⫹DESKSPACE⫺ 007: Penny Stocks, Knausgaard & The Next Book
Photo: Joan Didion, sometime in the early 1970s, wrapped in the exact same style of velour caftan I wear when I’m at my desk.
Belated hello—
—from the National Capital Region, where I have been (and still am) working on all the same stuff. Books, screenplays, etc.
These big projects have such long gestation periods, and grow their limbs and organs in such a unique and irregular sequence, that to provide semi-regular status updates – which was the original intention of this newsletter – seems, now, a fool’s errand. They’re all coming along, I suppose. Though they don’t always feel like they are. I can only take solace in the fact that this drawn-out, discrepant process is par for the course. One’s anxiety about these meandering paths is based on the simple fact that creative writing (at my level, at least) tends to be wholly speculative. All these hours you invest, all these words you type, they’re all just coins tossed into a wishing well. Penny stocks, teeth tucked under pillows. You’re dependent on some mercurial external entity – a producer, a publisher – to come along and make them real. And maybe (hopefully) give you a bit of cash in return—
⫹On My Desk⫺
—that being said, I have a few pieces of news to share about a couple ongoing projects. When I’ve confirmed all the details, I’ll do the thing that I’ve been meaning to do in this newsletter since the beginning: boast about my negligible accomplishments in desperate hopes of earning your validation.
⫹Something To Listen To⫺
Zadie Smith, maybe the best living writer on the face of the earth, in conversation with Eleanor Wachtel on Writers and Company, talking about, among other things, the oppressive ubiquity of technology, and how you are, at any given moment, multiple different versions of yourself.
“When You Wake at Night” by Low Island, a song that combines all my favourite things: falsetto vocals, rubbery synth bass-lines, and slowly building crescendos. Listen to it here.
A Single Thing, Natalie Karneef’s podcast about being single, which, even if you’re not single, is compelling and intimate and funny and weirdly soothing, like all good podcasts should be.
⫹Something To Read⫺
“The Lazy River”—Zadie’s Smith’s short story from last year, which she discusses at length in the interview above.
We’re submerged, all of us. You, me, the children, our friends, their children, everybody else. Sometimes we get out: for lunch, to read or to tan, never for very long. Then we all climb back into the metaphor.
“My Year of Concussions”—Nick Paumgerten’s great essay about middle-aged beer league hockey and its physical consequences.
This was men’s league—beer league. You play hockey, then you drink beer. Beer in the locker room, beer in the parking lot, beer at the bar. We all cared more than we should have.
⫹Something To Watch⫺
I love the original Watchmen comic series, but despaired over the movie—which, despite its piety, missed the point entirely—and I was utterly disinterested (and little bit disheartened) by the idea of a TV series sequel. The last thing the world needs, at the present moment, is another deconstruction of American superhero mythology.
But then I watched the first couple episodes, and, well—turns out that another deconstruction of American superhero mythology is exactly what the world needs at the present moment. Go figure.
What makes it particular brilliant, I think, is that it uses the structure, style, and rhetorical devices of the original text to make an entirely different philosophical point about an entirely different set of sociopolitical issues.
Showrunner Damon Lindelof has been very thoughtful about the whole thing in interviews:
What we’re really worried about, in my opinion, it’s not the television show. What we’re really worried about is a reflection of the real world. The paradox is: How do we feel about the police? How do you feel about authority? How do you feel about the law? Is the law just? The answer to the question, “How do you feel about the police?” Well, are you white? Are you a man? Are you a woman? Are you a person of color? What part of the country are you living in? Those are all questions that you should be asking.
⫹What I’ve Been Reading⫺
I’ve gone full Knaussgard. I started reading the first volume of My Struggle when we were in Scotland earlier this year, then picked up this little volume which collects a lecture he gave at Yale University. There are some gems within, like this one:
Literature was a hiding place for me, and at the same time a place where I became visible. And this, an outside place where what is inside becomes visible, is still what literature is to me.
⫹Update: The Next Book⫺
People often ask me if I’m working on it, and the answer is: yes. At the moment it’s a lot more finished than I think, and, simultaneously, much further from finished than I would like. And while it’s maybe a little too early to explain what it’s about (such things have a habit of evolving of their own will), I can give you a little hint about the vibe, the genre, and where it takes place:
That’s all for now. I will be back sooner than later (I hope). In the meantime, as winter descends, as the world falls apart, enjoy this quote from the writer Warren Ellis, whose biweekly newsletter Orbital Operations was the inspiration for this one.