"3 kids 1 swab" and other modern classic newsletters
Ilya tested positive for Covid on Thursday morning and since then we have all just been, I guess, waiting around to get Covid. He's fine, he will be fine, but he's had an unpleasant couple of days, poor guy, starting with a night of high fever that blossomed, a few days later, into what seems like the kind of cold where you feel like your whole head and face are just continuously oozing snot. But the fever is mostly gone and I think he will be back to his usual self within the next day or two. Mostly he watches Frozen but there has been a fair amount of around the clock coddling and cuddling as he oozes snot onto me and whines. No one else is sick yet, at least not physically, but if none of us manages to test positive after being bathed in Ilya's germs in our apartment continuously for the past few days then I'll honestly be a little disappointed. I have swabbed myself and my squirming unwilling children so many times. It's deranged that I feel the immediate urge to cop to what a privilege, what a luxury it is to be able to afford a supply of rapid Covid tests. A self that existed at some point in the past two years would have had the energy to get angry about this, or about anything.
I injured my attention span by allowing Twitter back into my life circa the publication of my VF piece about sad mom movies and my Anna Marie Tendler profile, and though I am far from previous levels of scrolling I am still missing the clean, pure, virtuous brain I had been enjoying prior to that relapse. I've been able to read books but I have't been able to write fiction or have ideas. I have listened to three different podcasts recapping and analyzing various aspects of And Just Like That. It goes without saying that I have watched every episode of And Just Like That, but I'll refrain from adding my commentary to that of the learnèd Rabbis who are poring over this rich text. My idols Lindsey and Bobby have done a great job, of course, and I've also been so grateful for the expertise of Lauren Garroni and Chelsea Fairless. The official AJLT writers room podcast is mostly interesting as a document of exactly why this show turned out the way it did, sort of like the documentary on Disney+ about the making of Frozen 2, the one that seems to exist mostly to answer the question "Why??" Now that I mention it, those two big ticket media properties have a lot in common -- can't-lose IP that will inevitably reach a huge audience despite offering an actual narrative that's so muddled and internally contradictory it's almost impossible to explain. In this essay, I will ...
My newsletter subscriptions are really coming through for me right now, though. I thought I would do a little digest of the best of my inbox, to share the wealth and remind myself that there has indeed been more to my intellectual life lately than the pleasurable but transient delight of reading 3 different exegeses of Che Diaz's "California Girls" scene.
I'll Be Right Back #92, "3 Kids 1 Swab and Other Notes on Raising Children During The Pandemic"
This one should be in the Smithsonian. It is "Dust Bowl Woman" in prose form. It reminded me of moments from the past two years that I had forgotten and, even now, seem both distant and arrestingly immediate, capable of making me enraged or thrilled all over again. Remember that one amazingly tone deaf tweet? Remember tiktok baked feta? Laura Hazard Owen is a genius. I love how understated and funny her writing is.
Everything Happened Vol. 208: "In which Donovan trolls me and I do not have the baby in a Safeway"
It's hard to fuck up a birth story -- I've basically never read what I would consider to be a "bad" one (the W**dy Allen joke about orgasms comes to mind, unfortunately). The narrative structure is really baked in, so between those beats you can do pretty much whatever you want and still keep your reader riveted. But that doesn't mean it's easy to make one sing, the way Evie did with the birth of Polly. What I love about Evie's writing is how effortlessly she balances description and narration. She is always interjecting funny perfect observations but never so often that they bog down the story; some people misjudge this balance and the result is that their writing is very funny but basically unreadable because it's all lols. With Evie it's like, a lol sneaks up on you when you're least expecting it, ie, "The doll looked like if Seth Meyers had had the worst day of his life for five years in a row."
Welcome Polly!! I hope someday you read this story and laugh and marvel and feel grateful that you were not born in an unclean Safeway toilet bowl.
