Interesting Times No. 10
Isabella Blow; malls; Bauhaus women; surreal estate and real estate; abstinence education; David Sedaris' marriage proposals; viagra scam; The Cloisters; BOOKS!!; TED talks
Hello, welcome! Enjoy this week’s internet goodness!
JOURNALISM
‘Soon after three P.M. on Tuesday, May 15, six bay horses, each with a plumage of black ostrich feathers, trotted toward Gloucester Cathedral drawing a Victorian funeral carriage, its cargo bedecked with white gardenias and surmounted by a black galleon hat. When the horses fell into step they looked as if they were dancing, even flying, some said. As the carriage entered the courtyard, led by a footman with a silver-topped cane, a black cape, and an undertaker’s top hat, the effect was of consummate gravitas and theatricality, the perfect dramatic exit for English fashion icon Isabella Blow. […] By 2006 the woman who’d discovered major talents such as Alexander McQueen, launched countless new looks, and turned hats into a spectator sport was being marginalized by an industry that couldn’t compute her value. Three months after Blow’s suicide [this piece is from 2007], friends, mentors, and colleagues tell Edward Helmore why the wildly eccentric British aristocrat became an icon, and then a casualty. In the end, it seemed, Isabella Blow loved fashion more than the fashion world loved her back.’
‘Triumph of the mall: how Victor Gruen’s grand urban vision became our suburban shopping reality.’
I have not enough words for how much I loathe abstinence education, and everything it stands for. This piece covers lots of my thoughts on it though: ‘As a Girl, I Went Through Abstinence Ed. As a Woman, I’m Trying to Understand the Damage Done.’
The Look Book Goes to a ‘Drive-in Drag Show.’
‘What Was the TED Talk? […] You just need an interesting topic and then you need to attach that topic to an inspirational story. Robots are interesting. Using them to eat trash in Nairobi is inspiring. Put the two together, and you have a TED talk.’
Peter Ravn, Second Service, 2021. Oil on canvas. ‘Females may […] select for traits in males that apparently have no other bearing upon their ability to survive. The peacock’s tail is a handicap in most other aspects of its life – an impediment to flight and evading predators – save for the attraction of a female. However, it may also be true that the ability of a male to manage such a burden is itself a marker of overall genetic quality and rigour.’ On ‘Evolution: how Victorian sexism influenced Darwin’s theories.’
‘Now You Can Rent a Robot Worker—for Less Than Paying a Human.’
Two interesting and thoughtful pieces, on the body, and the mind: Teeth as ‘little living archives’ that can reveal much more than we imagined, including (potentially) the experience of childhood trauma. And ‘My Daily Pills. On suffering, and not.’
‘When a Psychic Reading Costs You $740,000.’
‘Surreal Estate - an artist and his real-estate agent alter ego clash over the age old problem of art versus commerce.’
From an estate agent alter ego, to a real one. Inside the life of a ‘Super-prime mover: Britain’s most successful estate agent. […] As he swerved from conversation to conversation, Hersham modulated his tone accordingly: from soothing compliments to bawling out an underling. He did this instinctively, it seemed, his personality as volatile as the job required, and indivisible from it. The work was the conversation. “Was it a good price or not?! Just a simple yes or no!” Next call: “Believe you me, I know it was the best apartment I’ve ever seen.” Next call: “You’ve got us into serious trouble because you left a door open!”’
‘To hide in plain sight while on assignment in foreign nations, agents needed precisely tailored clothes made to look local: Clothing Britain’s Spies during WWII.’
‘I am objectively an average, perhaps even bad, runner. I run heavy, on my heels. My hamstrings have been described by someone familiar with hamstrings as “the tightest I’ve ever observed on a woman.”’ Anna Rawhiti-Connell writes about being ‘really shit at something and doing it anyway.’
‘London is five hours ahead of Washington, D.C., except when it comes to gay marriage. In that case, it’s two years and five hours ahead, which was news to me. “Really?” I said, on meeting two lesbian wives from Wolverhampton. “You can do that here?” “Well, of course they can,” Hugh said when I told him about it. “Where have you been?”’ […] ‘David Sedaris recounts the multiple times he proposed to his boyfriend, Hugh, before getting a yes.’
