I doubt therefore I think therefore I am
#Scurf198: May your September be full of wondrous hours where you read more and watch even more of Industry
It’s been a while. The vagaries of modern life have been costive, fluid, and mobile but also weirdly fusty. So, I thought I’ll quickly pull together some of the things I read these past few days along with an interview with Anne Carson done by a shaking, nervous, smitten Linn Ullmann at the Louisiana Festival this year. There’s just something so serene to see an author as accomplished as Ullmann herself, trembling in the face of having to interview her favourite writer.
As much as I love everything that the Louisiana Channel puts out, this interview has by far superseded everything I’ve seen on there (including my most favourite Rachel Cusk interview). And as much as I’ve read and admired Carson’s poetry and essays so far, I had no idea that she’d be such a delightful interviewee! The places she goes in her answers, the ease and casual charm with which she takes us along is remarkable. There is a lightness, even fun, to it all, that make the conversations, topics, everything seem so accessible. I listened to the interview for the first time while working out — that’s a feat!
In this interview, Ullmann brings up Carson’s recent London Review of Books essay which I read when it came out and have thought about every day. One wishes to have this clarity, with a certain amount of coldness to the way they look at things, life, illness to be able to write about it so perfectly! Here’s a link:
Gloves on! by Anne Carson, Aug 15, 2024 in the London Review of Books
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It was a weekday morning at around 7:30am when sitting at the kitchen table, wrapping up the latest episode of Industry, I logged on twitter and found this essay by Farah Yameen in
on the cultural history of the dastarkhwan. Three pars in and I was finding it difficult to look at the screen because my eyes were full of tears. A poignant, stirring, soulful read to make one level with their roots. Here it goes:Folds of abundance, by Farah Yameen, September 9, Vittles Magazine
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This Times Literary Supplement book review which is basically just a call to huddle for font lovers.
True to type, by Tom Cook, TLS
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The recent NY Times photo essay on 120 years of the NYC subway was all shades of enchanting, excellent, transporting. I love a literary piece that matches its own vibe with apt quotes and even better photographs!
120 Years of New York’s Subterranean Literary Muse, NYT
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As people who exist (sometimes only) on the internet, we’ve all been at one point or the other been obsessed with a Max Richter album, track, adaptation. Bizarre how for so many years of listening to his work, it’s only now I got around to actually reading an interview with him. And boy does it dazzle!
A casual moment of serendipity here when Richter talks about being so moved by everyone’s favourite Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, an iconic, timeless masterpiece. Illinois I feel as an album has it all, a work so complete, so poised. It holds within a mezmerizing, diverse instrumentation with expertly crafted, beautiful themes. That Richter sees them the same makes it all the more poignant, important.
Max Richter on the Music That Made Him, Pitchfork, Sept 2024
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Everything I know about life, I know it from the books I read (and never reread) and movies I watch (and almost always rewatch). This essays underlines my obsession with other people’s obsession of rereading books (???) as Schwartz goes into the deep-end of how that doesn’t really click much for him. I resonate with everything here, especially with the slightly pretentious, superficial pursuits (probably more so in the SM era) where more and more of us are so occupied with rereading the classics, oh god, its always the classics! Can we sometimes get past ourselves and reread a John Green book? No, right? So why reread Proust till the French come home?
Against Rereading, Oscar Schwartz in the Paris Review of Books, Sept 2024
As always,
Andy