The Sunday Letter #8
It’s a somewhat shorter round-up than usual today, but it’s still full of life. The arrival of spring has everything covered in a light coat of dirt, so I’m dusting off this burgeoning sense of creativity but I’m feeling like I’m still learning how to tie my shoes; a beautiful friend stops by to recommend bringing colour back into your wardrobe; and Natalia Ginzburg reminds us to write for the sake of writing.
Let’s jump in…
This week’s recommendations
Along with Love is Blind (team Brett and Tiffany forever), I’ve been obsessed with Beef, also on Netflix. As a rage-filled pair of strangers, Steven Yeun and Ali Wong have a magnetic, hate-tinged chemistry, and I can’t wait to see where Beef goes from here. It’s one of the most visually interesting shows on Netflix in years, and Wong is an absolute force—she delivers her lines with such a faux mousiness that it fills you with dread knowing how close she is to exploding. A show that feels like one long panic attack, in the best way.
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I adore the LitHub newsletter. Every few days I receive an email with links to pieces written by phenomenal writers on their craft, like how to play with time and chronology in a short story, from Danielle Evans, author of the brilliant short story collection, The Office of Historical Corrections:
I do not think that fiction, or all of art, can save us collectively—that will take a different kind of work—but I do think it can sometimes save some of us individually, perhaps even enough of us to remember why the work of survival is worth doing. Thinking about the short story over the course of a year that felt lost in many ways reminded me that time is not a fixed point: that I can be stuck here in the present and also stuck in the past and also on the brink of something enormous. I can resolve to change and also mourn some earlier version of myself and also be in some way all of those versions of myself forever.
Sophie Gilbert in The Atlantic, on Nora Ephron and the right of women to tell their side of the story. Ephron’s Heartburn was released in 1985 to blistering criticism, laced with an underlying argument that she should have just kept it all to herself:
To be unfaithful to one’s pregnant wife, he concluded, was “banal compared with the infidelity of a mother toward her children.”
And finally, Miri from Ephemeras recently quoted a stunning essay by Natalia Ginzburg called “On Women.” Written in the 1940’s, it’s a short reflection on the depth of women’s shared sorrow: “I’ve never met a woman without soon discovering in her something painful and pitiful that doesn’t exist in men.” Seventy years on, Ginzburg’s thoughts on her early writing still feel remarkably poignant:
I wrote with heat and conviction about obvious things. To be fair, this happened to everyone right after the liberation—getting all riled up only to say obvious things. In a way, it was the right thing to do, because in twenty years of fascism we had lost any sense of the most elementary values, and we had to start again, start again calling things by their name, and writing just for the sake of writing, to see if we were still alive.
Reading: “Usually a mood reader, I've finally decided to pick up Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann and I'm loving the fact that I can jump in and out of the frenetic mind of a woman dealing with motherhood and life. I'm also reading the first in Tove Ditlevsen's The Copenhagen Trilogy - a searing portrait of girlhood and female friendship, and I'm chipping away at the lyrical genius that is Clarice Lispector's Complete Stories.”
Watching: “Ahh so many shows! I'm watching the series sensation on everyone's lips Succession - the zippy one-liners are gold. I've just discovered Tidelands on Netflix about a woman newly released from prison, uncovering her true roots. Netflix says it's 'steamy and ominous' and indeed it is. And let's not forget Yellowjackets - still an underrated gem in my eyes. Also just started The Boston Marathon doco and it's so good.”
Listening: “Rediscovered my love for Alt-J and Death Cab for Cutie on Spotify. Also, Limp Bizkit's album Results May Vary as I just watched Gothika the other day and was transported back to the 2000's. ”
Life, etc: “I just bought a handheld portable kids water game where you try to get hoops over a pole - it's way better than a stress ball. I'm obsessed with filling my retro M&M dispensers and googling where the next flea market or book sale is. I'm also co-organising our workplace taking part in NZ's first beauty event so the countdown is on for the next few weeks! New bed linen, fresh flowers and amazing food - life is good! Also I'm considering colour in my wardrobe - SHOCK HORROR.”
P.S. You can find Rachel on instagram @thelitlist_!
What are you enjoying this week? Let me know below ↓