No. 27
Diner art; filth; hypochondria; dangerous cheese; white lies; a renters' utopia; 'food is for the weak and striving'; Magdalena Abakanowicz; the mother-child dialectic
Hello dear readers,
News: you now have the option to pay for this humble offering! The newsletter remains free to all subscribers, but I’m introducing the option to pay for it if you’d like to. So, if the spirit moves you, and you have a spare 5 NZD a month (that’s a bit more than a dollar a week/the cost of two little chocolate bars/2.45 in pounds sterling) you can give it to me! What do you get in return? The joy of supporting this newsletter, the satisfaction of acknowledging the many (happy, and entirely of my own choice) hours that go into putting it together, and possibly a feeling of altruistic contentment (probably not that actually) that you’re helping me pay rent to my greedy landlord! 🙃(She owns ten houses - very naughty.)
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And thank you, as always, for reading. Enjoy the words, enjoy the art!
~Ellie
On filth, and more filth.
‘Macron’s minister has defended his right to scribble steamy softcore on the side because, after all, this is France, where being found unsexy will get you sent to the Bastille.’ Ridiculous, in all the best ways.
‘Help! I couldn’t stop writing fake Dear Prudence letters that got published.’
Written with sensitivity and insight, Hilary Mantel goes deep into hypochondria: ‘It is the dismaying opaqueness of human flesh that drives us to anxiety and despair. What in God’s name is going on in there? Why are our bodies not made with hinged flaps or transparent panels, so that we can have a look? Why must we exist in perpetual uncertainty (only ended by death) as to whether we are well or ill? John Donne speaks of illness as an invader, which sets up a kingdom and conceals ‘secrets of State, by which it will proceed, and not be bound to declare them’.’
‘The crowd were saying, “Kill him, kick him to death”’: what happened to the people who protested against King Charles?’
‘How a visual mash-up of four tangentially related celebrities became America’s preferred diner art.’
Oh my goodness, we have been truly, truly blessed. First Michael Imperioli/Christopher from The Sopranos showed off his house to Architectural Digest (that was from a few newsletters ago; I’ll link it here again for those who missed it), now we have an interview with him!
‘Slaves to Love: The mother-child dialectic.’
From 2013: ‘Tucked away in a lower Manhattan back alley, the freight-elevator-sized, generically named Museum is one of New York City’s newest curiosities. While it’s only open 16 hours a week, during the day on Saturdays and Sundays, the museum’s contents are viewable 24/7, lit and sealed by glass doors.
Passers-by are encouraged to call a toll-free number to learn about the 15 collections, comprising 200 objects[.]’
‘Untitled’, a piece on remembering parts of our old lives/our other selves, by Peter Orner.
‘The Road to Auto Debt: Our cars, no matter how much we cherish them, hold us in social and economic custody.’
‘“Conditions have worsened for homeless people in Japan over the past few years,” [writes] translator Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda. Against this backdrop of eviction and erasure, she brings us the story of a woman who asserted her own dignity through writing. Koyama-san lived in an encampment in a Tokyo park for many years. When she died, she left behind dozens of notebooks filled with observations and invented phrases in jagged handwriting. These texts captured something essential about living on the streets, and living in general. So the Koyama-san Notebook Workshop—a group of women that included shut-ins, the precariously employed, artists, foreign students, researchers, and Koyoma-san’s fellow unhoused neighbors—dedicated itself to transcribing her work and preserving her writing. Workshop member Kukiko Nobori describes the process:
The contents of the notebook were so shocking, sad, painful, and funny, that we couldn’t possibly transcribe them in a mechanical way. Each of us wracked our brains trying to decipher her handwriting, occasionally pausing to relax our muscles, stiff from sitting in front of our computers for long hours, before finally stopping at the end of the day to have a chat over dinner. In this way the transcription proceeded, slowly, ever so slowly.’
Going into the Grand Canyon, in 1938. “The night was so beautiful that I couldn’t sleep.”
