Interesting Times No. 1
Brandon Taylor; QAnon; psychoanalysis; space-age toilets; a demon cat; Lynn Barber
Welcome to the first edition of Interesting Times! I’m here to recommend content that’s both new and old, highbrow (maybe?) and lowbrow, every fortnight - I hope you enjoy.
JOURNALISM
“I felt strongly there was no such thing as a slut”: Phoebe Waller-Bridge interviewed by the opposite-of-a-sycophant, Decca Aitkenhead. Hunt down Aitkenhead’s interview back-catalogue, and then Lynn Barber’s (at times, merciless) interviews too, while you’re at it - Barber seems to see right into a person, and it ain’t always pretty.
And speaking of Barber, here’s an extract from her memoir, which went on to become the film, An Education. In the extract, she says this, “But there were other lessons [he] taught me that I regret learning. I learned not to trust people; I learned not to believe what they say but to watch what they do; I learned to suspect that anyone and everyone is capable of "living a lie". I came to believe that other people - even when you think you know them well - are ultimately unknowable. Learning all this was a good basis for my subsequent career as an interviewer, but not, I think, for life. It made me too wary, too cautious, too ungiving. I was damaged by my education.” Reading Barber; her two memoirs, her interviews both as interviewer and interviewee, well, it always feels like seeing the truth laid bare. There’s such evidence of that ‘not believing what others say, but watching what they do’, that she speaks of so bleakly - I get the sense it allows her to see things about people that others somehow miss.
“The story of amusement parks is the story of America - with all of its sparkle and chipped paint”. And staying in America, this piece is spot-on - corporations like to jump on a bandwagon if it’s good for business (see corporations embracing Pride, some strange version of feminism etc. in the past few years) but they’re a bit confused about where to land on the new Texas abortion law.
All sorts of different houses. And if you can cope with the use of the word stool, used very liberally in a non-furniture sense, then this article tells us about the smart toilets we may all be living with in our very own houses sometime soon.
This was very poignant.
“What is it like to clean the world for tomorrow while the rest of a city sleeps? In this short video, ‘While You Were Sleeping’, the US director Anderson Wright takes viewers on an atmospheric, nocturnal tour of Salt Lake City as seen through the eyes of the people who clean while most of the city rests.”
“North West is goth now”. (Don’t pretend you don’t care.) Jeff Bezos is a weirdo - but this article isn’t about that; it’s about why Amazon knows so much about you.
“Normal feelings, or ADHD, or ASD, or PTSD? Social Media is here to diagnose you”. This is a fascinating topic - does increased awareness of mental illness, and increasing societal acceptance of it (in some spheres, at least) mean we risk pathologising ‘normal’ human behaviour? It’s an old question, of course, asked by people before Instagram accounts were validating your concerns about whether or not you have PTSD, but still an important and complex one. I don’t have the answers to that question. But I will say, on a related note, that the equally important question, of who gets access to mental health care, is of course a class/ethnicity/equity issue. If you can’t afford $200 an hour for therapy, don’t qualify for publicly funded mental health care, and are perhaps from a home that lacks emotional language, and are only just beginning to discover/give voice to certain things about your mental state, well, perhaps an IG account that gives (decent) advice, support in the comments, and even a few words of validation could be a positive thing for you. Certainly not anything like what a competent, attuned therapist will give you, but at least it’s something, instead of nothing.
“The Art World Remembers the Late Painter Hung Liu, Who Valorized Everyday Immigrants in Monumental Portraits”
“9/11: A Childhood Fractured by History. The World Trade Centre was a city unto itself, like a science fiction dream made real.”
“What Animals Think of Death: having a concept of death, far from being a uniquely human feat, is a fairly common trait in the animal kingdom".
“Doomsday prep for the super-rich.” And slightly related.
Who doesn’t love a society wedding, especially when it includes something in Latin? “A lasting memory is noticing my fingers entwined in David’s, and on one, a simple gold and diamond band from Charlotte Chesnais, which we had chosen together in Paris a few months earlier. Engraved on the inside, organised in secret by David, are the words “amor vincit omnia”. Love conquers all.”
“A short story about a demon cat” - this will haunt my dreams (and I believe yours) forever.
Trinny always brings me joy - click here for her frantic and joyful display of sequin wearing!!
