Friday Thoughts and Things to Share
Sometimes three-day weekends followed by four-day work weeks are a blessing, an extra day of rest or fun, a time to reconnect with a partner or catch up with a friend with whom it’s been too long. But, let’s be honest: other times they’re a curse. The curse, I’ve found, generally shows up in the form of a grinding beast, a beast that curses you with not enough time and too little energy and/or motivation to complete the work assigned to you. Some four-day work weeks are like that Stephen King short story “The Mangler” - purely metaphorically speaking, of course. Wink.
If you’re unfamiliar, “The Mangler” is about a laundromat whose steam ironing and folding machine goes psycho and starts inexplicably ironing and folding people, flattening and crushing them to death. The local police, with the aid of an academic specializing in paranormal mythology, finally pinpoint the cause of the folding machine’s violence. I won’t spoil the ending, but will say that “The Mangler” is, in my humble opinion, not one of King’s better short stories. Which is fitting, since this week very much wasn’t one of my better weeks.
What can you do. Onwards and upwards. Rise up and try, try again.
Articles to share:
Oscar nominations were just announced, and we Succession fans are not okay! You’re making us choose between Kendall and Roman? That was Logan’s job, and he died! Anyways, I love both actors, I haven’t seen either movie, and here’s a wonderful profile of Kieran Culkin and the movie A Real Pain, for which he’s nominated. Justice for Fuller!!!
“Dry January Is Driving Me to Drink” by Tressie McMillan Cottom, New York Times: She is such a brilliant cultural analyst. Case in point, a quote from the article:
“Anything that becomes popular has politics. Dry January takes a choice and compels people to talk about it, to proselytize it, and ultimately to perform it. I’m sure people think they perform going dry for all the good reasons. To let others know they are not alone. To fight back against insidious drinking culture. But what we mean to do and what we end up doing can be two different things.”
“The Old Rules Are For Losers” by Kelsey McKinney, Defector: (as an aside, who else has pre-ordered her new book? I have, I have!!) But anyways, she wrote a great and readable encapsulation and analysis on the Democratic Party’s refusal to fight our current autocratic GOP (italics are the author’s):
“The only way to possibly beat a dirty player is to play dirty right back.
I can hear the whines already. Do we want to live in a country where people cheat to win? Do we want to stoop to their level? Do we want to ignore the standards and made-up rules that everyone agreed to abide by? The problem with these questions is that they do not reflect an ethical situation that exists.”
PREACH!
“The Broligarchy Is Here” by Emily Amick, Emily in Your Phone on Substack: this fantastic piece is not a snarky, scathing mockery of tech bros - although no judgment to that kind of writing - but a long read chock full of vital information about the horrible, antidemocratic ways Silicon Valley titans want to remake our society, ways that will enrich them at everyone else’s expense and supposedly make up for all the ways they felt inadequate in high school, also at our collective expense. I can’t overstate how illuminating this read is, and also that we have to find some way to fight this bullshit.
Books I’m Currently Reading:
My nonfiction pick is Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
My current novel is The Best Bad Things by Katrina Carrasco
I’m immensely enjoying both, but my week was so crunched for time I barely got any reading done, so I hope to have a different answer in this category next week; alas, I make no promises
Two Books to Recommend:
NONFICTION:
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer
I too read the Neil Gaiman piece, yes THAT Neil Gaiman piece, the immense feat of investigative reporting in Vulture by Lila Shapiro depicting the monstrous assault allegations against this famous and beloved novelist. I’ve never read any of Gaiman’s books, but many people, including my husband, have loved his books. I have loved art that turned out to have been created by a monster. We all have. So what do we do? Start with Claire Dederer’s book, it’s phenomenal. It is absolutely okay and perfectly human to have loved art made by a very bad person, it is absolutely okay and perfectly human to have never suspected a thing before the revelations were reported.
FICTION:
The Future by Naomi Alderman!
I feel like everyone had a very weird week and we might need something escapist and cathartic and a little unhinged, and to that end I offer you Alderman’s sophomore effort, an outstanding, highly entertaining, beautifully bonkers novel.
Cheers to the weekend, may it restore you as much as possible!