203. READ. LOOK. THINK.You only get to debut once, 'precious stones and unprecious bodies', a random guy with a marginal Substack, the Seinfeld of books, Orna, romantic nostalgia, social contestation.
France — very nice. Hi friends, I’m home from holidays, which were so great, but actually getting there and back murders my psyche. Please tell me if you’ve read anything super in-depth about travel anxiety. It’s not that I think the plane will crash, it’s more just the horror of not being in charge of my own life, choices, timekeeping and air quality. How to deal? READ.You only get to debut once — Carmen Maria Machado. 'I am afraid even using his name in this essay is going to somehow ruin my life: that someone is going to try and tell me I didn’t do it right.' Editing is like ‘trying to perform therapy without the help of a professional.' 'Before, I operated with the confidence of a local in the place of my birth; when I described, I knew that my perspective, even if others came to critique it, was informed by a lifetime of observation in and through my mother tongue. I was one of what I observed. Being a new foreigner throws you from that security.' '...we go to writers of color for the gooey heart-porn of the ethnographic: to learn about forgotten history, harrowing tragedy, community-destroying political upheaval, genocide, trauma; that we expect those writers to provide those intellectual commodities the way their ancestors once provided spices, minerals, precious stones, and unprecious bodies.' An industry of rejection. 'You can’t drag the story out of a woman like that, and then leave her alone.' Simran Hans profiles Dolly Alderton. 'Even though I was just a random guy with a marginal Substack who had only just moved to New York, it was clear that I had something they needed.' I read this gripped despite understanding 60% of the background at most. ‘Art is part of life experience, but it isn’t the same as living life. We don’t enjoy crying over the death of a beloved friend, but inside what I call ‘the aesthetic frame’, we can experience safely what would be terrible in our own lives, not because we are having ‘quasi-emotions’, as the analytical philosopher Colin Radford has argued. The emotions are real. The context is different.' Siri Hustvedt (I reread What I Loved for the thousandth time on holidays — what an amazing book. When Leo says ‘I knew my happiness had come’ 💔) Really sad story about Daniel Auster. 'I feel hysterical as I serve food to dozens of people I have never met who flood the apartment, play music I don’t like and intrude on my flatmates’ private space. I find out that I do not like the girl whose birthday party I am hosting, that I do not know her at all; we do not really speak again after that night. Even worse, I make a fatal substitution in the recipe, not anticipating how differently the ingredient would behave. The thought of all these strangers eating the manic, bad dish haunts me painfully.' Tantalising preview of Rebecca May Johnson's new cooking memoir in Granta You probably won't guess what Blackbird Spyplane calls the 'Seinfeld of books.' 'Orna’s indefatigable patience models an approach to difference that is unlike either the liberal obsession with truth or the fascist fixation on control. It begins from the irreducible idiosyncrasies of perception, neither concrete nor abstract, real nor unreal, willed nor automatic.' Profile of Orna from Couples Therapy (and did I already post the New Yorker profile?). I'm up to Season 2 — sometimes I have to pause it when (the extremely compelling) Michal is yelling. Listening to The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr on audiobook. 'In its imperfect way, the novel tells imperfect people a simple, perfect thing. Hold on.' 🥲 LOOK.Ottessa Moshfegh is on Depop. Foundation (the face make up) is dead. Too much SPF 50 might be ‘as bad for you as Marlboro 100s.’ Pemberley from the BBC Pride and Prejudice is for sale ('Check out this equestrian facility for sale on Rightmove' it says, lol?) How to water street trees. Ixta Belfrage's brown butter curried cornbread. The pic looks… amazing. Why salmon and rice go so well together. Courgette butter spaghetti. ‘I walk up to the bar and see she is Googling “how to act hot while eating an oyster (woman).”’ Obligatory house from Modern House/Inigo... in Bennington Square! They better have a very good reason for leaving — I fear they will regret it! Claire de Rouen books tote. Also based in Globe Road E2: have you been to the Buddhist Centre secondhand bookshop Jambala recently? I instagrammed my amazing haul. (If you don’t follow me on IG because I’m on private, don’t worry — I will definitely add you unless you have the word Crypto in your bio.) A Melbourne-based florist that does Australian native flora only — beautiful @bush.flowers. THINK.Romantic nostalgia might be the key to lasting love. 'The people complaining clearly thought they were trying to enforce a sonic landscape that they deemed superior, but what they were really doing was using shame to exert control.' Why do rich people love quiet? 'But one thing I’ve noticed, after years of reporting on climate change: The people who have devoted their lives to combating climate change keep having children. I hear them playing in the background of our calls. I see them when we Zoom. And so I began asking them why.' 'Romantic comedy is the only [movie] genre committed to letting relatively ordinary people — no capes, no spaceships, no infinite sequels — figure out how to deal meaningfully with another human being.' ❣️ You don't need to 'earn' your next meal.❣️ Messageboard rot: signs that social networks are dying or atrophying. '...we must give up the illusions of moral purity in favor of mutual understanding. We must give up on self-denialism, we must admit the reality of the world as a messy place, one in which offense, complexity, diverging interests and ideas are inherent. Only by refusing to figure ourselves moral authorities over others’ ideas and lives, and refusing to live in denial of our own desires, can we make actual, material progress.' Almost nothing is working in Britain / 'Britain’s capitalist class has effectively given up on the future.' / '...what we call ‘rioting’ is for some people the only effective means of social contestation'. / People voted Tory not because they had become rich but because a Tory life had become cheap. Jess X READ. LOOK. THINK. is sent out every three or four weeks by Jessica Stanley, an Australian writer living in Hackney. Each edition contains around thirty links to essays, books, first person writing, research, recipes, podcasts, interiors and more. Subscribe below or follow @dailydoseofjess on Instagram and Twitter. My novel A GREAT HOPE is out now from Picador AU: a family, a mystery! sex, love and politics in a beautiful Fitzroy terrace 💛 © 2022 Jessica Stanley
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