‘An internet huckster got rich selling a sex enhancement supplement named Stiff Nights. Then the FDA sampled his wares. The Rise and Fall of an Herbal Viagra Scammer.’
‘The Bauhaus, the interwar German design school that profoundly influenced later developments in art, architecture, product design and typography, was a complex, contradictory crucible of ideas.’ On ‘Anni Albers and the forgotten women of the Bauhaus.’
‘The [Metropolitan Museum of Art’s] Cloisters is arguably one of the most peculiar museums in the world; it is quite surprising indeed to be able to make a journey through European medieval architecture while in New York City. The building for the museum, which opened to the public in 1938, was designed by architect Charles Collens, who incorporated in a medieval-style construction various original architectural portions of French abbeys, hence the name The Cloisters. (The core of the MET’s collection of medieval art is based on donations made in the first half of the 20th century by wealthy New Yorkers.)
The building includes parts from the cloisters of […] Romanesque and Gothic monasteries […] as well as portions and architectural elements from the abbey of Bonnefont-en-Comminges, which were all disassembled, moved to the United States by ship, and re-assembled in New York.’Here are two collections of photographs of both the architecture (taken c. 1925) of The Cloisters, and the art that lives within.
Jailbait, an essay on power dynamics, by Ottessa Moshfegh. ‘Part of what made him interesting was that I felt he would dismiss me the moment I bored him.’
‘Asian food cultures and Spam: a love story for the ages.’
Sorry, have run out of room for a British Goop - next time!
BOOKS
This week is all book recommendations. Books I’ve recently borrowed from the library, or bought from op-shops, and books I’ve heard of and can’t wait to read. A colleague of mine said to me the other day, ‘you’re greedy for books’. Very true. Hopefully you are too. (I’ve used other people’s reviews of the books (apart from a few of my opinions inserted) as writing about books in an engaging way is much harder than it looks - and these people are far better at it than I am!)
Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Hollerman
‘One of the most important works of gay literature, this haunting, brilliant novel is a seriocomic remembrance of things past -- and still poignantly present. It depicts the adventures of Malone, a beautiful young man searching for love amid New York's emerging gay scene. From Manhattan's Everard Baths and after-hours discos to Fire Island's deserted parks and lavish orgies, Malone looks high and low for meaningful companionship. The person he finds is Sutherland, a campy quintessential queen -- and one of the most memorable literary creations of contemporary fiction. Hilarious, witty, and ultimately heartbreaking, Dancer from the Dance is truthful, provocative, outrageous fiction told in a voice as close to laughter as to tears.’
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
‘From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans. In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?’
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
'“A whole Gothic world had come to grief . . .” Beautiful Lady Brenda Last lives at Hetton Abbey, a crumbling Gothic monstrosity that is her husband Tony's pride and joy. Bored and restless after seven years of marriage, she drifts into an affair with a worthless young socialite. Abandoning the country for the glamorous yet shallow London scene, Brenda imagines divorce will bring happiness. Instead she and Tony feel lost and isolated - victims of the wreckless times in which they live . . . “One of the 20th century's most chilling and bitter novels; and one of its best.”’
Hockney-Van Gogh: The Joy of Nature by Hans den Hartog Jager
‘Van Gogh's masterpieces are juxtaposed with Hockney's colourful and colossal paintings in this exploration of the artists' parallel approaches to nature and landscape.’
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
“'It's about the terror, isn't it?'
'The terror of what?' I said.
'The terror of being found out.'“
’For the past three years, Jon Ronson has travelled the world meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us - people who, say, made a joke on social media that came out badly, or made a mistake at work. Once their transgression is revealed, collective outrage circles with the force of a hurricane and the next thing they know they're being torn apart by an angry mob, jeered at, demonized, sometimes even fired from their job.A great renaissance of public shaming is sweeping our land. Justice has been democratized. The silent majority are getting a voice. But what are we doing with our voice? We are mercilessly finding people's faults. We are defining the boundaries of normality by ruining the lives of those outside it. We are using shame as a form of social control.