Over the past few years I’ve been trying to introduce the concept of the white lie to my father, a man who does not believe in the concept, and who, in my opinion, could do with embracing it more. (White lies spare feelings! How is that bad!?) [I have his permission to disclose this aspect of his character fyi.] However, the article below has made me question everything: should I have been following my dad’s example, and telling a gift-giver I don’t like my gift? Apparently! (I would NEVER.) ‘Even well-intentioned white lies can foster disconnection and distrust.’
‘Children know. They breathe it in early, for there’s no unknowing the difference between nannies, cleaners, below-stairs people and the family upstairs. Children are the go-betweens, one foot in each world, and yet they know very well from the earliest age where they belong, where their destiny lies or, to put it crudely, who pays whom. Tiny hands are steeped young in the essence of class and caste.’
‘Soaring real estate markets have created a worldwide housing crisis. What can we learn from a city that has largely avoided it? Imagine a Renters’ Utopia.’
And more on real estate, this time with a slightly different vibe: ‘The Market for Disney Adults With Millions to Spend.’ ‘Just to explain the Golden Oak phenomenon, it’s a very upscale residential area within the Walt Disney World Resort. It launched in 2010 and is really its own thing. Golden Oak has a club, membership is $23,000 a year plus $8,000 for HOA, so that’s $30,000 just in dues. There’s a restaurant, a gym, a pool, a not-that-extravagant country club, and most people get around on golf carts. It’s not very diverse, and I’d guess it’s mostly Republican. The cheapest house is going to be $4 million and can go up to around $16 million. You’re paying for the Disney name and the perks — close proximity to the parks, fireworks at night, VIP treatment. You move there because you love Disney; no one would pay that kind of a premium if not.’
A brilliant newsletter this week from Justin Myers (aka The Guyliner) on just how much Gwyn Paltrow’s husband loves her, Joan Collins, and the confusion of the ‘x’ or even ‘xx’ when texting/emailing. SO GOOD! SO MUCH FUNNY!
A dangerous cheese.
‘What will be the last creature on Earth? A cockroach expert answers.’
‘As rates of diagnosis rise, a fierce debate rages in psychiatry. Are we experiencing a parallel pandemic, or having a rational response to a traumatic world?’
‘“She’s wolfing all the canapés like a famished warthog,” Tom tells cousin Greg, clocking the inappropriate date Greg brought along to Logan’s birthday lunch. Because what could be more plebeian, what could signify her being any more out of place, than actually eating the food?’ On Succession, ‘food is for the weak and striving.’
‘The longest smoke break of Nicholas White’s life began at around eleven o’clock on a Friday night in October, 1999. White, a thirty-four-year-old production manager at Business Week, working late on a special supplement, had just watched the Braves beat the Mets on a television in the office pantry. Now he wanted a cigarette. He told a colleague he’d be right back and, leaving behind his jacket, headed downstairs.’ On ‘The lives of elevators.’
From 2006: Glorious, acerbic Lynn Barber on being a Turner Prize judge.
As an aside, I’ve finally managed to get my greedy paws on Mostly Men and Demon Barber, the two (bizarrely) out of print collections of Barber’s infamous interviews. She truly is something else, and the most cheering person to read if you’re feeling a bit bleak. Love her, adore her.
‘Vital Threads: From a studio flat behind the Iron Curtain, Magdalena Abakanowicz created a series of expansive, woven-fibre artworks that radically altered the field of sculpture.’
Two long reads from The Atavist, both on strange happenings: [Warning: incoming pun] Barbearians at the Gate: A journey through a quixotic New Hampshire town teeming with libertarians, fake news, guns, and—possibly—furry invaders.’ And ‘[a] town plagued by mysterious fires turns to science, the church, and the law in a search for answers: When the Devil Enters.’
