Interesting Times No. 23
Soft toys; Elon Musk or Mr Burns?; inheritance; an Oprah cruise; the haunted house; body positivity; an art theft; 2022 book lists; excellent council houses; Raymond Chandler
Hello dear readers,
It’s the last newsletter of the year, and although it’s not quite up to scratch (Covid has finally got me, the monster), I thought I’d still send it out; this way I get to include some Best Of The Year lists before they feel redundant. I always enjoy a good round up - hopefully you’re the same.
Thank you so much for reading and supporting the ol’ Interesting Times this year - I appreciate you all.
Meri Kirihimeti! / Happy Hanukkah! / Festive Greetings! - see you next year.
~Ellie
p.s. If the spirit so moves you, you can buy me a coffee here!
‘Drake copped [what does copped mean in this context, pls? I’m thinking ‘showed/displayed’?] a new custom diamond necklace called “Previous Engagement” made of 42 engagement rings, representing the 42 times he thought of proposing to different women but decided not to.’ 42! I mean, that’s the story right there, really, but if you need more info, it’s here.
‘The 10 weirdest local news stories of 2022, including a mystery ham.
‘“I love him so much I could cry”: adults who have cuddly toys.’ <3 This reminds me of a book published in 2013, Much Loved, by ‘award-winning Dublin-based portrait photographer Mark Nixon [who] created a whimsical and nostalgic collection of images of individual teddy bears that are battered and worn from years of play.’ Some of the images from the book are here; so precious.
‘Living with a father’s demanding spirit: [T]he central figure, the king, for all his destructiveness and ferocity and self-doubt, turned out to be an exceptional father, with heroic energies. “Parenting” in its contemporary sense was not a concept most fathers would have understood back then, but if it was pride that first made him fight to keep his children, he then plunged right ahead with fatherhood, striding up its trail at full bore.’
Another cruise story! Who knew cruises were such a thing?! ‘Seven Days on the Oprah Cruise. At sea with a ship full of superfans, including my mom.’
A piece from 1984: ‘When Gentrification Hit the Lower East Side: There goes the neighborhood.’
A photo essay: ‘Rose Hill is centred around Harry Culy’s memories of those childhood road trips to and from his maternal grandmother’s farm. Beginning in 2017, and shot on 4x5 large-format film, this ongoing series explores the wider Te Matau-a-Māui Hawke’s Bay region and its surrounds.’ This one goes out to my dad who grew up on a farm in the same area. Because of his connection to this land, and childhood visits to see where he grew up, the nostalgia I have for this place runs deep.
‘A Speculative Endeavor’: On Education.
‘One of the many slogans to come out of the culture war in the 1960s, ‘the personal is political’ best defines our own. The past six years of British and American politics have essentially been a fight about how valid and/or noble that sentiment is – how central a place personal feeling and identity should have in the way policy is made, and the way progress is defined. To understand the disagreements about race, sex and gender that divide the West now, we could do worse than go back to where the sentiment began – with second-wave feminists at the end of the 1960s, and with a set of serious ideas that have been cheapened and weaponised at both ends of the political spectrum today.’
‘Who Said It: Elon Musk or Mr. Burns?’
Animals: A ‘pure evil’ jackdaw called Derek, and ‘Reggie, L.A.’s celebrity alligator.’
‘“Of my friends who have bought houses, most have got money from their parents,” [Isobel] says. “When people talk about our generation having a terrible time, I think the divide is between people who do and don’t have inherited wealth.” No wonder inheritance has become the middle class’s dirty secret, harder to talk about than sex.’
‘This House Is Still Haunted’. An essay that dives deep into ‘the motif of the haunted house in American fiction and film.’
‘At Mar-a-Lago, Trump really is still the president. But he’s more than that. “No other president in the history of the United States will be like Trump,” one club member tells me. “Trump’s the president. He runs the country, but he’s also the king. There’s no other president that will be the king.” I ask if I can quote him on that by name, but he declines. “Some readers won’t like that. Some readers don’t like royalty.” He shakes his head sadly. “The world is changing a lot.” […] In the court of Mar-a-Lago, ‘King’ Trump still reigns supreme.’
‘A Lot of What Is Known about Pirates Is Not True, and a Lot of What Is True Is Not Known.’
This is the opposite of festive, but hey ho: ‘Who Will Remove My IUD?’
‘If only I were better - spiritually, politically, morally, even - couldn’t I trample on my desire to be thinner?’ On body positivity and its reductive/prescriptive message. And an interesting piece on those who suffer from eating disorders, and new ideas/research on their experiences with self-perception and ‘changes in physical body size.’
From 2020: ‘In times of crisis, the love affairs of strangers remain endlessly absorbing.’
‘When a framed photograph went missing during a Paris Review party, the avant-garde revelers became suspects in an old-fashioned potboiler: The Case of the Light-Fingered Litterateur.’
Sorry to honk on about The Sopranos yet again; I just can’t help myself.
‘Bada bing, bada boo: Everyone should rewatch ‘The Sopranos’ as horror. The mafia masterpiece is full of ghosts, visions, and the dread of the supernatural.’
This popped up on YouTube, and I loved it so much (although the narration’s a bit tabloidy). It’s filled with stories of interesting lives, and the admirable ways people express their creativity.
Books of the year - some lists:
‘Slate: The 10 Best Books of 2022. For a reader who wants to be reminded of how glorious books can be.’
‘ReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias selects the year's 10 best works of fiction’ and the 10 best non-fiction.
Mother Jones: ‘The Books We Needed in 2022. The best nonfiction, novels, and cookbooks published this year—and some older reads that resonated anew.’
New York Magazine: ‘The Best Books of 2022. Yes, this list features more than one book set in a post-apocalyptic world, but have you looked around lately?’
The Guardian: The Best Books of 2022. The most thorough round up of the bunch, this includes fiction divided by genre (general fiction; crime and thriller; science fiction and fantasy), non-fiction by subject (biography and memoir; history and politics; sport; science) and also the best of poetry, graphic novels, food and music books, and children’s books too. Phew.
‘From Marcel Proust and Jane Austen to Ottessa Moshfegh and Rachel Cusk, we look at 19 novels where domestic settings play a crucial role – often serving as characters in their own right.’
A short story by Raymond Chandler, I’ll Be Waiting, written in 1939.
Beautiful and interesting book covers of 2022.
‘In 1982, Scott Rice, an English professor at San Jose State University, founded the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest—in which entrants are challenged “to write an atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written”—named, of course, after Edward Bulwer-Lytton, best known for his purple prose and the iconic opening line “it was a dark and stormy night.”’ Here’s this year’s winning sentence, written by a man from Colorado called John Farmer. It’s a very good bad sentence.
“I knew she was trouble the second she walked into my 24-hour deli, laundromat, and detective agency, and after dropping a load of unmentionables in one of the heavy-duty machines (a mistake that would soon turn deadly) she turned to me, asking for two things: find her missing husband and make her a salami on rye with spicy mustard, breaking into tears when I told her I couldn’t help—I was fresh out of salami.”
‘A streak of pure nastiness runs through the author’s anarchic, beloved children’s literature – just as it did through his life.’ On Roald Dahl’s famously complex and often unpleasant character.
New York Magazine’s Best Podcasts of 2022. ‘Forget the celebrity brand extensions. The art of podcasting is still as vibrant as ever.’
Book Chat. ‘A monthly podcast hosted by Pandora Sykes and Bobby Palmer, who bring a book each to chat about. The one rule: the books have to be more than 2 years old.’ Such a great idea - rather than talking about the ten or so books that are surfing the zeitgeist and getting disproportionate amounts of press, old(er) books get some love!