Hi y’all,
Hellooooooooo from dreary ol’ New York City, where I must live the dream every day, just to make ends meet. This week I finished The Custom of the Country, which I’ll review next week. Spoiler: it was fantastic.
On a serious note, I’m very relieved that Salman Rushdie seems to be recovering. I read The Satanic Verses in high school, and it was the type of book that changed what I understood a novel could do. I loved it and the teacher who assigned it. You’re doing yourself a serious disservice if you’ve never picked up one of Rushdie’s novels.
Spotted: On the A train, a girl in ripped skinny jeans and black converse, with a silver cross around her neck, looking like she just walked out of ‘08 Hot Topic. Verity by Colleen Hoover is on her lap, but she’s looking at her iPhone.
Sitting in front of Stumptown Coffee near Washington Square, a woman with a green balayage reading All About Love by bell hooks. On the L train, a woman with a bowl cut reading The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm.
And finally, next to the 6th Ave L train exit, a guy with a mullet reading a Penguin Classic. I couldn’t quite make out the title.
This week, I recommend you re-read the stuff you wrote a few months ago and thought was terrible.
It probably is just as bad as you remember, but hey, there’s always a chance that it’s actually good!
Totally tragic:
George sent me this blog post that I really liked:
It’s a compelling read— the best line: “Viewed in the proper light, influencer is a career path of tragic dimensions.” I agree. Tragic figures are born and die every day on Instagram (Aesthetica, which I reviewed recently, depicts a fictional example of this). Glad someone is giving them their due!
I don’t really like Eve Babitz’ work. The voice just doesn’t do it for me! Not that I’m unwilling to change my opinion eventually.
In fact, y’all, I’ll cop to it: When I was 16 years old, I gave Joan Didion’s The White Album a 2 star review on GoodReads. “This is well written, I guess,” I wrote, “but not for me.”
The nerve! Honestly, I’m kinda impressed with my 16 year-old-self, how blithely I tossed away one of the most beloved literary giants of my lifetime. I didn’t suffer from any lack of self-confidence, clearly.
Anyway, I re-read Didion a few years later, and lo and behold, I realized instantly that I had been a dumb teenager. Didion rocks. So maybe one day, I’ll have a come to Jesus about Babitz too.
In the meantime, I loved this article in Vanity Fair about the relationship between the writers. It’s a pretty moving portrait of two very different women. It also includes a scathing letter from Babitz to Didion about Virginia Woolf, California, and the OG height gap discourse:1
Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan?… Would the balance of power between you and John have collapsed long ago if it weren’t that he regards you a lot of the time as a child so it’s all right that you are famous. And you yourself keep making it more all right because you are always referring to your size.
Okay, last thing:
I asked pop-star, TikTok fanfic artist/storyteller, and my sorority “grand little” (lol) Genny (aka Autumn) to tell me what she is reading, and she did not disappoint!
My most recent obsession is Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's This is How You Lose The Time War (2019). To start… I have never been so moved, so seen, so touched by any piece of media- film, text, song, anything- in my entire life of consuming stimuli. Never. I don’t want to give anything away. It’s perfect. It’s everything you could possibly want or even dream of. Just read it, it will take you 4 hours at the MOST, (if you take breaks to re read and ponder and cry and tell your friends about it) and then you’ll understand. There’s everything. Love. Letters. Espionage. Cool futuristic science. Cool historical magic. Longing. Tea. Animals. Everything. And when you read it dm me please.
Maybe idle speculation, but I have a feeling her girl band SZNS is going to have a big reveal sometime soon! In the meantime, enjoy my favorite song “We’re Not Gonna Be Friends” and the very cool music video for their song “Tequila with Lime.”
I’m 27 pages into Anna Karenina, which I’m reading for a book club that’s supposed to meet in late August… y’all, I may be totally fucked.
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Ok that’s it, see ya next week!!!!!!!!
xoxoxo,
Book Notes
Disclosure: I make a small commission from any books you buy through my BookStore.org links!
The phrase “height gap discourse” comes from Twitter, where a few years ago, some users argued that short women are infantilized by tall men, and thus any relationship with a height gap of over 5 inches is predatory and indicative of pedophilic inclinations.
