Time” by Sandro Galea.
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Chunky, visual-heavy nonfiction books: “The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature” by Peter Mendelsund and David J. Alworth; “The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing” by Adam Moss (an exceptional editorial mind); “I. M. Pei: Life Is Architecture” by Shirley Surya; “The Wes Anderson Collection” by Matt Zoller Seitz; “Branding: In Five and a Half Steps” by Michael Johnson; “How Design Makes Us Think and Feel and Do Things” by Sean Adams; and “Crossing the Line: Arthur Ashe at the 1968 US Open” (multiple editors/writers).
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Novels: “The Fraud” by Zadie Smith; “Nonfiction: A Novel” by Julie Myerson; “Intermezzo” by Sally Rooney; and “Catalina” by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.
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Books of poems: “Scattered Snows, to the North” by Carl Phillips and “A Film in Which I Play Everyone” by Mary Jo Bang, both STL-connected writers.
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Books about what went wrong at Twitter: I should not have spent time reading two books on this subject, but they were interesting: “Battle for the Bird” by Kurt Wagner and “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter” by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac.
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Rereading “Gilead”: Endures. Recommended for when you’ve just read two books about Twitter.
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The William Gass Centenary: I spent many years writing about and promoting awareness and discussion of Bill’s work, and I had the great fortune of getting to know both Bill and Mary during the last decade of his long and productive life. In October, WashU organized a day-long event to mark what would have been Bill’s 100th birthday. While the Gass projects I launched over the years are set on a kind of permanent simmer, it was meaningful to re-immerse myself in the world of Bill’s writing. Videos and resources are available on the university’s centenary website.
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Movies: I was deeply impressed and moved by “The Zone of Interest”; “The Taste of Things”; “Past Lives”; “Anatomy of a Fall”; “Petite Maman”; “Saint Omer”; “Aftersun”; and “His Three Daughters.” Also enjoyed “Killers of the Flower Moon”; “American Fiction”; “You Hurt My Feelings”; “Between the Temples”; “May December”; “Barbie”; “Oppenheimer”; “Maestro”; “Janet Planet”; “She Said”; “Showing Up”; “BlackBerry”; and “Dumb Money.” Temporarily engrossing: “Conclave.” Interesting docs: “Modernism, Inc.: The Eliot Noyes Design Story”; “Martha.”
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Satisfying rewatches: “Marriage Story”; “Heat”; and “Kicking and Screaming” (prompted by The Rewatchables). Plus, with the kids, “Spellbound” and “The Princess Bride.”
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Articles about the world: “Seventy Miles in the Darién Gap” by Caitlin Dickerson, The Atlantic; “Our Strange New Way of Witnessing Natural Disasters," by Brooke Jarvis, NYT Magazine; “The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers,” by Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker; and “Unsafe Passage: A Palestinian Poet’s Perilious Journey Out of Gaza,” by Mosab Abu Toha, The New Yorker.
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Articles about America: “What Will Become of American Civilization?" by George Packer, The Atlantic; “The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending,” by Franklin Foer, The Atlantic; “The Man Who Died for the Liberal Arts," by David M. Shribman, The Atlantic; and “Shibboleth” by Zadie Smith, The New Yorker.
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Personal essays: “On Cancer and Desire," by Annie Ernaux, The New Yorker; “The Birth of My Daughter, the Death of My Marriage” by Leslie Jamison, The New Yorker; “If My Dying Daughter Could Face Her Mortality, Why Couldn’t the Rest of Us?" by Sarah Wildman, NYT; and “Variations on the Theme of Silence," by my friend Jeannette Cooperman, The Common Reader.
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Great match of medium and story: “She Slept With a Violin on Her Pillow. Her Dreams Came True in Italy," by Valeriya Safronova, with photographs and video by Sasha Arutyunova, NYT; “How Taylor Tomlinson Nailed Her Closing Joke," by Jason Zinoman, NYT.
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TV shows: The show that made me smile the most all year was “Girls5Eva” (all seasons are streaming on Netflix). Huge fan as well of “Beef”; “The Bear” seasons 1 and 2; “Ripley”; “My Brilliant Friend” season 1; and “Fargo” season 5. Enjoyed “Magpie Murders” and “Bad Monkey.”
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New Music: “Oh Smokey” from Clem Snide; “Manning Fireworks” from MJ Lenderman; “Charm” from Clairo; “Patterns in Repeat” from Laura Marling; “Hit Me Hard and Soft” from Billie Eilish; and “Chromakopia” from Tyler, The Creator. Doechii’s Tiny Desk performance was fierce.
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New podcasts: My favorite new-to-me podcast this year was Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso. The host is wise beyond is years, does superb research and prep, and seems to quietly relish his good fortune of gently steering weighty conversations. (You can’t go wrong choosing an episode, but Fragoso’s conversation with Ocean Vuong was especially memorable, particularly for the author’s insights about youth and masculinity in America.) Another new discovery I enjoyed, as a former magazine EIC, was Print is Dead (Long Live Print). I can’t remember if I discovered it last year or this year, but I enjoy Jarrett Fuller’s Scratching the Surface podcast (as well as his blog).
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A few podcast episodes: Bonnie Prince Billy talks through “I See a Darkness” on Life of a Record; The Wolf of Wine decodes his single “Quintin Tarantino”; Zadie Smith talks through “The Fraud” on Fresh Air; and the Dissect hip-hop aficionados talk through the Best Bars of 2024.
