I began reading Lena Dunham’s memoir Famesick on a Saturday morning while on a train to Antwerp. I went to the brilliant Antwerp Six exhibition at MoMu, then continued reading in the museum cafe. After a long walk, and several stops in vintage shops and antique stores and home decor stores and a yarn shop and art bookstores and the line at Frites Atelier and Uniqlo (why do I always end up in a Uniqlo while traveling? why?), I made my way back to Antwerpen Centraal to escape the rain and eat lunch at Pret, and finished reading the memoir.

It is incredible, and I left it feeling despondent — for our past lives — and still, somewhat hopeful, about what it means for Dunham to be the voice of a generation. Afterwards, I went to the KMSKA/Royal Museum of Fine Arts, which is perhaps the most peaceful of museum experiences I’ve ever had in my life, and then I took a train back home, and began writing about Famesick the next day. My review of the book is here at Dunya Digital:

It is a deeply introspective account of a person who is literally rendered sick as a product of fame. This fame propelled the popular culture discourse machine into turning Dunham and her work into a product onto which they could project their critique of everything from Lena’s weight, to her tweets, the success of Girls, its storylines, scandal, privilege, and her defense of a writer accused of sexual assault. It is a story of the proximity to celebrity and how unnatural and strange it is, ranging from experiences like receiving an email out of the blue from Nora Ephron, to the meeting with the iconic male star who Dunham doesn’t name, who sends her a ‘u up?’ text. It is recognisable in the recounting of the long, slow, brutal decimation of relationships, sometimes described with the kind of levity and self deprecation that feels like an episode of Girls, but put to paper, has an overwhelming feeling of sadness and confusion to it, and the accounts — particularly of her working relationship with her co-star Adam Driver — sound resoundingly awful.