“Meghan Daum, the author, most recently, of “The Unspeakable,” said that when her mother was dying, the best thing her friends did for her was to continue to socialize with her as if she weren’t in the middle of a crisis.”
— “How to Be a Friend in Deed,” The New York Times

5 Things

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Inspired by smashfizzle:

1) I have precious little opportunity these days to write things for myself, for my very own sake, so I have decided that I need to start taking a short amount of time on Sundays for this exercise (this Monday is my first Sunday, in this case). I am in a bit of a cycle where I have a lot of writing obligations that I’m not being paid enough for, and I feel a bit weary of this permanent apprenticeship. I want to be paid the right amount of money for things that I write.

2) There was a protest this week in Boston where a major highway was shut down with college kids attached to oil barrels. It stopped traffic for hours. There was something about this protest that hit me the wrong way. I felt angry seeing it, angry thinking about how it affected my parents — seniors who need that road to get to work (since they haven’t retired, because they can’t afford to) and need that road to get to chemo appointments. It also felt like college kids — usurpers, people who had the privilege of living in the Boston area, decided to protest in order to show every frustrated commuter that the whole system was corrupt and we’re all guilty, man. It didn’t help that the two people I know who are the most “involved” in this current round of activism are dudes with trust funds who have decided to use their money and privilege in order to pursue activism. Which is good and on the average I admire what they do, but they have that weird zealous mix of self-righteousness and self-aggrandizement that makes me want to change that old Margaret Mead saying to “Don’t ever doubt that one red-headed man with a trust fund, who bought a condo before 30, can change the world — in fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

It also smarted more because it was an action directed at the people I know from my hometown; the bulk of people who have small, middle-class lives, and who live where they live because they can afford it. It’s not the people who control things, trust me. People who could be convinced to be on your side as long as the argument’s presented reasonably. People who just don’t have the chance to understand that their attitudes may be shaped by division from social and economic structures because they’re too busy surviving and not getting a liberal arts degree. 

But the people I know who are calling this action “so brave” are the very people who moved to Boston, can afford to buy apartments there with help from their parents, driving up prices and displacing people (like myself) who don’t get any help from their parents. I can’t afford to live in Boston. The group of friends I had when I was 26 can afford to live there, and while I didn’t know it at the time, it’s because they get help with their parents. At one wedding, my friend said to me, “oh I don’t know anybody who hasn’t gotten help from their parents.” I wanted to scream in reply, to be like, oh really? And this is why I don’t live here, why when I take the time to go home, I visit my family, and not you guys. Out of this group particular of friends it should be noted that the bulk of them came to Massachusetts from other places.

This particular round of activism annoyed me because it got me in the “I want to protect my parents” spot and the “I feel some anger about the fact that I can’t afford my hometown” spot. It had very little to do with the activism myself — I want the energy in this country to influence change right now. My suspicion is that it may be slow. I wonder if these men that I know should maybe use some of their money and energy to make sure that people are able to effect change through voting and candidates who have people in mind, not corporations.

3) This financial disconnect is also why when Girls premiered, and the first scene had Hannah being “cut off” from her parents at the tender age of 23ish in New York, I couldn’t get on board with the show. I wasn’t funded by my parents, and I had to have a series of terrible jobs in order to be able to put a life together. The only thing they could offer me was time at our family house. That first scene in Girls was a bit of a Woody Allen-ish statement of intent: this class is the one that we’re writing about, and they’re blithe and obnoxious and unaware of their good luck and money. 

I always approached the profession of media and the people in the profession with a certain naiveté, but perhaps some of the reason Girls got very good reviews off the bat was that, for some people, the idea of an awful person bemoaning getting cut off by their parents was funny and absurd, a little bit like life. I’m glad that I stuck with Girls — it got better, I liked it more, I’m impressed with Lena Dunham as a writer and a director — but I think the pilot’s stakes said a bit more about the bougie competitiveness anyone in media is dealing with on a day to day basis and that I remained stubbornly ostrich-like about on average.

I think talent does find its place; I also think that there are certain things in your life that put you way ahead of your peers in your twenties, from money to beauty and the surprise is that talent is actually the least of it unless you’re obviously a genius. When you are young and poor and walking on a wire, these advantages are reason to assume people are evil and shitty and awful, but it gets better, it evens out in some form or fashion, and you can deal with it, eventually.

