5 March 2022
Yesterday my dear friend S. C. Cornell published a stellar review of Amia Srinivasan’s The Right to Sex in the inaugural issue of LIBER: A Feminist Review: “Baby, Was I Born This Way?”. Cornell is as generous and precise a critic as she is a novelist. We are lucky to have her work.
You may notice a different format for today’s entry. It is written in the spirit of Sasha Frere-Jones’s newsletter, S/FJ: an eclectic, fragmented mix of art and criticism. In short: links, spiky bois.
In other newsletters, I’ve been enjoying Ben Libman’s The Unnamable, Christian Lorentzen’s newsletter — as well as his recent review of Fuccboi in the LRB — and the hilarious newsletter of Noah Kalina.
In class we’ve been working through a unit on the art of the interview. The adage is true: the teacher learns by teaching. Last week we read Dambudzo Marechera’s 1983 “Interview with Himself” (the type-written manuscript of which you can read here) and watched a clip from Terrance Dixon’s Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (1970).
Back to Frere-Jones — he is everywhere! I’m encountering his work for the first time, and with great pleasure. See his pieces on surrealism, J Dilla, Odetta, and, most recently, Caroline, whose eponymous album I have queued up for today.
In other albums: FKA Twig’s Caprisongs, Nilüfer Yanya's PAINLESS, Saba’s Few Good Things, and — endlessly, nostalgically, in anticipation of the new project — Rex Orange County’s Pony.
Some time ago Mauro Javier Cárdenas tweeted an excellent playlist of music for writing. What about music for reading? I recommend Fernanda Melchor + Ravedeath, 1972 by Tim Hecker.
Is it too late for a year-end roundup of one’s Favorite Books of 2021? I nominate:
And the award for Best Music Video goes to:
(courtesy of Z)
Z and Murray, Bi-Coastal Working Adults, are going strong with Sunday Lunch — I am keeping my ears peeled (plugged) for the next round of on-air Wordle.
It would not be a proper entry without the mention of short stories: yesterday on the train I started Zoë Wicomb’s linked collection You Can’t Get Lost In Cape Town and am keen to continue on with it. And in recent weeks nothing has moved me quite like Sterling HolyWhiteMountain’s “This Then Is A Song, We Are Singing” recommended to me by Paul.
As for my own work, late last year I had an essay on Mauro Javier Cárdenas appear in n+1, and a piece of fiction appear in Socrates on the Beach.
Queued up:
Lawrence Weschler’s “Valkyries Over Iraq: The Trouble With War Movies” (Harper’s, 2005)