Interesting Times No. 19
A Gucci tragi-comedy; robot cat servers; what do we owe each other?; Gary Shteyngard; cheerfulness; sex bracelet hysteria; new books; the pedagogy of artifice; AI art.
Hello! Welcome. I always find this bit of the newsletter (along with podcast recs) the most tricky. I mean, how many different ways are there to say: here are the links. So in a slightly grandiose act, I’ll share a tiny bit of my life. If that sounds boring, then fair enough, just scroll down; if not, here’s what’s been going on:
~ I’ve left the job I had in a community library - a bit terrifying, as a) most people like an answer to the question ‘what do you do?’ And b) what if I never again have as nice a job? Libraries are society’s golden, precious democratic spaces, filled to the brim with wonderful books, community events, often delightful colleagues, and the ever-fascinating; entertaining; often lovely; sometimes desperate; and always welcome general public. I won’t go into why I left, because this isn’t a diary entry for god’s sake, but yes, that has happened. Goodbye to the lovely library.
~ I stepped on my cat’s tail, and she let out such a yelp. But how do I know if it’s broken? Does she need a tail x-ray? [Update: she’s fine.]
~ The highlight of my life in Auckland, which in my opinion is quite a boring city (it’s no London, let’s be honest), is the annual International Film Festival, and normally a delightful ritual is to get the catalogue, circle the films I want to see, discuss with my husband, and then look forward to two weeks of lovely films. But this year, I just couldn’t be bothered. I think it’s because I’ve recently turned 40, and so leaving the house is just too much of an effort now. Let the decline begin.
Enjoy the links! Enjoy the art!
JOURNALISM
‘From try-hard to die-hard, here is a guide to who likes what and why.’
‘The case before the court involved a Rhode Island greyhound named Lexus, accused of killing a Pomeranian in a dog park. The prosecution was asking for the death penalty, and a lawyer for the defense, Richard Rosenthal, was there to stop it.’
‘“That’s a lovely dress”, I say to break the ice.
“It’s Zara. I don’t earn enough at this place to buy proper clothes”, she replies, throwing a disgruntled look at her hovering employers.
We sit down on matching white sofas to espressos and iced water, and I ask her about life in Milan’s San Vittore prison. “I think I am a very strong person because I survived all these years in captivity”, she says in the heavily accented English she picked up during her jet-setting days. “I slept a lot. I took care of my plants. I looked after Bambi, my pet ferret.” Bambi, she adds, was a special privilege negotiated by her lawyer, but the creature met a sticky end when a fellow inmate accidentally sat on him.’ The tragi-comedy of ‘the Gucci wife and the hitman.’
‘They deliver dumplings. They sing songs. They’re faster than you’d think.’
‘A History of Black Horror: An interview with Tananarive Due, Black horror author, scholar, and screenwriter.’
‘Marcus Aurelius said almost 2000 years ago: “You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.”’ (My dad is very good at this, and I need to learn from him.)
Drama in the art world! Involving artist Anish Kapoor! [See his work above.]
‘What mistakes can we make and still ask for forgiveness? What do we owe one another? What do we owe ourselves? You can discuss these questions forever. […] In her 1987 memoir, Fierce Attachments, Vivian Gornick describes her relationship with her unhappy and demanding mother. The story doesn’t come to a dramatic end in which Gornick stops talking to her mother forever. Instead, Gornick painfully, slowly, gains a little freedom. “We are no longer nose to nose, she and I. A degree of distance has been permanently achieved … This little bit of space provides me with the intermittent but useful excitement that comes of believing I begin and end with myself.”
Beginning and ending with yourself is not the same as suggesting that your self is your only obligation, which is plainly nonsense. […]Because if the people in our lives aren’t our responsibility, then what is?’
On cutting ‘toxic’ people out of your life, social media’s role in its proliferation, and ‘the cut-’em-loose era of human relationships.’
(I will say that I think there are very valid reasons for ‘cutting people off’, and that people can be held hostage in relationships, particularly with family, partly because to sever ties is to be cast as the ‘bad one’. i.e. what kind of person does that to their mother/father/sister? etc. Only those in the relationship know its true dynamic, and its true costs. (There endeth the lesson.))
Are you in the market for a castle or a palace? (I’m in the market for a stone cottage on one of the Outer Hebrides islands- please advise if you’re selling one. My budget is $50.)
