Hello again,
I mentioned last time that there are approximately 20 billion newsletters now, which is something you have no doubt read about the hallowed Times of Neue Yorke and elsewhere. I subscribe to a cool 70 or so of them, partly because I thought it would help me to *~*stay informed~*~ and *~*~engage with others*~* but not be on social media. It… sort of does. Sometimes I reply to newsletters and the person writes back and that’s nice. Mostly I keep newsletters in my inbox because I want to reply to them at length and then I forget to or it feels weird to reply to a four-week old weekly newsletter like “four weeks ago this really touched me but I only got around to telling you about it now because i’ve been really busy pretending I don’t have email.”
Anyway one way in which this is going to be a Bad Newsletter is I’m basically just going to take things I learned about from other newsletters and tell you about them. LOL the aggregation economy will never die!!!!! Relatedly, I am in a sort of paradise for me personally, having driven up to the Finger Lakes to stay with my friends Eric and Sylvia at their truly incredible, insanely beautiful and perfectly decorated (like honestly who are these people?!?!?! Are we the same species?!?! How do i, too, find a way to live in a rustic yet modern dreamhouse that is simultaneously airy and full of personality?!?!) farmhouse where Eric cooks incredible meals and tirelessly does a very Protestant-feeling slate of rural chores and I try desperately to find ways to make myself a useful or at least desirable presence but mostly just bitch about capitalism excessively like a goddamn nightmare of a person. I try to make them laugh as much as possible and hope that laughter is a valuable enough commodity to justify my generally parasitic presence in their lives. Also we watched Parasite the other night and ugh can I tell you that I never before really appreciated how much more pleasurable it is to watch a movie with other people, even just on a laptop at home. Additionally (and this is the last thing, I swear), Sylvia is one of those people who asks questions and makes comments during movies, and I am too, and it was a true delight to be among one of my own.
Anyway THREE THINGS!
1.
Can you handle criticism of Dr. Fauci? You should, because it’s important. I first read this in Libby Watson’s newsletter Sick Note which is genius and fills me with a little envy but honestly mostly gratitude that someone smart is doing exactly that thing, and then was reminded of it in Dana Snitzky’s This Week in Books, which I am always surprised I enjoy, not because it’s bad but just because I expect to not have any idea what she’s talking about. Dana’s is a newsletter of literary criticism, and in my opinion is a good companion to the inimitable Books on GIF, which I’ve recommended to readers of this newsletter approximately 34 times. Dana also inspired me to look up some stuff about the new Lauren Oyler novel, and while it’s very basic of me, the New York Times review of it intrigued me. I don’t know very much about Lauren except that she’s a generally exciting critic because she often doesn’t agree with the general consensus around whatever the current darling of the scene is, and she has a seemingly well-deserved, impressive amount of intellectual confidence.
2.
My very dear friend Allegra interviewed me for this good essay on the journalistic art of door-knocking.
3.
I really love Jami Attenberg’s newsletter Craft Talk, and if you are a writer you probably will, too. She’s a really talented novelist who has such a stunningly clear-eyed understanding of her skill and how she deploys it. In a recent dispatch, she asked other writers how they refill their cups when they’re feeling depleted, and I loved Alexander Chee’s contribution. (He is another author whose work I really admire—I’ve recommended his novel The Queen of the Night to a lot of people because I think it fits so many different genre interests: historical fiction, mystery, just generally good fiction, etc. The audio version is also very enjoyable.) Chee said he took a spec tv screenwriting class online and just the sound of that is so desirable to me, but his description of what he got out of it is extra good.
Here’s a photo of my cat last year when she weighed one pound and was covered in fleas.
More soon!
Love,
Danielle