It’s been fun, sometimes, talking to friends in other cities, telling them just how terrifying people in New York can be: brilliant, well read, great writers, occasional part-time models, and they’re also gorgeous to boot. On top of it, they’re very nice, too! Maybe I say that in order to get some shine off the drag.

It’s different from Boston, where on average you’re more surprised that the dirtbag you met at a bar is also a rocket scientist and knows their shit when it comes to books.

4) There is a cafe that I like in Brooklyn that I haven’t figured out the wifi password yet. I don’t know if I’m ever going to. As a result, I have been getting quite a bit of work done there. 

5) Along those lines, I’ve been thinking a bit about brains. I do not know how to put this on in official, neurological language, but it seems to me that there’s a certain division in the way that brains work these days. I find that my work requires a sort of quick, analytical, intelligent mind and I don’t always naturally access that state, because sometimes I want to be writing from a place that’s bigger, wilder, more comfortable with ambiguity and spaciousness. It’s difficult to feel between the two.

I want to cultivate more of a dreaminess, a way to think beyond the limitations of my everyday life. I think this requires a strain of thought that’s more inspired by the transcendentalist movement, inspired by Emerson and Fuller and the incredible brains we have in American letters. I want to read more writing coming from that spaciousness. Too much daily writing is just clever clever, saying hey, I’ve been to college. I get that. I know. The net result a lot of the time feels like rooting for a particular sports team or something. Black and white, team x or y. Nothing in between, and that’s no home for someone like me. I want to find the space in between.

Flavorwire 2014 Year In Review

Going to try to do the impossible: link to the bulk of what I’ve written. Let’s begin! A quick glance shows that I conducted about 30 interviews last year, read at least 69 books for work (a. HA and b. definitely more from January - March and also with my own reading), and no wonder I was very tired in December. Obviously after the jump if you’re interested, but it’s very long. Will probably pick some highlights for later in the week.




March links

Interviews:
Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams
 Max Brooks, The Harlem Hellfighters
 Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven
Astra Taylor, The People’s Platform
Mimi Pond, Over Easy
Bryant Terry, Afro-Vegan
Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me
Geoff Dyer, Another Great Day at Sea
David Zweig, Invisibles
Joe Berlinger, Whitey: United States of America vs. James J. Bulger
Alex Tizon, Big Little Man
Chaz Ebert, Life Itself
David Rees, Going Deep With David Rees
Dan Krauss, The Kill Team
Elizabeth Little and Abigail Haas, Dear Daughter and Dangerous Boys
Hannah Hart, My Drunk Kitchen
Jon Ronson, Frank
Sheila Heti, Leanne Shapton, and Heidi Julavits, Women in Clothes
Jill Soloway, Transparent
Christian Rudder, Dataclysm
Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped
Bob Odenkirk, A Load of Hooey
Sam Shaw, Manhattan
Katha Pollitt, Pro
Mallory Ortberg, Texts From Jane Eyre & The Toast
Lynn Shelton, Laggies
Jenny Slate & Dean Fleischer-Camp, Marcel the Shell
Laurie Penny, Unspeakable Things
Megan Amran, Science… For Her!
Nancy Kates, Regarding Susan Sontag
Amy Sedaris, Goodbye to All That

