Interesting Times No. 6
Silvio Berlusconi; a fictional marriage; paper bags; NFTs; dental tourism; Petrit Halilaj; shyness; Field Recordings; Thomas the Tank Engine
Hello! Welcome to Interesting Times, and welcome, new subscribers. Thanks for signing up! I’m here to recommend content from the World Wide Web that’s both new and old, highbrow (maybe?) and lowbrow - every fortnight. I hope you find things to enjoy.
JOURNALISM
How different cultures respond to identical circumstances is fascinating - COVID is of course the most recent example of an experience shared by the entire world. In times of challenge, a country/culture’s responses become more visible - the world is paying more attention, and people are given insights into the complexities of a culture that are not often seen by those who don’t belong to it: on Japan, and its pandemic response. And speaking of cultural insights, this piece written just over ten years ago offers ways to understand parts of Italian culture (and the rebellion against it) through the story of Silvio Berlusconi.
‘Graphic designer Tim Sumner was introduced to the idea of paper bags as a cultural artefact a decade ago by his tutor at the University of Central Lancashire. “I’ve since amassed over 1,000 bags of my own from around the world.”’ ‘A celebration of the humble paper bag – in pictures.’
‘What personality are you? How the Myers-Briggs test took over the world.’ I find these kinds of tests v bizarre. We all contain multitudes etc etc.
Rosa Lyster, a columnist, was worried when hearing of writer John le Carré’s
death in 2020 - she felt he was ‘under appreciated and misunderstood’ as an author, and was concerned that obituaries and reportage would simply reduce him to a ‘genre writer’, and not give his work the depth of response and analysis she thought it deserved. But she was proved wrong - and was pleasantly surprised: ‘Everyone praised the same things – genius for plot, atmosphere of creeping dread, interesting about class, feeling of permanently thrashing around in a near-impenetrable thicket of tonal irony, flattering assumption of shared moral indignation regarding opaque political alliances, unbeatable at establishing the basis for obsessive mutual hatred that sometimes resembles love, knows how to describe the slippery feel of an expensive overcoat’s pockets or the weight of a small, important book. All very gratifying.’ However, Lyster felt one thing was overlooked: ‘the relationship between le Carré’s greatest character, George Smiley, and his wife, Ann, which plays out over the five novels where George Smiley appears as a central figure’. Lyster has righted this wrong, and provided a critique of ‘one of the strangest marriages in fiction’.
‘The Lovely Whimsicality of Architectural Follies.’
‘Researchers are pursuing age-old questions about the nature of thoughts—and learning how to read them.’
Academia is asking the tough questions! ‘The Impact of Posing with Cats on Female Perceptions of Male Dateability.’
This piece caused my brain to go to its maximum power setting (you may find it less challenging/have a bigger brain?), but I persevered because it’s important not to let the world and its modern new ideas/happenings charge on ahead without you, I feel. On NFTs and ‘why artists are the ones leading the charge.’
‘You’d be surprised how many reasons people have to go to Yuma, Arizona. They go for the weather, the four thousand yearly hours of baking sunlight. They go for the casinos, rising up by the highway on the lands of the Quechan and the Cocopah […] And then there are people who go for the same reason I did: because they’re afflicted with aching and rotting teeth, with broken molars and crooked gums, mouths full of pain that follow them around like debts. Because just across the border from Yuma, so close you can walk it, is Los Algodones—Molar City. The dental tourism capital of the world.’
Excellent, excellent! ‘New Zealand’s best real estate agent ads, reviewed and ranked.’
‘Bruised egos, gobs of money, and [a] bitter feud.’ This piece has it all!
‘Lee Friedlander’s Intimate Portraits of His Wife, Through Sixty Years of Marriage.’
‘Many of those who helped execute people in South Carolina have never
spoken about their job’s toll. The State interviewed 10 involved in the work.’ (I’m hoping this link works - it did for me right up until it suddenly didn’t! My apologies if it doesn’t work for you - if it doesn’t, do google the story, as it’s well worth your time, I think.)
‘Reshaping previous ideas on the story of civilisation, Gobekli Tepe in Turkey was built by a prehistoric people 6,000 years before Stonehenge.
I just remembered this piece, from 2017, on ‘The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends”’. Never have truer words been written. This piece covers the TV episodes, but obviously they’re based on the books, and my god, those books. The hours spent reading them to my son are some of the dullest I’ve ever known.
DAILY MAIL HEADLINE OF THE WEEK!!
‘Ex-wife of The Road writer Cormac McCarthy pulled silver handgun from her genitals during argument with boyfriend over space aliens.’
Verdict: Good, but not amazing - no mention of cost of gun, or age of people involved, but points for including space aliens: 3/5.
BOOKS
RECOMMENDED READING
‘A life rewritten: Charlotte Grimshaw’s memoir The Mirror Book, reviewed.
[…] Very occasionally you encounter a book where you think – this writer saved their own life in the writing of this […] Madness is approached by Grimshaw with lonely precision. In real time she is testing herself as an unreliable narrator. She diligently catalogues and references the material, but the material is her subjective memory. She goes to the psychology texts, the journals, a psychiatrist and a clinical psychologist in her obsession to understand why her parents are telling her that things didn’t happen the way she remembers them.’
This is the writing of a brave woman - one who spoke up, who refused to accept family stories as truth, who acted to expose the madness. Most writers wait until the family members in question are dead before they write it all down - she hasn’t waited; she’s done it anyway.
Read this book!! It’s hilarious. ‘Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe – review.’
I want to heap praise on a wonderful little publisher, Persephone Books, based in Bath, England: ‘Persephone Books reprints neglected fiction and non-fiction by mid-twentieth century (mostly) women writers. All of our 141 books are intelligent, thought-provoking and beautifully written and are chosen to appeal to busy people wanting titles that are neither too literary nor too commercial. We publish novels, short stories, diaries, memoirs and cookery books; each has an elegant grey jacket, a “fabric” endpaper with matching bookmark, and a preface by writers such as Rachel Reeves, Elizabeth Day and Lucy Ellmann.’ If you live in the U.K., lucky you! If you’re in NZ, postage costs are pretty prohibitive. However, Auckland Libraries has some of their titles - every one I’ve read has been a lovely discovery.
PODCASTS
Another podcast about women artists! What have we done to deserve this?! ‘Bow Down: Women in Art History. A new series about significant women artists from the past who deserve our attention.’
‘Spectrum 10k was supposed to be Britain's biggest ever study of autism. But just weeks after launch, it was put on pause. As the genetics revolution picks up pace, could this be among the first of many such confrontations between researchers and those who feel threatened by their work?’
Lovely. ‘Field Recordings. A podcast where audio-makers stand silently in fields (or things that could be broadly interpreted as fields)’ and record what’s going on around them.
Thanks for reading - see you in a fortnight,
-Ellie