Inputs
The Torqued Man by Peter Mann: Is a novel in the form of two manuscripts, one written by a reluctant German intelligence officer during WWII, and one by the double-crossing Irish agent he is running. I briefly wondered whether I was supposed to be rooting for these two crazy kids to make it work? One of the parties clearly was- or was he, and to what end? Occasionally disorienting but in a way that seems like a feature rather than a bug.
Down the Drain by Julia Fox: JF’s memoir beats The Autobiography of Gucci Mane for darkness by a long shot, much of it focusing on her youth populated by unstable parents, volatile and doomed friends, and awful men (including Kanye, who she only refers to as “the artist”). I was hoping for more about her artistic and aesthetic influences or her ideas about that world, and if you aren’t sure why Julia Fox is famous DtD won’t do much to illuminate you. If she ever decides to write a book about that I might enjoy it more- but I probably won’t get nearly as much out of it without the context of all this pain and the the shards of joy she found inside it.
The Fraud by Zadie Smith: A trope I’ve noticed in a lot of British historical dramas is the moment when a righteous (white) British man meets a racist American man and tells him That’s Not How We Do Things. This is a novel about how in fact it very much is.
Mrs Touchet had a theory. England was not a real place at all. England was an elaborate alibi. Nothing real happened in England. Only dinner parties and boarding schools and bankruptcies. Everything else, everything the English really did and really wanted, everything they desired and took and used and discarded – all of that they did elsewhere.
I’m not going to get into plot summary, it takes place in the 18-whatevers, pairs well with a viewing of Peterloo. This is a book about being a human. Mrs. Touchet at the center of it is a strange and prickly and beguiling character.
Why couldn’t she wear the same black dress every day? Why couldn’t she go about naked or in the many suits William had outgrown? Instead, she had to manage and maintain these last few shreds of beauty. Until old age arrived and released her once and for all from the tedious pantomime.
I saw Zadie Smith at a book signing and she is so beautiful I thought I was going to be turned to ash. Maybe she herself would roll her eyes to hear me say it, but White Teeth was what made me consider at that perhaps the twin threads of the banal and the bizarre in my surroundings at age 16 were worth noticing. There is probably no one whose work means more to me and I hope she never stops.
Outputs
This weekend was our first overnight trip just the four of us without a visit or social event as the impetus. It was to Springfield for New England Fiber Fest. T and the boys went off and did something with fossilized dinosaur tracks. I heard a lot about the various temples and priestesses of the yarn cult, mostly in Scotland and the Maritime Provinces and other places similarly windswept and desolate. The teacher of my miniature punch needle class, a retired art teacher from Maine, said “Don’t put any of your supplies at home away! Then you’ll always have to go look for them, and then you’re digging around in a closet, and next thing you know you’re organizing it, and ladies a clean closet DOES NOT MATTER!”. I have given her attitude toward the relative importance of housework and creativity much thought in the intervening days.
The teacher mentioned offhandedly that she had “put her husband through school on scrimshaw”. Another student said “Oh I worked for a scrimshander in the seventies!”. Surely a sentence that propelled me to the God tier of Massachusetts Bingo. I had the same instructor for another class the next day so I said “You mentioned you worked in scrimshaw?” and she started to explain what scrimshaw is, as if she was talking to someone who hadn’t recently made her third visit to the New Bedford Whaling Museum, so I said “Yes, what I was wondering is that something that is still…possible to do?” and she answered “Oh no!” and told me about a friend of hers who had an appraisal gone wrong and a disgruntled customer who called the State Department and then poor Charlie went to JAIL. Oh it was horrible. And now he is just a total libertarian, doesn’t think the government should be involved in ANYTHING after what he went through, and she doesn’t share all of his beliefs but, well. Then she started talking about the EPA’s persecution of the strawberry farms, and then someone was having problems with their rug hooking, and she had to move on.
Condiment Corner
While not particularly spicy this is savory, lemony, and sweet per the label, with an almost metallic sharp note I associate with Indian pickle. I’ve never been in the habit of eating pickle with Indian food because it seems like it would drown out whatever I ate it with. In that vein, this was good with some daal that wasn’t very strongly seasoned, but as with anything Indian I somehow feel like I’m not doing it right.