Good afternoon! It’s hot as hell (I love it) and I watched the sun rise this morning, as I forgot my keys last night and my husband was sleeping when I returned from dinner. I’d rather eat my own recycling than wake my neighbours up at midnight, so I spent 5 hours on my doorstep pondering the meaning of life and reading Ocean Vuong’s new novel. For anyone who thinks I have my shit together, take this as evidence that my chaos merchanting is just well-disguised.
Under the paywall today: the celebrity memoir that twanged my heart strings; the literary controversy that rages on; a gorgeous book I’m reading with my 7-year-old; a celebrity podcast that’s genuinely good; and why I think it’s time to stop dunking on AJLT.
Last week I shared a profile on Barbara Kingsolver (where she talks about the myths of Appalachian life) and a reader responded with a recommendation for Soft White Underbelly, a YouTube interview series about the human condition by photographer, Mark Laita. Specifically, she recommended this episode, with an Appalachian woman, Shannon. Laita is a brilliant interviewer: sensitive, clear, calm. Here’s a Guardian profile on his career photographing people who exist on the margins of American life.
I’ve only just realised that in The Observer shake-up (when The Guardian sold it to Tortoise) my favourite agony aunt, the psychotherapist Philippa Perry (author of the absolutely brilliant The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read) has now migrated her column to Substack. I cannot recommend it more.
Another interesting writer on Substack is Freya India, whose publication, GIRLS, I’ve linked to before. I don’t always agree with her theories on Gen Z (and that’s fine, I don’t need to agree with all of anybody’s work) but I find her essays original, incisive and thought-provoking. In her June letter, ‘Nobody Has A Personality Anymore’, she writes:
“[It] is part of a deeper instinct in modern life, I think, to explain everything. Psychologically, scientifically, evolutionarily. Everything about us is caused, categorised, and can be corrected. We talk in theories, frameworks, systems, structures, drives, motivations, mechanisms. But in exchange for explanation, we lost mystery, romance, and lately, I think, ourselves.”
My older kids are wild for fun/weird facts at the moment, which, unsurprisingly, I am very into. Last week my son took The Fascinating Science Book For Kids out of the library and he makes me look at this vile bacteria every single day: a phallus, with hands for feet and a sort of floral peperami mouth. I can’t believe I haven’t had nightmares about it yet.
In less gross news, did you know that the heat of a chilli pepper is actually pain? “Chemicals in hot peppers called capsaicinoids trigger pain sensors in our mouths.” The appeal of eating one comes from the feel-good endorphins that the body releases after you bite into it, to fight the pain.
This week I learned that before Caroline, there was Marie Calloway (no relation), who also divided her critics with her confessional, graphic writing—Esquire called her “the enfant terrible of fiction”. She appeared on America’s alt-lit scene in 2010, published her essay collection in 2013 and then disappeared in 2016, never to be heard from even again. Her 2011 short story, ‘Adrien Brody’ (nothing to do with the actor, somewhat confusingly) is good; I wonder if it influenced Girls and the naturalistic confessional art of the early 2010s.
Also flagged by Girl on Girl author Sophie Gilbert (read our conversation, here) this excellently researched piece Ellen Atlanta for Dazed, on the Conservative bent of SkinnyTok (aka, Size 00 2.0) and how the deluge of products and suggested augmentations for women, serve as “a method of distraction”:
“The current beauty ideals, aggressively promoted through both traditional and digital channels, serve as a method of societal control, distracting from collective action through hyper-individualised self-scrutiny… It’s also about physical control – both reproductive rights restrictions like denying access to abortion, and GLP-1 drugs (for those who aren’t using them to treat diabetes) create environments where women’s bodies are heavily restricted, surveilled and minimised… In April, the New York Times reported the White House is currently considering introducing incentives like giving every American mother $5,000 after delivery and awarding a “National Medal of Motherhood” to mothers with six or more children – a practice chillingly similar to the Nazis who granted German women who fulfilled their racial ideals motherhood awards.”
Polly Vernon makes a good point in her column in the current issue of Grazia, that we should be wary of politicising slimness—it’s in the print issue only, which I chucked after reading, so annoyingly can’t quote her, but the gist was: just because a woman is slim, and/or has Botox/fillers, doesn’t mean they are against birth control/are a Conservative influencer—but I do think there’s something persuasive about this theory of hyper-individualised self-scrutiny.
I was excited for Lena Dunham’s new show—not least because one of my oldest and dearest friends made the nightie for the lead character and her tiny hairless dog—but three episodes in, it hasn’t quite hit the spot for me. There are some good one-liners, and I find Will Sharpe’s character, Felix, more interesting than the usual fuckboi musicians of screen yore, but as a whole, the series doesn’t quite gel together for me. That said, my friend tells me the Notting Hill dinner party in episode 4 is good, so I shall hold out for that.
