⫹DESKSPACE⫺ 005
Photo: Simon de Beauvoir, in 1945, hanging out at her usual table at the Cafe de Flore in Paris, asking herself the same existential question writers in coffee shops have been asking for centuries: are they going to kick me out if I don’t order another latte?
Hello from the National Capital Region, where allergy season is in full swing and the weather is finding new and exciting ways to be completely fucked up.
[On the topic of fucking up: I didn’t think the ending of Game of Thrones was that bad. But ask me again in six months or so, once we all have a bit of distance from the all-consuming cultural dialectic about it.]
Also: I’ve clearly abandoned my commitment to sending these emails on Sunday mornings. I should have known better; I have kids, and Sunday mornings are all about pancakes and ballet class and planning to do yard work that never gets done. So, how about Wednesdays?
⫹On My Desk⫺
Sometimes you reread your work and are elated by its brilliance; more often than not you are left to wonder: can I fire myself from this non-existent job for utter, embarrassing incompetence?
With The Screenplay on the back-burner, I’ve moved on to The Other Screenplay, and my reintroduction to it was the latter experience: a nightmarish slog through the atonal, unreadable last draft. But, as with root canals and kidney stones, you’re better on the far side of it (even thought it’s hard to have perspective for it when your urethra is on fire). The Other Screenplay is currently in a not-too-bad place. I will learn to hate it again soon, I’m sure. But, for now—it has potential.
In the midst of this, in spare hours and stolen minutes, I’ve been working on a few short stories, which are a good remedy for the hyperconscious process of screenwriting, in which you’re constantly bumping up against the necessary rules and regulations. But there are some interesting things happening as I work on these things in tandem: my aimless, indulgent short stories are developing plots. And they’re getting longer. And are perhaps no longer short stories.
All of this, as always, happening while I’m not doing the things I do for money. Which I will continue to do until there’s a bull market for plot-driven not-short-stories. (Please let me know if this happens.)
⫹On The Desks of Others⫺
My friend Olivier Ballou is the sort of polymath I’ve never had the skill or discipline (or, frankly, talent) to be. Among all the other stuff he’s doing (including the very cool Storyline game you’ll read about below), he’s been working on a book:
After spending the past year waking up at 5:00 am every day, I had my first draft. Too embarrassed to show my wife, I paid a lady in Sacramento $900 to read through it. A month later, I FaceTimed her at the pre-appointed time. In my heart of hearts, I was clinging to the outside chance I had written something great. Even as we said our hellos, I was trying to decode the expression on her face. What did she think of it? “There is a noticeable lack of sex,” she said. “It needs more id.” She suggested more ways I should channel Freud: “The ideal state for male psyche is a state of hardness, being erect, effective, you know.” I nodded. “Man wants woman who stokes that hardness. But then that power she possesses also takes his hard-on away.” Then she added: “And you should change everything to the present tense.” Lots more 5:00 am wakes-ups to go.
⫹Something To Listen To⫺
The year is 1980.
Phil Collins, recently divorced, on hiatus from Genesis, is passing his days alone in an empty house, brooding, playing around with his newly acquired 808 drum machine—and, well, you know how this story ends.
Slate’s Hit Parade is one of my favourite podcasts of all time, and this might be my favourite episode.
Pop overachievers Genesis—including Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel—competed head to head on the charts.
Phil Collins didn’t ditch Genesis when he went solo—he helped the band compete with him.
⫹Some Things To Read⫺
From email marketing to secretary work to carpentry, here’s how indie musicians actually make money (because they don’t make money as indie musicians).
You might know the Dutch historian Rutger Bregman from when he called out a bunch of tax-dodging rich dudes to their faces at the Davos Conference, or maybe from that time he triggered a Tucker Carlson meltdown. Here’s an article he wrote a few years ago that very convincingly argues that the solution to just about everything is a shorter work week.
If you’ve read the book The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn (or simply seen it on display at Chapters), this New Yorker article on the author’s creepy con-artist climb to the top of the bestseller list is worth a read.
Here is a transcript of the conversation between two navy pilots who drew a giant penis in the sky, which I greatly enjoyed, probably because, if I was a navy pilot, this is most definitely something I’d get court-martialed for doing.
⫹What I’ve Been Playing⫺
Storyline, which was created by Olivier Ballou (when he wasn’t waking up at 5:00 am to not write about sex in the past-tense). It’s kind of a game, kind of a quiz, but also neither of those things. Like so many ingenious ideas, it’s both stupidly simple and totally addictive. I’m not even going to explain it. Just try it.
⫹What I’ve Been Reading⫺
I just finished Ian McEwen’s Machines Like Me, which takes place in an alternate version of 1980s Britain where Alan Turing lived on to catalyze an early digital revolution (he’s sort of a midcentury Steve Jobs). There are murders, androids, revenge schemes, riots in the streets, and somehow the whole thing is completely unassuming. Like a lot of late career novelists, McEwen has found this immersive prose style that makes you forget that sentences are made up of words, and paragraphs of sentences, and chapters of paragraphs. You open the book and the story just kind of happens to you. Which is good and bad, I guess.
I am currently reading an old collection of Martin Amis’ essays, The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America. The contemporary aptness of the title is a clue to what makes this so fun to read: all the things that Amis pontificates – the decline of pop culture, the state of race relations in America, the failures of the political system, the rise of feminism – are the exact same things we are pontificating today, and all the answers he suggests are laying just beyond our reach in the near future are the same ones we’re still waiting for.
Also, no one writes an excoriating book review quite like him. Here he is, absolutely annihilating a 1983 biography of Elvis:
In biography, displays of such inordinate aggression leave one wondering about the personal problems of the author rather than the subject. I read Elvis under the impression that Goldman [the author] was a surly young iconoclast of the Rolling Stone school of New Journalism. On the back flap I am confronted by a middle-aged chipmunk who used to be a Professor of English and Comparative LIterature at Columbia. As should now be evident, the book is a prodigy of bad writing, excitable, sarcastic, and barely literate. It is also as exploitative as the exploiters whom Goldman reviles, and no more tasteful than a Presley pants-suit.
—motherfucker! (is how he should have ended that last sentence).
That’s all for now. Good luck with the ragweed and dandelions, watch the skies for tornadoes and huge penises, and thanks, as always, for reading.