242. READ. LOOK. THINK.
Lots to read as usual (and a bombay mix innovation) -- but also Consider Yourself Kissed is out in less than 2 weeks in Australia, and I have Australian tour dates too!
READ.
‘The unfathomable is unsettling, and that makes the most banal thought a shelter. Those who don’t think of themselves as monsters feel less uneasy if catastrophes can be explained as consequences.’ A new short story by Yiyun Li? Have I ever read a (from my personal POV) better one? I don’t think so?
‘The curse of Englishness is something whose magnitude we are still taking the measure of in our time. The English habit of not finding others as real as themselves forms a substantial part of this curse.’
‘I am quite attached to my own sanity, such as it is, and I feel I have to approach the essay form with caution. In fact, I wonder if nonfiction somehow taps into my (otherwise largely suppressed) competitive instincts. I never feel competitive when I’m writing fiction, obviously—I don’t see how fiction even could engage that feeling. But I do seem to feel a little inkling of that instinct when I write nonfiction. It’s something I can’t quite explain.’ Sally Rooney (very interesting!)
Some amazing profiles:
A founder of You Me Bum Bum Train: ‘In 2022, a period of psychosis made her believe that she needed to embarrass herself to save the human race.’
Parker Posey: “Ha ha ha HA,” she said as we closed in on a poodle in a little sweater. “Yeah, I speak poodle!”
Curtis Sittenfeld: “Sometimes in interviews people will say to me, ‘Do you feel a lot of pressure in writing your next book?’ And I’ll think, Who would I feel pressure from?” Ms. Sittenfeld said. “Nobody cares what I’m doing.”
I loved reading Torrey Peters on Elif Batuman, whom I also LOVE (in a writing sense). Torrey says, ‘Everyone I know who has met her says she’s lovely, but I don’t feel the need to meet her, because what she’s created through her writing is so enriching that I’m happy just to accept that from her.’ I feel exactly the same about every writer I admire, the actual meeting in person is not needed when you have the books.
‘He would ring up and announce, “This is Lucian Freud.” I would tease him, asking in reply, “Lucy and who?” There would be a long silence, after which he would ask to reserve a table.’
‘Photographers go wild about my studio with its paint rags and paint-splattered floorboards. … [They] forget that this is my private space to work.’
If you have a sub to The Times, you can read my review (rave, really) about Helen Garner’s diaries.
LOOK.
THINK.
Almost 100% of birthing parents will experience perinatal intrusions [intrusive thoughts and images of accidental child-related harm].
‘A premonition is growing. I believe large swaths of the internet will be ceded, like it or not, to the creatures of the digital night: ghostly bots, cackling trolls, the baying hounds of attention. I imagine this future internet as a vast, boiling miasma, punctuated by signal towers poking up into the clear air: blogs & shops, beacons of reality & sincerity, nodes of a human overlay network.’
‘The movies condition us to imagine survival as a response to a singular, calamitous event: a pandemic virus, a zombie invasion, a plane crash, aliens, government collapse. But it’s more realistic to imagine that we are already living in the midst of a slowly unfurling cataclysm whose effects we encounter in succession, like the waves of an ocean. Picture it this way, and there is a kind of quiet steadiness to the work of survivalism; it is not so different from the ordinary work of living.’
Mental health crisis means youth is no longer one of happiest times of life.
MY BOOK!
Consider Yourself Kissed is out in Australia on April 1, less than two weeks way! It’s a love story — two people fall in love at the start. But then it follows them, from the POV of my main character Coralie, across the next ten years of their lives. How do you STAY in love? How do you make a family when your family life growing up wasn’t the best? How can you keep going when the world feels so uncertain and chaotic??? Vibe-wise, I’ve been saying imagine a young Helen Garner is suddenly transported into a Richard Curtis. Agonised reflection ensues (with jokes) (and crying).
It will be out in UK, US/Canada in May but today I just want to ask all my Australian friends to place their pre-orders or put a reminder in their gcals to pop into a shop not next Tuesday but the one after ❤️
Please also come to my Australian events, any or all!
❤️ April 23 6.30pm Fitzroy library author talk. FREE TIX.
❤️ April 26 4.30pm Sorrento Writers' Festival: Writers on Writing. FREE TIX.
❤️ April 26 6pm Sorrento Writers' Festival: Let's Talk Love. $30 TIX.
❤️ April 27 1.30pm Sorrento Writers' Festival: My New Book. $30 TIX.
❤️ April 28 6.15pm Melbourne Launch of Consider Yourself Kissed at Brunswick Bound. FREE, PLEASE COME!
❤️ April 29 6.30pm Sydney launch of Consider Yourself Kissed in conversation with Sophie Roberts (Highly Enthused) at Better Read Than Dead. BOOK $5 TIX or $40 with book! PLEASE COME!
If any of those links don’t work, the events are listed here on the Text Publishing site.
Please come and please say hello if you come!
Jess X
OMG YES! See you in Sydney! And with SoRo no less.. Highly Enthused hive rise...