Reviews:
Craig Nelson, The Age of Radiance
Ellen Gilchrist, Acts of God
 Veep Season 3
Justified Season 5
Joshua Ferris, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Elaine Lui, Listen to the Squawking Chicken
Muriel Spark, The Informed Air
Maya Van Wagenen, Popular
Pee Wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special
Pixar, Creativity, Inc
Molly Wizenberg, Delancey
Adelle Waldman, Nathaniel P. prequel
Sophia Amoruso, #GIRLBOSS
The Nellie Bly Reader
Dan Barber, The Third Plate
X-Men: Days of Future Past
The Fault In Our Stars
Brando Skyhorse, Take This Man
Joanna Rakoff, My Salinger Year
Hillary Clinton, Hard Choices
Remembering the Artist Robert De Niro, Sr.
Rectify Season 2
Kevin Birmingham, The Most Dangerous Book
Joan Rivers, Diary of a Mad Diva
Jon Ronson, Frank (the inspiration for the movie)
Courtney Robertson, I Didn’t Come Here to Make Friends
Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies
Begin Again
Marja Mills, The Mockingbird Next Door
I Origins
Beth Macy, Factory Man
Nora Ephron and Food
Manhattan, Season 1
Benoit Denizet-Lewis, Travels With Casey
Jess Row, Your Face in Mine
Michael Harris, The End of Absence
Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist
Megan Amran’s Science… For Her! & Mallory Ortberg’s Texts From Jane Eyre
Monterey Pop
William Deresiewicz, Excellent Sheep
Jo Piazza, If Nuns Ruled the World
Worn Stories
God Help the Girl
Maureen Corrigan, So We Read On
Steve Almond, Against Football
Merritt Tierce, Love Me Back
Happiness: Ten Years of N + 1
Eula Biss, On Immunity
Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl
Transparent, Season1
The 50-Year Argument
Brian Morton, Florence Gordon
Madam Secretary, Season 1
Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage
Cary Elwes, As You Wish
Hector Tobar, Deep Down Dark
Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman
Amy Poehler, Yes Please
An Open Secret
Heaven Adores You
Charles D'Ambrosio, Loitering
Los Angeles Plays Itself
Happy Valley
Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable
Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking
Jon Safran, God’ll Cut You Down
Big Eyes
Joshua Davis, Spare Parts

Commentary:
Gilmore Girls: Secretly a Twin Peaks tribute show
In Praise of 42-Year-old Jared Leto
Why 538 is soulless dreck
Take Cosmopolitan seriously
Adult Magazine’s Millennial erotics
The Man, the Writer, and His Cigarette
Lauren Hillenbrand is America’s best nonfiction writer
How Lauren Hillenbrand works
I miss the video store
Talking about Lena Dunham & Aziz Ansari
2014: pop culture and prison
Book Criticism should be more poptimist
D'Angelo at the Afro-Punk Festival
Jennifer Egan is a prophet
Will Adam Brody happen?
Millennial with a flip phone
Why we still love Moby Dick
Online jealousy is boring
What is Lana Del Rey wearing?
YA is for everybody
Celebrity feminism is hot
Adam Driver is a new man
Justin Bieber and Shia LaBeouf are wrecks
Who is Jake Silverstein, the new New York Times Magazine editor?
Katherine Boo & Adrian Nicole LeBlanc at the NYPL
David Lynch at BAM
High Maintenance at BAM
GoodReads nihilism
Rating Olive Kitteridge’s Maine accents
Zadie Smith and the New York City essay
Ebola freak-out
Why is women’s confessional writing provocative?
October’s best reads
November’s best reads
Realistic Young Adult Movies
Gone Girl’s cool girl speech is a meme
Seth McFarlane, “satirist”
Tilda Swinton is a mystery
James Franco lost his narrative
James Franco Piece #3
James Franco’s poetry and the New York Times Book Review
Blake Lively’s Preserve
Stylized violence is immoral
Manic Pixie Dream Girl still dead
Is To Kill a Mockingbird YA?
Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s marriage works
The skeptic’s guide to Elizabeth Gilbert
The grown-up’s guide to John Green
The grown-up’s guide to Rainbow Rowell
Margaret Atwood’s writing advice
Mindy Kaling, role model
Bechdel Test/Manic Pixie Dream Girls nihilism
Joan Rivers was mean
Why a Game of Thrones actress should be known for her acting
10 Years of Questlove’s faith in D'Angelo
Love locks are the worst
Do teen YouTube celebrities matter?
Don’t do rape threats
Factcheckers are geniuses
John Green’s Reddit AMA
Lena Dunham loves books
What’s with the marketing for Melissa McCarthy’s Tammy?
Where to start with John Cheever
Maya Angelous + Oprah = luv
Will the book last?
Seth Meyers is smug
Johnny Depp isn’t cool anymore
Things we learned about Mad Men’s Matthew Weiner
Mark Wahlberg is entitled
Shailene Woodley on feminism
Caitlin Moran Doesn’t Read YA
Media on Jill Abramson

Longform:
Surfing
Wells Tower
Race
Celebrity profiles
Life in the country
Scary Viruses
Mary Gaitskill
David Lynch
Kathleen Hale
Guernica
Muses
Teen Idols
Mike Nichols
Feminists
Writer’s Choice