‘Moral Panics Come and Go. Sex Bracelet Hysteria Is Forever.’
Ideas on punishment; vengeance; justice. From 2011: ‘The complex desire for vengeance.’ And a philosopher argues, ‘It is unjust, cruel and profoundly wasteful to consign a person to prison for life.’ And ‘Why Punish?
Historian Peter Baldwin explores the evolution of the state's role in crime and punishment over 3,000 years.’
‘Voices from Xinjiang: Untold Stories From China’s Gulag State.’
Addiction and a brain implant.
Gabriella Boyd, Better Song, 2021. Oil on canvas ‘Why Are Furio’s Shirts So Good on The Sopranos? An appreciation of the most intoxicating silk tops to hit prestige TV.’ (Carmella saying ‘Furio’ in her New Jersey accent is one of The Sopranos’ great contributions to the culture, in my opinion.)
‘We need to talk about Kévin: French namesakes fight national mockery.’
‘How Greenwich Village Bohemians Found Their Way to Provincetown. John Taylor Williams on Two Radical Communities.’
‘He grew up speaking a language of the enslaved on the shores of Pin Point, Georgia. He would become the most powerful Black man in America, using the astonishing power vested in a Supreme Court justice to hold back his own people. Now he sits atop an activist right-wing court poised to undo the progressivism of the past century. What happened? Looking for Clarence Thomas.’
Pedagogies of artifice: the excellent Kathryn Jezer-Morton writes here about rentable ‘sleepover kits’ for children’s sleepovers, and how uneasy they make her. ‘Like charcuterie boards, sleepover kits are a trend that emerged from the constraints of the act of image creation. The kits are not designed to encourage creativity or even play; they are designed to look cute. They are teaching tools in the pedagogy of artifice. They enable children to create charming scenes for the camera, to behave and react in ways appropriate for social media. Nowhere in the sleepover kit is there space for the instinct to take apart and rebuild, to create something of their own. The idea is to take your place in your individual tent, arrange the props just so, and strike a pose for Mom.’
DAILY MAIL HEADLINE OF THE WEEK:
‘‘Naughty’ retired vicar, 74, caught carrying out a sex act with a HENRY HOOVER in church while wearing stockings claims he did it because his ‘diabetes was not medicated’.’
I feel this is close to the perfect DM headline, and have no analysis to add. 4.75/5
BOOKS
‘The Stories Behind Marion Ettlinger’s Author Portraits: For decades, getting “Ettlingered” was a rite of passage in the book world. The photographer, now retired, looks back.’
Ashish Ghadiali talks to S.A. Cosby: ‘The holy trinity of southern fiction is race, class and sex.’
Short reviews: New books from Geoff Mulgan, CJ Hauser, Matt Rowland Hill and Hans Fallada.
‘When did cheerfulness get so miserable? A professor of literature sets out to rescue true cheerfulness from bullies, bosses, household tyrants and self-help gurus.’
‘The Great Fiction of AI. The strange world of high-speed semi-automated genre fiction.’
I found this fascinating - a book coming into being! ‘Ink, Paper and a 200,000 pound printer: How a Book is Made.’
PODCASTS
The Sunshine Place: ‘Once called “the miracle on the beach,” Synanon began in the 1960s as an experimental rehab facility in Santa Monica, California with a radical claim: It could cure heroin addiction. Before long, it would make an even bolder claim: It could cure any of your problems. All you had to do was move in. What started in a house on the beach, soon spread to compounds across the country. The man who made the miracle happen, Charles E. Dederich, aka “Chuck,” would be the one to destroy it all, along with the lives of many of his followers and millions of dollars in assets. The Sunshine Place tells the mind-blowing, true-story of Synanon - one of America’s most cutting edge social experiments, turned into one of its most dangerous and violent cults - as it’s never been told before: by the people who lived it.’
The David McWilliams Podcast: In this episode David talks to beloved novelist/essayist/satirist Gary Shteyngard, about lots of interesting things, including * the state of the world *.
Salome Tanuvasa, Untitled, 2021. Acrylic on canvas. If you feel like it, you can support the newsletter (which is actually me; unlike a corporation this newsletter is not a person) by donating a virtual coffee!
See you next time,
~Ellie