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Connecting with two living artists: Any year when my wife Tamara presents a new exhibition is a good one, and this year saw her open “Delcy Morelos: Interwoven," at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. Having our kids meet the Colombian artist, and hearing her talk astutely about her work, were highlights from the year. Grateful as well to meet Julie Blackmon, one of my favorite living photographers, and hear her discuss her distinctive Midwestern work at the Saint Louis Art Museum.
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Home tour with Laura Dewe Mathews: I have such admiration for Matt Gibberd and what he’s built with The Modern House — from the real estate listing website to the Homing In podcast to the publications, each one presented handsomely and with soul. In the summer, Matt shared a video interview and tour he did with architect Laura Dewe Mathews. I was thinking back to this one in particular, because Mathews' lovely home is known locally as “the gingerbread house” — and our kids are asking to begin nibbling away at theirs.
With that, sending best wishes to you in the new year.
Wednesday, December 18, 2024 →
What a document, and statement, from Darwin: “I think.” From “The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper” by Roland Allen.
From the delicious new hardback “The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature” by Peter Mendelsund and David J. Alworth:
Announcing the text and creating a conduit between imaginary and real space are two key tasks of the book cover. They are what the book cover does, first and foremost, but they are not all that it does. The cover’s job is not over when you begin reading the pages. A good book cover has that timed-release quality; it changes with you as you read.
Monocle’s new-issue promos are exceptional examples of how to use photos + VO to produce compelling video.
Lovely, gentle new album from Clem Snide: “Oh Smokey.”
“Jesse Eisenberg Has a Few Questions” — An excellent interview at The New Yorker’s website. I can still remember seeing him for the first time in “Roger Dodger” in the early 2000s. A committed, inquisitive art-maker.
From “Our Strange New Way of Witnessing Natural Disasters,” by Brooke Jarvis in the NYT:
Suddenly, some experience that previously seemed distant or impossible becomes something we’ve watched happen — not with distance or solemnity on the evening news, but mixed into the jumble of images of everyday life that scroll across our feeds. The details move rapidly from the inconceivable to the familiar, from things we would never expect to things we can easily picture, things we almost feel that we’ve experienced ourselves. Yes, this is what it looks like when you film through a car window while everything around you burns. This is what it looks like when the ocean crashes through the window of your living room. This is what it looks like when a riverbed tries to carry nearly two dozen times more water than it usually holds, or when houses bob downstream like rubber duckies. To quote a viral tweet about a previous calamity: “Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones, with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.”
From Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Message,” which I just finished:
Great canons angle toward great power, and the great privilege of great power is an incuriosity about those who lack it.
“The Zone of Interest” was an astonishing film. How it shows what it chooses to show; the sounds we hear of what it chooses not to show — it’s just an incredible work of art made with deep sensitivity by everyone involved. If you’ve already seen it, I recommend this Vanity Fair interview with writer/director Jonathan Glazer and director of photography Łukasz Żal. It’s streaming on MAX. Plan to rewatch soon.
Just finished a quick read of “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter,” by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac. A single sentence from the final third, describing yet another moment of chaos and spite, revealed something larger about the repugnant title character’s worldview: “And yet, Musk enjoyed the madness.”
From “I. M. Pei: Life Is Architecture,” a beautifully designed new volume by Shirley Surya and Aric Chen, a story of insistence driving invention:
Wary of the greenish tint characteristic of commercially available glass, Pei insisted on using a completely clear alternative for the Louvre’s pyramid. Along with President Mitterrand’s intervention, this led France’s largest glass manufacturer, Saint-Gobain, to devise an entirely new production process for large-scale manufacturing. Beginning by sourcing pure white sand from Fontainebleau, Saint-Gobain proceeded to develop a specialised furnace that reduces the amount of the naturally occurring iron oxide in the glass formula, eliminating the source of the green hue. The 675 diamond and 118 triangular panes were transported to a factory in the United Kingdom that was able to polish their surfaces to perfect planarity, achieving flawless results with optical properties close to those of crystal. (Photo)
Happened to read this passage from “The Diaries of Franz Kafka” about 10 minutes after checking in with my Day One app and reviewing the (unsunny) “On this day” diary entries I’d left on other October firsts one, seven, and eleven years ago. Grateful for that space.
Excellent recent interviews with Ta-Nehisi Coates by Jon Stewart and Terry Gross. Have ordered “The Message” and can’t wait to start reading.
New Poems from Carl Phillips
Sunday, September 22, 2024
Spent a lovely few weeks making my way, intentionally slowly, through Carl Phillips’s new book of poetry, “Scattered Snows, to the North”. A huge fan of his sensitive, fluid-with-pauses work. A few lines I was especially struck by (though reading the original in print, with line breaks, is preferred):
From “Thicket”:
It’s a quiet night—quiet / the way the animals here, east / of touch, but slightly north, / still, of penetration, live / mostly quiet. Most disappear.
From “Career”:
What if all the truth is / is an over-washed sweatshirt, sometimes on / purpose worn inside out?
From “Back Soon; Driving”:
The way the present cuts into history, / or how the future can look at first / like the past sweeping through, there / are blizzards, and there are blizzards. / Some contain us; some we carry / within us until they die, when we do.
“Muse retrospective” — Though I wasn’t a committed user of the Muse app, I used to enjoy listening to the intelligent podcast put out by the team. Here, and I’m late to this, Muse’s Adam Wiggins offers a perceptive, considered look back at the ups and downs of building a new “tool for thought.”
Toni Morrison, in a 1975 lecture, quoted by Ketanji Brown Jackson in her new memoir, “Lovely One”, which I’m reading now:
The function, the very serious function of racism … is distraction. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped property so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms, and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.