Media Log, May
Mistress Isabelle Brooks, Open Wide, Big City Life
Books
Unbeknownst to me, this was my most productive month in books since January 2022, when I was in college and had no job and had nothing to do all day. I finished 15 this month, owing to some very small books, but also because of a recent vacation where I had the ability to sit by the pool and finally get into Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections.
May 1: Stag Dance, Torrey Peters: I reviewed this for Spectrum Culture, but my quick take is that there is no one better than Peters when it comes to the messy and very funny realities and anxieties of gender.
May 5: Great Black Hope, Rob Franklin: This started out so strong, but the winding writing really kept exhausting me. It had MFA fiction written all over it, which only strengthens my idea that it might have a flattening effect on writing. Funny at times, though.
May 5: Fresh, Green Life, Sebastian Castillo: I had a lovely conversation with Sebastian just yesterday about the book, and after reading it twice, I think it’s a delight. It was so fun to spend sometime in the brain of this deluded, anxious adult who emerges from a year of solitude to spend his New Year’s Eve at a former professor’s apartment, lured there by the promise of a former crush. There’s so many thinkpieces about how young men don’t read anymore, and this seems like an answer and explanation to that.
May 8: The Story of ABBA, Jan Gradvall: Review to come, but this book was such a disappointment from a longtime fan of ABBA who learned nothing new from this book. Full of winding diatribes and oddball anecdotes, it didn’t go anywhere meaningful in the end.
May 9: Bitter Water Opera, Nicolette Polak: Lyrical and pretty — finished in a day.
May 11: Open Wide, Jessica Gross: I will read anything Jessica Gross writes. I consumed Hysteria, her 2020 debut, over two days, and I couldn’t have been more excited for her next work. A little more formal in structure, Open Wide continues her streak of young Jewish women being absolutely insane. Instead of hallucinating that your bartender is Sigmund Freud, Olive cuts her boyfriend Theo open one night as he’s sleeping. And he’s into it. I reviewed this, and until the book comes out this August, I’ll be telling everyone about it.
May 18: The Young Man & The Simple Passion, Annie Ernaux: I had some time before a flight so I wandered around San Diego’s Fashion Valley mall — the Barnes and Noble being my first stop. Unlike B&Ns in the past, this one didn’t have a welcoming plush seating area, so I sat in a wood chair near the health section and finally got into Annie Ernaux, who I have heard many good things about since her Nobel Prize win in 2022. I started with The Young Man, a very short book, and thought it probably could have been condensed into something else. I wasn’t really sure why this person caused her so much strife and desire, but I suppose that’s the point of a relationship from the outside. The Simple Passion, at least, had some quotes I could write down, and I thought it worked better as a book.
May 18: The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen: After a week of reading this by the pool in Carlsbad, I finished it waiting in the gate for my flight, and I almost cried. It’s a big fat read, which I have been clamoring for some time, and it has some really funny parts, really boring parts, and it culminates in this affecting finale. I couldn’t believe how good some of these sentences were, and I’m glad I picked this up at a thrift store for $1.
May 19: Hey You Assholes, Kyle Seibel: After a while of enjoying Seibel’s stories online, I’m glad that a book-length collection of them holds up. It’s silly, serious, and emotional — who said guys aren’t reading/writing fiction?
May 22: Foreclosure Gothic, Harris Lahti: Strange, subversive, and immersive in a way that is rare in fiction. I felt like I had to pay attention to every word, every detail, and in our conversation, Lahti mentioned that each sentence opened itself up to the next, which makes sense. Each chapter reads like a short story, and it’s a lovely first horror read of the year.
May 26: Disappoint Me, Nicola Dinan: I was certainly disappointed. I thought that the writing and the characters were all flat and dry. Save for a health scare in the last half that picked things up quite a big, it’s such a slog.
May 26: The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex, Melissa Febos: I couldn’t stand how smart this tried to be. I know Febos has written some great memoirs in the past, and maybe those will be less pretentious, but I’m not sure any human needs more than one memoir (except for Cher).
May 29: The State of Israel vs. The Jews, Sylvain Cypel: Pretty indispensable in cementing my thoughts around That Whole Thing. I’ve been needing a book from the Jewish perspective and how embarrassing it is when people are humiliating themselves and going to bat for a country that they think has their best interests in mind. It’s been such a confusing time, but this helped.
May 29: Pan, Michael Clune: Meticulous and bizarre. I wanted to review this one, but couldn’t even find out where to start. A pretty stunning coming-of-age novel.
Music
“Bookends,” U.S. Girls: Meg Remy returns with a stretching 12-minute psychedelic pop stunner.
Lifetime, Erika de Casier: A nice follow-up after the relatively muted Still. This one relies on the same trip-hop, dreamy vibe throughout and it’s a testament to de Casier’s ability that she makes it work.
Cocktail, Belanova: The perfect beach album. I was in California while listening, and I would take gorgeous runs by the ocean listening to the easy beats and languid vocals.
Big city life, Smerz: So beguiling and strange. “Feisty” might be one of the songs of the year.
PRESSURE, Julia Wolf: It’s impossible not to listen to this album without thinking ow ow ow at the cover art, but it mixes glitch pop, metal, and indie rock so interestingly, and in only 30 minutes, that it’s hard to keep it off repeat.
“Man of the Year,” Lorde: Immediately more interesting to me than “What Was That.” The ego death stuff is a little overdone, but I’m obsessed with how the song builds. After hearing her say the perfect place to listen to this song is a bathroom with all the white tile on triple j, the image hasn’t left my head.
“Afterlife,” Alex G: Haven’t always connected to his music, but this single was so sunny.
Something Beautiful, Miley Cyrus: The divide between critics and users on this album is so interesting to me. One one hand, it’s a well-produced record with a great team and some great atmospheric qualities, and on the other, it has no substance. It’s a weak album dressed up like a song one, and we’re still nowhere closer to understanding who Miley Cyrus is as an artist. I had some fun digging into this one.
Articles
Harris Lahti’s ever-erratic and affecting fiction in Flaunt.
Lorde in conversation with Martine Syms about totems and her new album. (Document Journal).
Amy Weiss-Meyer’s loving profile of Florida hero Carl Hiaasen (The Atlantic).
Nick Summers tracking the pathetic devolution of Columbia University (New York Magazine).
Harmony Holiday’s teetering, rollercoaster-like sentences when reviewing Nettie Jones’ Fish Tales (Bookforum).
The loveliness Charlotte Shane imbues in an equally-lovely-seeming memoir from Mayumi Inaba (Bookforum).
TV Shows
Hacks limps to its finale while And Just Like That… starts season 3 on its left foot.
RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars makes its best casting decisions in years with Mistress Isabelle Brooks and Nicole Paige Brooks.
What I Wrote
Didn’t enjoy the new Samia album as much as her previous ones (The Line of Best Fit).
Everyone needs to calm down and not take fiction, especially Lauren Haddad’s Fireweed, less seriously (The Brooklyn Rail).
Interviewed Matthew Gasda for his play-like novel, The Sleepers (OurCulture).
Ranked Addison Rae’s songs (thus far) for this Substack.
Rob Franklin’s Great Black Hope was too caught up in being beautiful (PopMatters).