I interviewed photographer Gregory Crewdson for The Paris Review Daily, where we talked about the movies (Lynch, Hitchcock, Malick), the pursuit of things that are perfect, digital versus film, and Mad Men, of course. In the “good news” category: Wes Anderson is finally working at a quicker pace. Hooray!

Fun fact, I don’t know if this remains in the final piece: Mr. Crewdson watches Mad Men on his iPad, because it reminds him of looking through the ground glass on his 8 by 10 camera, which makes a lot of sense.

Watching Mad Men With My Mother →

Check out this week’s Lives column in the New York Times Magazine. I wrote it. It’s about my relationship with my mother, dresses, and Mad Men. Funny enough, it’s one of the most personal things I’ve written!

Bonus fun facts: my mom is addicted to Mad Men now, but it literally took “watching each episode twice, to get through the bad feelings.” She even considered getting cable to watch this season. For this piece, she had to get fact checked by the New York Times Magazine. She also called me at one point to point out some typos in a draft. She’s really great.

Musings of an Inappropriate Woman: Mad Men: Meta-story of Women's Liberation or Patriarchy Porn? →

rachelhills:

Cassandra writes: Question for a bright feminist - why do so many women get upset that I find mad men depressing? If I say it looks like patriarchy porn men say fair enough but lots of women get upset and say it’s a metastory of womens liberation. no doubt you get many random pop culture…

Well, here’s the thing - I have tried to get my Mother into Mad Men. She’s seen a couple of episodes, but has said, “I really don’t want to relive that, honey.” In some ways, as a ginned-up soap opera that’s a record of a time where ideas were backward, it’s completely depressing, depending on your context. It feels like a lot of the Mad Men audience is at the age where it just seems exotic.

*Whether it ends up as a metastory about women’s liberation probably depends on how the show ends, is my guess. Is it Don Draper’s story, or is it Peggy Olsen’s?

Books and visceral reactions

When I finished Revolutionary Road, I was in a coffeeshop in the West Village, killing time because I was late for a yoga class and didn’t get in, but it was way too early to get to work. Reading Revolutionary Road, as a woman in a serious relationship, was a very different experience from when I banged through it in high school. The writing was still exquisite, of course, but I understood the characters in a deeper way; their hopes and aspirations of how life in Paris would make them interesting, fascinating people; the way that they boxed themselves into a corner thanks to time and choices. I related to some of that idealism. When I came to the end, I couldn’t put the book back in my purse. It scared me. It was a live thing, a record of life at its rawest and its most emotionally excruciating and the fears that we all have, as people trying to exist and find some proof of worth in that question. I felt like it was a snake, and I didn’t want its physical presence anywhere near me. I ran out of the coffeeshop and walked, briskly, to work.

Regret is a stupid, self-defeating concept, but I do have one that sticks in my mind. Last year, some high school kids were putting on a version of “Revolutionary Road: The Play.” The poster featured a boy and a girl dressed in Mad Men-wear, striking a faux wise and weary look in front of a brick wall. I do regret missing high schoolers taking on Revolutionary Road as theater. It had to have been incredible.



When I finished Desperate Characters, I started laughing. But it was a strange laugh, a sound I hadn’t made before. Deep and long and hearty. I wasn’t quite sure what was in that laughter. It wasn’t funny ha-ha. It was something different.

Needless to say, both of these books are masterpieces.