Simultaneously powerful and hilarious in the way only Jon Ronson can be, So You've Been Publicly Shamed is a deeply honest book about modern life, full of eye-opening truths about the escalating war on human flaws - and the very scary part we all play in it.’ *This isn’t a book about the evils of ‘cancel culture’, but about a growing collective inability to not be able to forgive others for making the same kinds of mistakes we’re more than capable of making ourselves. Harvery Weinstein, for example, deserved everything he got; not everyone does.*
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
‘A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.’
Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker
‘Dorothy Baker’s entrancing tragicomic novella follows an unpredictable course of events in which her heroine appears variously as conniving, self-aware, pitiful, frenzied, absurd, and heartbroken—at once utterly impossible and tremendously sympathetic. Cassandra reckons with her complicated feelings about the sister who she feels owes it to her to be her alter ego; with her father, a brandy-soaked retired professor of philosophy; and with the ghost of her dead mother, as she struggles to come to terms with the only life she has.’
Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell by John Preston
Given how much has been written about Ghislaine Maxwell in the media recently, I started to wonder about her upbringing and childhood; wanting to understand how someone could end up doing the things she’s done. I think there are always answers in people's pasts, and it turns out her father seems to have behaved in sociopathic ways, terrorizing his children (similar to Trump’s father - the book by his niece Mary Trump shows a family so emotionally dysfunctional that in the end, all I could think was that Donald Trump had no chance; he was ruined from the very beginning). It’s been written that Jefferey Epstein was possibly a familiar kind of person to Ghislaine, an extension of her father. We’re so often comfortable around what we know, whether it’s dysfunctional or not; bad for us or not. This isn’t to excuse Ghislaine’s actions - far from it - but rather to try and find an explanation for her behaviour. I think we should always be looking for that. Anyway, those thoughts led me to this book.
‘Robert Maxwell was a very British success. Born an Orthodox Jew, he escaped the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, fought in the Second World War, and was decorated for his heroism with the Military Cross. He went on to become a Labour MP and an astonishingly successful businessman, owning a number of newspapers and publishing companies. But after his dead body was discovered floating in waters around his superyacht, his empire fell apart as long-hidden debts and unscrupulous dealings came to light. Within a few days, Maxwell was being reviled as the embodiment of greed and corruption.
What went so wrong? How did a man who had once laid such store on the importance of ethics and good behaviour become reduced to a bloated, amoral wreck? In this gripping book, John Preston delivers the definitive account of Maxwell's extraordinary rise and scandalous fall.’
PODCASTS
The author of the excellent book Empireland, Santhnam Sanghera, talks to the My Best Teacher podcast about ‘the teachers that had a lasting impact on [his] life and what made them so special’. He also shares how he developed ‘a side business in selling his packed lunches,’ and introduced ‘pupils in school to a more detailed history of colonialism.’
‘Wild Things: Siegfried and Roy.’ Remember Siegfied and Roy, the magicians who lived with and performed alongside lions and tigers, and seemed to personify a very particular gaudy excess? This is a podcast about them. ‘Over the course of nearly half a century, Siegfried & Roy performed 30,000 shows for 50 million people and generated well over $1 billion in ticket sales. Although the German-born illusionists and pop culture icons were mega-famous, much about their private lives, eccentric public personae, and tragic final show remained shrouded in mystery[.]’ In Wild Things ‘Steven Leckart […] takes you behind the velvet curtain to reveal shocking moments, surprising details, and hidden truths about two men who were lionized by millions of fans, lampooned by the media, criticized by animal welfare advocates, and endlessly scrutinized by the public.’ (Episodes are released weekly, with five already released, and three still to come.)
Thanks for reading, see you next time, and please share with anyone you think might enjoy!
-Ellie
Does exactly what it says on the tin - never fails to be Interesting. Thank you!