219. READ. LOOK. THINK.
Strong urge, call number tattoos, birthday blues, being a favourite adult, the trauma of publishing a novel, a book that made me feel lonely when it ended.
READ.
‘All this said and done, I say, what is, exactly, the point of being a novelist? There is a long pause. “I have this really strong urge to speak clearly,” [Zadie Smith] replies.’
Journal excerpts from Lydia Davis 1997-1999.
Evelyn Waugh is laughing at you.
‘Becky, you slut. What are you doing?’
‘For every book she writes, she gets a tattoo of its call number in the Library of Congress on her side.’ This profile of Merve Emre is… ???!!!
‘They have one thing in common: they want to be published. They want their talents ratified by an outside authority. I remember this feeling. You want someone to see past your costume, ignore the raiment of your day job, intuit your gifts.’/ ‘Becoming a published author, or just being a writer in general, can sometimes create an ungraciousness, a sort of infantile need to be told, constantly, that your work is important.’ / The “trauma” of publishing a novel.
I have read the new Nina Stibbe diary via the black market proof economy and it’s SO GOOD. When it finished I felt lonely!
LOOK.
I have a feeling I might have talked about LOVE AND OTHER CATASTROPHES before (classic 90s film set in Melbourne and Melbourne Uni, stars Helen Garner’s daughter?) but anyway — it’s on YouTube!
Hannah-Rose Yee says I have to go to Farleys House, ‘even better than Charleston,’ I must have driven past about ten times — am I the only person who’s never heard of it?
This jumper!
THINK.
Do you suffer from the birthday blues? ‘some people may develop their resentment for the day during childhood if the people in their lives failed to celebrate them the way they desired.’
‘All the ways we now seek to manage ourselves deadens the little freedom we have, the possibility of exploring our wildest and worst fantasies in order to reconcile with them, and with it, take advantage of the minor pleasures we might achieve in life.’
The problem with boys, the manosphere says, is actually just women.
Does the Left have a problem with children?
How to become a kid’s favourite adult.
‘If I go missing’ folders.
‘One person who worked at TBI, and has since left, compared life inside the institute to the movie Goodbye Lenin — in which a woman who fell into a coma before the fall of the Berlin Wall is shielded from the truth by her protective son. Blair’s new life, according to some former colleagues, feels like one long prime ministerial cosplay in which everybody must play their part.’
‘While the relatively privileged seek ways to shield themselves from risk — and even turn periodic shocks to their advantage — the fact is they’ve rigged a game that can’t be won, one that keeps them stressed and scrambling, and breathing the same smoke-tinged air as the rest of us. Which means they, too, have much to gain from rewriting its rules, including reimagining what new forms of security might entail.’
Anger is most powerful emotion by far for spurring climate action, study finds. (Not really looking forward to being communicated to on the basis of this finding.)
Jess
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