Lists:
2014: Best Cultural Criticism
2014: 15 Best Nonfiction Books
25 Best Music Documentaries on Netflix Streaming
25 Writers Who Wrote Great Books Before 25
27 Writers on Whether or not to Get Your MFA
Muppet Twin Peaks
Gilmore Girls’ Highbrow Cameos
Underrated Books of 2014
90s Pop-Culture WItches, Ranked
28 Feminist Writers Recommend Books For Men
My So-Called Life, Ranked
50 Books For 50 States
10 Essential Neil Gaiman works
10 Best Nonfiction Books So Far in 2014
10 Obscure Nonfiction Books by Fiction Writers
10 Juicy Books About Scandal
10 Ways We Totally Relate to BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti
50 Writers to See Live
50 Best Films About Writers, Ranked
30 Writers Give Advice to the Graduate
10 Books for Gone Girl Fans
25 Films to Watch With Your Mom
10 Mysteries If You Like Serial
15 Films to Watch With Your Dad
20 Nonfiction Books for the Summer
15 Teen Feminist Books
25 Must-Read Fall Books
15 Boring Superpowers
11 Hilarious Women (Who Aren’t Comedians)

Recaps:

Orphan Black:
2.3: “Mingling Its Own Nature With It”

Mad Men:
Season 7 Review
How Don Draper avoided cliche California rebirth
Why People Wanted Megan Draper to Die
7.1: “Time Zones”
7.2: “A Day’s Work”
7.3: “Field Trip”
7.4: “The Monolith”
7.5: “The Runaways”
7.6: “The Strategy”
7.7: “Waterloo”

The Affair:
Overly optimistic review based on the pilot
Short piece on its use of sex scenes (generally good!)
Episode 1: “Pilot”
Episode 2: “2”
Episode 3: “3”
Episode 4: “4”
Episode 5: “5”
Episode 6: “6”
Episode 7: “7”
Episode 8: “8”
Episode 9: “9”
Episode 10: “10”

What was The Affair?


The Affair won a ton of Golden Globes, and I tangled with it for ten hours for the sake of recaps and think piecery. Here is my story. (Yes, the episodes are “named” by the number.)

Overly optimistic review based on the pilot
Short piece on its use of sex scenes (generally good!)

Episode 1: “Pilot”
Episode 2: “2”
Episode 3: “3”
Episode 4: “4”
Episode 5: “5”
Episode 6: “6”
Episode 7: “7”
Episode 8: “8”
Episode 9: “9”
Episode 10: “10”

The Promise in Elena Ferrante →

In a year so crammed with both cultural stasis and accelerated political mania that it resembled nothing else so strongly as a trash fire, there was Elena Ferrante, oasis of the terrifyingly good. The pseudonymous Italian author has made a quiet, graceful transition from cult fame to widespread obsession, and rightly: she’s equally pulpy and brilliant, her plots setting fire to “the female experience” in all its traps and correspondent pleasures while her style accumulates a cold philosophical divinity, increasingly cerebral and bloodless as it becomes bloodier and wild.

Good piece. Gave me thoughts.

“That’s the problem with history, we like to think it’s a book — that we can turn the page and move the fuck on. But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.”
— Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, out in March 2015. Should be on your to-read and best-of-2015 lists already.

Some of the Best Things

It’s fun to write about the things that move you greatly. So, in short order:

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Angel Olsen, D'Angelo, Will Chancellor’s A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall, Frank the movie, Manhattan the TV Show, Citizen: An American Lyric & Olive Kitteridge, and the best nonfiction books of the year.

A note: I thought it was interesting that our “underrated” list mostly consisted of television shows — books were possible, of course, but I also think it speaks to the fact that amazing things are happening in television on a regular basis and film, on the other hand, is falling behind.

A Terrifically Boring Observation

I don’t drink that much on average, and I’ve noticed that when I do drink, I wake up quite sluggish the next day. It’s a bit frustrating, especially as this month, I need to write 30,000 words at least on top of whatever amount of writing I’m doing for work. So I’m afraid I should probably not drink, in order to get that done. A healthy life for a very boring reason, for a task I don’t want to do, one thing shoving its way in front of the eight relevant things I want to do, for something I’m not being paid enough money for — this is why you want to drink in the first place, to feel like a genius!

PS. Take my advice: GET PAID