
The Sunday Letter #4
Tomorrow will bring the spring equinox here in the Northern hemisphere, also known as the vernal equinox, a term stemming from the Latin ver, meaning “of the spring.” The longer days, extra sunshine, and melting snow, along with thoughtful books and films I’ve been enjoying for this newsletter, have me feeling incredibly renewed and excited for the year ahead.
Last week, I finished reading Artful by Ali Smith, first published in 2011. Artful is an experimental blend of fiction and essay, featuring lyrical dissections of everything from art history and literature to soul-crushing grief. It was one of those rare books that I felt propelling me into the future armed with a sense of creative determination. I can only recall two other recent books that left me feeling similarly re-oriented towards life, and those were Feel Free by Zadie Smith and Either/Or by Elif Batuman. These are the types of books I search for, the kind that leave me in awe both at the writers’ sheer depths of knowledge and of the generosity in sharing it. To be able to instil a sense of appreciation for the world in one’s readers is likely the most aspirational kind of writing of all.
I also finished Hit Parade of Tears (forthcoming from Verso, who kindly gifted me a copy) by the late Izumi Suzuki. Each of the magical, sci-fi-adjacent stories were written prior to Suzuki’s death by suicide in 1986, and frequently feature people who feel that they don’t belong to the planet on which they live. What are you currently reading?
This week’s recommendations
The Worst Person in the World (dir. Joachim Trier, 2021) is the kind of luscious slow burn that I paused halfway through just so I could save the rest for the next day because I didn’t want it to end. As the film’s restless protagonist, Julie, Norwegian actress Renata Reinsve is a revelation, elevating what could be a common coming-of-age film into something else entirely. She can silently convey an entire emotional journey regarding her indifference towards motherhood with only her side profile and a cigarette. The film’s direction is playful, gorgeously-lit, and visually effective, from the way Julie’s hair is constantly changing to reflect her identity shifts, to the way Julie’s physicality changes depending on who is around her.
She said she was terrified of being alone, terrified of living without him, that when she left, she’d be like Bambi on the ice—and that was precisely why she had to do it. Asked mumbled soothing words she didn’t hear. She was thinking about how, at the age of 30, she’d just compared herself to Bambi.
The latter half of the film takes on a heavier emotional tone as Julie reconnects with an older lover confronting his own mortality, reflecting Julie’s earlier rant against feeling like a spectator in her own life. We see her process these complicated losses simultaneously, fighting to emerge with a determination to do something with her life, even if she doesn’t know what that is yet.
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Ursula K. Le Guin’s son (and literary executor) on his complicated decision to update the language in her children’s books: “I tend to start from the position that Ursula’s words are sacred.”
Jean Garnett writes in The Yale Review on envy and twin sisterhood:
But with twins it is never just fetus and mother; there is always triangulation. We are not only dependent on our mother to nourish, but on each other to share rather than steal. Each of us withholds from the other—each of us constitutes, for the other—the thing that would end all discomfort by conferring wholeness.
The reviews for Jenny Odell’s new book, Saving Time, are…divided. Parul Sehgal in The New Yorker dissects why defensively-written literature falls flat:
Why does a book so concerned with the looming issues of our day, and possessed of such an urgent authorial voice, feel like such a time sink?
For The Believer, Meghan O’Gieblyn reflects on her time in a seminary, ponders the existence of God, and considers whether human naïveté is allowing the algorithm to become a new God:
He believes it is only a matter of time before AI assumes divine powers. “It’s not a god in the sense that it makes lightning or causes hurricanes,” he clarified in an interview. “But if there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what else are you going to call it?”
A brief history of a devastating pregnancy complication called hyperemesis, the misogynistic treatment endured by its sufferers who were told that it was psychological, and a doctor who made it her life mission to find a cause and cure:
“I would be devastated to see my daughters go through this without having tried everything in my power to make things better,” Dr. Fejzo said. “If I don’t keep going, who will?”
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An anthem for spring’s arrival: “It’s every season where it is I’m going. I stretch my bones out on the floor; I think I’ll really do the change.”
New word of the week: skeuomorph (skeu·o·morph) — noun — a feature that imitates the design of another feature made of different material, in order to retain familiarity. Some interesting examples of skeuomorphic design, and the question of whether skeuomorphism has been permanently abandoned in favour of minimalism here.