great(ish) pt 50: grown ups, scammers, artists
Today: the best new song by a definitely not new band, the new Biedermeier in film and literature, an update on the art market, unfortunately we have to talk about AI.
And a request: I’d love to know what your favourite novels, films, TV shows about work are. Am I right in thinking that “solving violent crimes” is the only profession that features in fiction with any kind of regularity? (And isn’t it so weird that that is a whole genre when there are many other professions that essentially solve mysteries?) Yes, I’ve watched Severance.
Article: How The Black Portraiture Boom Went Bust by Rachel Corbett, published in Vulture in May 2025
Yet another insight into how crushingly stupid and cynical the (visual) art market is: collectors and art sharks bought portraits by Black artists for lots and lots of money in the wake of the BLM protests; then they lost interest. Black portraiture was a bubble that burst. The numbers are truly staggering. So is the cynical signposting and virtue signalling to ultimately earn more money.
Film: Oslo Stories: Dreams and Oslo Stories: Sex, directed by Dag Johan Haugerud (2024)
It’s been a while since watching a film made me feel as awake and curious as the Oslo Stories trilogy. You can find plot summaries on wikipedia, all I’ll say is that I felt very strongly about all the characters in these films. I think I enjoyed Love the most, thought Dreams was the smartest and Sex the funniest.
Book: Consider Yourself Kissed by Jessica Stanley (2025)
My pet theory is that we’re in a new Biedermeier (Oslo Stories no exception!). What I liked best about Consider Yourself Kissed, a book that I read almost from beginning to end on a very long train ride, is that even though its protagonist is mainly concerned with domestic drama – the realistic joy and horror of motherhood – she is also constantly watching and worrying about politics and the world. A great book for train rides.
Learning: Scamming Substack? by Will Storr
Will Storr’s analysis of the specific style emerging on Substack in the seemingly personal essays that go viral on there was illuminating: they’re not written by humans!
(I feel very ambivalent about Substack, a venture-backed newsletter platform [see Anna Wiener’s 2022 article about what it means for the future of media if all writing moves to individual newsletters instead of edited publications]. I feel even more ambivalent about how we’re devaluing creative expression and problem solving by outsourcing it to AI.)
Other: Grown Ups by Pulp
Speaking of good or bad writing: this is a brilliantly written song on the very good new album by Pulp. Every other line is a punch in the stomach if you’re at the age when you feel like you should have worked out how to be an adult but feel repelled by the apparent fixtures of adulthood (i.e. moving somewhere because it’s good for commuting).
That’s it! As always, you can find all past recommendations in this spreadsheet and you can read past newsletters in the archive. Let me know what you’ve been reading, listening, or where you’ve taken the train to.