More on Google reviews: ‘Like many Google Reviews, Mathura-Jeffree’s oeuvre reveals a lot about the writer. Where other Google Reviewers denigrate St Lukes Mall with its “bird poo covered trolleys” and “filthy young people in their nike shoes”, Mathura-Jeffree’s review (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) is much more sentimental: “I went Christmas shopping there as a child in the 70s. I would hang around after school with my friends in the 80s. There was a restaurant we ate at as a family. Worked part time in there after school. So many changes. So many memories.”’
Important news from the culture:
‘A Twitter poll asking users to decide who was hotter, young Al Pacino or young Robert De Niro, went viral this week, seeing over quarter of a million votes cast. The final result? Split perfectly, 50/50. In the hope of breaking this stalemate, we'll tell you this.
When staying at the Shelburne Hotel in Dublin some years ago, Al Pacino was holding court in the bar for a while, being the life and soul of the party, before nipping away to his room for a while. On his return, he took the young woman who had been tasked with taking care of him to one side and asked if she'd mind popping upstairs to flush what he'd just done.
She remains traumatised.
FYI: If that hasn't tipped you, Al Pacino is known for having the worst nails in Hollywood, thanks to a long-standing, untreated fungus.’ 😕
‘Teeth are comical. Even when you suffer an infection from a toothache, people don’t feel guilty laughing at your swelling face. It’s not like you’re going to die or anything. All that makes teeth a good vehicle for humor. I once read a love poem with a line that went something to the effect of, “I cannot tell who gives me more pain / You or my teeth.” I await the the first great contribution to dental literature.’
What a line: “The nation sipped morning coffee with disaster.” It’s from this piece on ‘The Literary Lives of Mid-Century Nuns’.
‘The fiction of Anzia Yezierska captures the perennial tension between personal ambition and the obligations of care.’
‘Tania Branigan on the Enduring Impact of Collective Intergenerational Trauma in China: Family after family hid their past. Some would not discuss their suffering even with the husbands or wives who had witnessed it. Others told brothers and sisters to forget the events that had scarred their childhood. Sometimes, scared by psychotic episodes or anxious at strange obsessions, adult sons and daughters brought their parents directly to psychiatrists.
More often, patients came for physical ailments that had found no relief. They had seen that speech had unimaginable consequences and that a surface harmony, however tenuous, should not be broken. Silence was safety, however dearly bought. The misery stretched back fifty years and ran onwards; you could not see its end. The trauma would not die with its victims: it had already replicated itself in their children, and their children’s children. Like cancer cells, it could not mature, only reproduce itself, mutating in grotesque immortality.’
Ottessa Moshfegh ‘on her post-Covid novel Lapvona, the influence of Ingmar Bergman and the Brothers Grimm, and the draw of England in the 90s for her next book.’
The Mental Illness Happy Hour: This podcast started twelve years ago (!), but I’ve only just discovered it, and I’m finding it incredibly soothing, reassuring and insightful and that’s all because of the excellent host, Paul Gilmartin. He gets the tone just right: he lets people tell their stories, he asks insightful questions, he shares his own experiences, and also brings some lols - not in a forced way, just because he’s a funny, attuned guy. High recommend.
Where Are You Going: ‘Nine years ago Catherine Carr, who also created the Talking Politics and Relatively podcasts, started sticking her microphone under the noses of random strangers in the street and asking the single question of the pod's title. After 16 episodes on the BBC, it was shelved. But as of April Carr has been out and about again, chatting to people in New York, Liverpool, Brighton, Cambridge, Cardiff and elsewhere about what they're up to. The 15-minute episodes pack in more intrigue and unexpected heart-tugs than pretty much any of the grander, intensely production-centric mystery pods I've heard this year. It's just normal people talking about their lives, and because Carr is so genuine they open up to her instinctively. Along the way we meet oyster divers on the Underground, some lads off to Malaga to watch the racing at Cheltenham on the TV, and more remarkable everyday lives.’
Thank you so much for the shout-out; it’s very kind of you!