read with me: october
read with me!
books
Our American Israel, Amy Kaplan I took Amy Kaplan’s course on the Vietnam War through literature and film while I was in college and it was one of my favorite classes. She was a brilliant lecturer with a distinct ability to weave iconic cultural pieces (like Full Metal Jacket or The Things They Carried) into a broader narrative about the war and art’s interaction with history. So I was eager to read her recently published book which explores the complex relationship between Israel and America. A cultural historian, Kaplan writes astutely about the role cultural artifacts like the films Exodus and Schindler’s List have played in shaping the American consciousness of Israel and I was fascinated to gain a deeper understanding of Israel’s founding. I took pause at some of Kaplan’s dismissals of Israel as a site of Jewish liberation following the Holocaust but found her writing clear and revelatory.
Belladonna, Daša Drndic This is possibly one of the most difficult books I have ever read. Translated from Croatian by Celia Haweksworth, Drndic tackles a seemingly unimaginable slew of difficult topics: collective World War II trauma, personal trauma, the politics of forgetting, aging, illness and the body’s decay, academia and the straight jacket of scholarship and other academic-related bullshit, Croatian history, and the writing process. Written in a biographical style (critics have compared Drndic to W.G. Sebald), the novel is filled with footnotes about historical figures and jarringly, long lists with nothing but the real names of those murdered in Croatian death camps. Drndic doesn’t shy away from horror, and there were many times I was so nauseated with disgust I had to put the book aside. Drndic’s writing is brutal, but clarifying. “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us,” is one of many lines still ringing in my head.
other reading i’ve enjoyed
“What are the stakes of such a shift? If the gym is the new church, what happens when the church enters our homes? And when the altar at which we worship is our own image?”
Is Agnes Gund the Last Good Rich Person?
“Her first major acquisition was a Henry Moore sculpture of a horse. ‘But the children were playing on it so I gave it to the Cleveland Museum,’ she said.”
Abandoning a Cat: Memories of My Father
“To put it another way, this heavy weight my father carried—a trauma, in today’s terminology—was handed down, in part, to me, his son. That’s how human connections work, how history works.”
“McCarthy is cruel to her subjects, but she’s never as cruel to them as she is to herself, and she’s present at all times in all of her fiction. She once replied, to the tiresome question asked only of women about how closely her novels hewed to real life: “What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake.”
my month was better because
Scuola di vino frissant sparkling wine 20 Spot (and their beautiful shelving designed by Wylie Price and crafted by Sebastian Parker) Objects at Kindred Black W.I.T.C.H and my introduction to ZamRock The can’t believe this exists an hour from my house elk reserve at tomales point Millennium Actress Rkatsiteli Khvtisia Wine Parking lot wine tasting in point richmond Shan dong’s homemade noodles Morning bike rides to devil’s teeth bakery Harvest moon winery and tilar mazzeo’s sonoma back lane winery guidebook Watching wanda, a brave film directed by Barbara Loden Valet studio bags