Interesting Times No. 14
Elite pets; Sheila Hicks; status; back to the (tech) office; Gilded Age/Gilded Glamour; poor teeth; Karl Lagerfeld; migration; friendship; debauchery in Ibiza; a mob informant; Patricia Highsmith
Hello readers!
I’ve decided to go back to releasing the newsletter more frequently - once a month doesn’t feel often enough, and every fortnight is a bit much, so I’m going to try every three weeks. Hopefully this will be the sweet spot! I’ll also be including, from this issue, a ’buy me a coffee’ option. It’s called Ko-Fi - if you particularly enjoy an issue, or the spirit moves you, you can donate the price of a coffee to me. Just click the link at the bottom of the newsletter.
I hope you enjoy this week’s high and low of the www!
JOURNALISM
If only this were satire. (For Veep fans, this reminds me so much of the ‘Clovis’ episode.) ‘Welcome Back to the Office. Isn’t This Fun?’
‘The Gilded Age? The Rich Are Rotting in the Mildewed Age: Excessive displays of wealth—Getty or Bezos, Murdoch or Musk—are the guiltless gilt of our time.’ And here’s a very tenuous connection… the Met Gala’s theme this year was ‘Gilded Glamour’ which apparently means ‘excess — but an excess deeply rooted in tradition’. Anyway, here are the incredibly artistic/often beautiful dresses/ensembles/threadzz).
‘This Man Married a Fictional Character. He’d Like You to Hear Him Out.’ And a bit related? Perhaps the above man would disagree. ‘Humans, robots and the new sexual frontier.’
‘The new trend is Gnomecore.’
‘That’s it? It’s over? I was 30. What a brutal business’: pop stars on life after the spotlight moves on.’
The cooking show, The Two Fat Ladies, was so good, so funny, quite hedonistic in tone, and ‘proved pleasure was for every body.’
‘At 84, Sheila Hicks Is Still Making Defiant, Honest Art.’ And ‘This Artwork Changed My Life: The photograph of a bombed-out car helped curator Maria McLintock reconnect to her identity as the ‘English’ child in an Irish town.’
On migration. ‘Sonia Shah Asks Why People Move.’
PSA: I subscribe to an excellent Substack called Mothers Under the Influence which covers momfluencer culture, the cultural fixation on ‘family life’ and social media’s commodification of it, and thoughtfully asks questions about all of this, and more.
The writer, Kathryn Jezer-Morton, says this: “I’m a PhD candidate in Sociology at Concordia University in Montreal. I’m also a writer. If you’re looking for a witty skewering of momfluencer culture, you will be disappointed. I won’t write anything here that I wouldn’t say to a momfluencer face-to-face. As an aspiring sociologist I am guided by curiosity. I didn’t take up this field of study to make fun of other women. I love speaking to momfluencers about their work — they have taught me a lot. I’m also a scholar of intersectional feminism. Life’s a rich ragout, baby.”
Anyway, because it's so great, the newsletter’s been picked up by New York Magazine (amazing!) - it’s now called Brooding, and you can sign up for it here.
Karl Lagerfeld’s Estate (Part I) as sold by Sotheby’s. Good for nosy people.
Elite pets ! ! ‘From Benito’s chicken to Bardot’s dog, inside Rome’s elite pet cemetery.’
Does the mind exist? This writer says no, get rid of the word.
Friendship: ‘He drives me mad!’ and Nina Stibbe’s droll take on her mother’s approach to the troublesome friend. (There’s the adage that says if you can count on one hand the people in your life who are true friends, then you’re a lucky person. [The actual quote is this: 'When all is said and done, if you can count all your true friends on one hand, you're a lucky man.] The older I get, the more I understand the truth in this.)
‘“Pity me!” A recent trend in writing brings us a whole lot of dramatics and zero perspective.’
The work that went into unionising JFK8 Warehouse, the only unionised Amazon workplace in the USA. (This piece was written before the vote passed.)
‘Climate need not be fate.’ On ‘how […] complex societies respond to the ecological challenges posed by their climate[.]’
‘Holiday at the Dictator’s Guesthouse. What possessed a family man from Ohio to smuggle a Bible into North Korea?’
‘Cocaine, Orgies and Club Tropicana. Inside wild, legendary Pike’s Hotel in Ibiza: a hotel so debauched it made Studio 54 look like a convent.’
This is adorable. Louis’ chunky dad knit; his silly jokes. I love him. Plus his American accent is *swoon*. (Fun fact: I once stood next to Louis in a queue for ice-cream at a theatre and didn’t even accost him!)
BOOKS
On my to-read / am-in-the-middle-of-reading list: Grand; Kiss Myself Goodbye:The Many Lives of Aunt Munca; The Pumpkin Eater; Guns, Germs and Steel; Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
Peter, a pensioner, said he experienced books as smelling of salt and pepper – “that dryness when you open the cupboard … with a touch of the sea”, while 46-year-old Donna confessed that she had recently bought a book for her young son partly because it “smelled of the rain”.’ On what the smell of a book tells us about ‘how and when a book was made, and where it’s been.’
For fans of Meg Mason’s sad, funny, human ‘Sorrow and Bliss’.
And speaking of Meg Mason [spoiler], this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist has been announced!
‘No matter if it is Austen or Atwood, the Brontës or Booker winners, data shows men are reluctant to read women – and this has real world implications. Why do so few men read books by women?’ Come on men, get involved. Why not read all the Women’s Prize nominees? You can do it! (Sorry to all men who do read books by women; you are good men, modern men.)
A mini deep-dive into the mind and work of Patricia Highsmith, writer of, as she called it, ‘suspense fiction.’
PODCASTS
‘The status games we all play: Author Will Storr on our universal obsession with status and how it distorts so much of human behavior.’
A far-reaching and fascinating interview with the erudite and talented author Min Jin Lee, who wrote the acclaimed novel Pachinko [released in 2017]. She discusses the history of Korean families in Japan, which is the story Pachinko’s narrative centres itself around, and also covers how the novel itself was written.
‘Deep Cover is a show about people who lead double lives, how far they’re willing to go in pursuit of a greater cause, and how sometimes, seemingly small decisions can change the course of history. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jake Halpern reveals webs of deception and dark underworlds, through interviews with federal agents and convicted criminals.
Season two, Mob Land, is about a high-rolling lawyer who joins forces with the feds to try to bring down one of the most powerful criminal syndicates in the country.’
If you’ve enjoyed this week’s Interesting Times, and have a few spare coins, you can support the newsletter (me) by buying me a coffee!
Thanks for reading - see you next time.
Ellie