This issue of Katie's newsletter captured the emotional complexity of this moment in time, the feeling of struggling to have any particular hopes for the future when so many previous hopes have been thwarted and we're all so used to it. I live for granular descriptions of other people's days and coping mechanisms. I also love her photos.
I've always loved Kristin Iversen's book reviews and also her personal writing. In this new-ish newsletter she does thematically linked capsule reviews of books I have mostly never heard of. This issue though contains a review of Niina Pollari's Path of Totality which comes out this week, and which I hope will get a bunch of awards and introduce many more readers to Niina's brilliant writing. I agree with Kristin's assessment of the book a million percent: "These poems feel like a generous act; in sharing her tragedy — not just the sorrow, but the fierce and enduring love, the moments of pure bliss — Pollari is offering a legacy, a blindingly beautiful corona surrounding all that darkness."
Evil Witches: Mom's Sticker Chart for Winter Depression
Claire Zulkey's voice and opinions have been part of my consciousness for decades now. She is part of a crew of OG bloggers whose writing I turn to when I feel like youngins can't understand how it feels to have already been online for a long time before, for example, Tumblr (which is now being discussed as though it is the ruins of an ancient civilization, came along. Thank goddess she is experiencing this infinite winter and parenting two boys at the same time that I am. Her newsletter is more a of a newsmagazine, full of interviews and communal advice-giving that always feels helpful, never judgmental. This particular installment of her newsletter functioned, for me, as the acknowledgment of something I had never really thought about before which is how important it is to regularly talk to someone outside your family. I definitely get a lot of passing chitchat in my life but I am severely depleted in the routine long talks with friends department and reading this made me realize that even though it feels gross to keep track of that it will keep me from inadvertently getting into a situation where suddenly a random person at school dropoff has to be privy to my innermost thoughts and fears.
Ask Polly: I'm Tired of Getting Used!
Ever since I did my time in the advice column mines I've been a little bit allergic to the genre. But I make an exception for Polly, or Molly, or whatever else Heather Havrilesky wants to call herself. This one is going to stick with me for a long time; it describes a situation that's unfortunately familiar to me -- maybe to most people? -- where you realize you've been simultaneously using someone (for example, to feel like you have your shit together, comparatively speaking) and being used (for material help), but the terms of the mutual using are no longer comfortable to you and you can't stand it one second longer so you become suddenly desperate to rid yourself of the person and forget that any trace of them ever existed in your life, as though that will somehow delete the mistake you made and prevent you from ever making it again. Calling this "codependency" and telling people to just stop being codependent is most advice columnists' stock in trade. Polly does something different here. I'm very excited about her new book!
Unsnackable Vol. #55: Optimistic Ganache and Snail Matrix Goo
Folu Akinkuotu is a mad scientist, poet and genius and her birthday cake sounds, frankly, fucking disgusting but in an AWESOME way. I think I would enjoy each of the elements on their own (were I able to eat them) but together? Actually, I want to hippieishly hold space for the possibility that this cake, featuring whipped Twizzler ganache, popcorn/malted milk ball buttercream, a rum/cola soak on spiced cola cake, and several other things I'm forgetting, might have tasted amazing. Folu on a baking competition reality show when?
A Piece of Cake #56: Honey-Roasted Peanut Cake With Bourbon Caramel Frosting
I admire this newsletter so much -- it is put together so thoughtfully, with such attention to detail. Unlike my own resolutely lo-fi efforts, it makes the case via its mere existence that newsletters, as a medium, can be as aesthetically pleasing and useful as print magazines. Whenever it shows up in my inbox it reminds me that it's possible to live a more delicious, appealing life with a little bit of effort. And failing that, it's always possible to enjoy someone else's efforts in that direction vicariously!
On the eve of the publication of Jessica Stanley's brilliant first novel A Great Hope, the author herself has celebrated by getting Covid and making an even longer than usual list of wonderful things for us to read, plus a very beautiful lampshade.