I found this Substack about Gilmore Girls, this week, and I’ve been obsessively reading every article. Also, here’s some books Rory would have read in the last seven years. Speaking of shows, this is a great article on Derry Girls and Irish literature. The New Yorker had an excellent article on Edna St. Vincent Millay, if you remember her biography, Savage Beauty, featured in the best Gilmore Girls opening of Rory trying to fit too many books in her bag.
This is a great defense of the humanities. I think critics sort of get the short end of the stick. They’re a key part of the evolution of culture, so let people not enjoy things as I say, all the time, but this article says it better. An ode to Bruce Springsteen that I loved. Also, Facebook is decomposing. Speaking of strange tech things, crypto’s stocks fell, what now?
Taking a turn, I watched this video by Tiffany Ferg on van life ages ago and now there’s a New Yorker article about it. Even for someone pretty much as removed from the beauty industry as one can get, this was an interesting read. Also, a great profile of Jack Antonoff came out lately, perfect for all the girls who were anticipating the CwF adaptation with equal amounts of trepidation and excitement.
This article seems normal until you remember that David Foster Wallace wrote it and that it’s in the gourmet section. A discussion of Jane Austen’s piety (side note: I just read Persuasion for the first time and absolutely loved it), a vicious dissection of auto fiction, and a Donna Tartt profile. I’m not the only one who loves Anne Carson, but god do I love Anne Carson.
There’s two big cases in the new recently. This article gives you a great perspective on Roe v. Wade and abortion access in general from a socialist and abolitionist perspective. This and this give help you understand that the internet has gone crazy, regarding Depp suing Heard for defamation.
On the political side, an interesting read on Boris Johnson that reframes the cultural narrative around him.
This video is a fascinating, in depth breakdown of what happened around Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Jarvis Cocker has a great album inspired by The French Dispatch, which is so so good. Great name, too. A fantastic list on Letterboxd about global cinema. Also, more specifically, this is a good one on Iranian cinema.
The famous and absolutely insane Ann Patchett piece, notes on conceptual fiction, and a brief history of jazz. Speaking of music, this is an excellent playlist with a lot of cool Russian stuff.
As I mentioned, I recently read Persuasion by Jane Austen for the first time. I also read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, which was excellent, unsurprisingly enough, and The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham - which reminded me of The Age of Innocence and Gatsby by which I mean it was great - this week. I also started The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon.
The most popular links from last week were this critique of Emily Ratajkowski’s My Body and a look into the divisive issue of how we should treat our books. As someone who regularly elicits sighs, groans, and expressions of shock and horror from my friends for dog earing, cracking spines, and underlining (with pen, the horror), this hit home.