BOOKS
Part of a review of one of the most affecting books I’ve ever read, Far from the Tree, includes this description: ‘“ Parenting”, writes Andrew Solomon in Far from the Tree, "is no sport for perfectionists." It's an irony of the book, 10 years in the making and his first since The Noonday Demon, that by militating against perfectionism, he only leaves the reader in greater awe of the art of the achievable. The book starts out as a study of parents raising "difficult" children, and ends up as an affirmation of what it is to be human.” It’s a hard book to describe - its premise, Solomon talking to parents of children who are notably different to them (children who are Deaf, who have autism, who have killed, who are prodigies), is and isn’t what the book is about. Someone more eloquent than me said, “elegantly reported by a spectacularly original thinker, Far from the Tree explores themes of generosity, acceptance, and tolerance—all rooted in the insight that love can transcend every prejudice. This [is a] crucial and revelatory book”. Talking about love transcending prejudice can feel a bit like straying into inspirational quote territory, but I promise this book is the opposite of that mindset. I suppose I would say it’s about the vast, vast array of human experience, and how people traverse that vastness to arrive at a place of understanding and connection. And I will add, with evangelical fervour: please, READ IT!
The merciless Steve Braunias is at it again (well, he was - this is from 2020) with: “Photos of New Zealand politicians and their bookcases are creepily revealing: we are what we read; a bookcase is an X-ray of its owner, their ambitions and fears, their IQ and their desires”.
‘No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy” by Linsey McGoey. “As large charitable organisations replace governments as the providers of social welfare, their largesse becomes suspect. The businesses fronting the money often create the very economic instability and inequality the foundations are purported to solve”. It’s not a perfect book, but it’s a very good one.
A short story (for adults) by Roald Dahl. ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’. For some reason it thrilled me to the core! Also, Dahl’s short stories (for adults - do feel like I need to include that caveat every time, in case people are expecting Mr Twit-esque escapades) are FANTASTIC! [Yes, all caps]. Penguin has recently (2018) released a series of his short stories, divided by theme:
In this article on Dahl’s short stories, The New Yorker has this to say, “As with his books for children, his adult stories are marked by conscience, by a moral center that extends beyond mere payback, leading to moments of unexpected depth”, and also this, “What we’re seeing is a style, a sensibility: that sophisticated, offhand voice, that air of a story heard and repeated; fiction as gossip or conversation, a game of telephone.” Basically, get involved - and look how pretty those Penguin editions are.
‘Free Food for Millionaires’, the first novel by Min Jin Lee, author of the acclaimed ‘Pachinko’, is a delight. Set in New York, engrossing from the very start, large in scope, funny, and wrenching, it “explores the most fundamental crisis of immigrant’s children; how to bridge a generation gap so wide it is measured in oceans”.
‘Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations’, is a graphic memoir by Mira Jacob. I found it contained such a wonderful mix of things. “[A] showstopping memoir about race in America . . . by turns funny, philosophical, cautious, and heartbreaking . . . Particularly moving are the chapters in which Jacob explores how even those close to her retain closed-minded and culturally defined prejudices. . . . The memoir works well visually, with striking pen-and-ink drawings . . . collaged onto vibrant found photographs and illustrated backgrounds. . . . Told with immense bravery and candor, this book will make readers hunger for more of Jacob’s wisdom and light.” Couldn’t agree more.
PODCASTS
A lovely, interesting interview with the also interesting and (seems) lovely Brandon Taylor, author of the acclaimed novel Real Life, and the short story collection Filthy Animals. Sam Sanders, the interviewer, sums up the central questions of Real Life as, “Do we ever really like our lives, and do we ever really like our friends?”. Indeed. Anyway, I love Brandon Taylor - he has a fascinating, quick and questioning mind, and he’s funny. What more could you want? I wish we were friends, but understand the closest I can get to that is following his every move on Instagram.
“The philosopher Amia Srinivasan, discussing her book The Right to Sex, on Pandora Sykes’s podcast Doing It Right, was Sykes’s erudite, thought-provoking first guest on a recently launched second series of this podcast, exploring contemporary ideas without imposing them.” Sykes’s discussion from Season One with another philosopher, Alain de Botton , (possibly the world’s most articulate person?) is excellent too - illuminating and comforting.
“Who are those conspiracy theorists on social media, doubting vaccines and fomenting civil unrest? The beguilingly voiced British presenter Nicky Woolf decided to try to understand by following the QAnon movement back to its beginnings. A sometimes crazy, distressing, fascinating journey”. (Only available through Audible, but they do offer a free 30 day trial.)
“It’s not only the individual, but also society that benefits enormously when people engage in longer-term therapy”, and “the good-enough [parent] is one who can tolerate being both loved and hated” - the psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams interviewed on what actually heals in therapy.
Thank you for reading. See you in a fortnight!
-Ellie