Links for May 23
Parasocial dynamics, Cy Twombly, etiquette classes, Kacey Musgraves, the Knicks, Pedro Páramo and the Guardian best books list
Hope you had a smooth week. Go Knicks.
Links
In the continuing dramatic change to the immigration system, DHS made a change to green card issuance that will have major implications, which is outlined well here.
Thought this was sharp about just how challenging some of the (to use the ol parlance of the day) parasocial dynamics are with online life, including politics, and how flattening that is. (Also great choice of art.)
These photos that Cy Twombly’s wife took of him are totally gorgeous and really interesting to look at (though there is a sort of 2026 jump scare photo of RFK Sr., shirtless, on a horse, in McLean).
Fun story about etiquette classes for A.I. founders, but with an amazing powerpoint slide within, titled, “Vulnerability Circuit.”
Randomly literary fall movie slate, with a black-and-white film with Sandra Huller about Thomas Mann’s return to post-war Germany (which sounds good) and an adaption of Mrs. Dalloway to modern-day Nigeria (Ibid.)
For whatever reason, started listening to the Kacey Musgraves album recently, and as ever the Craig Jenkins review is good (“On the surface, Middle of Nowhere outlines the turmoil before and after an ex’s disappearing act… But the album is really about releasing yearning and resentment”) especially on the concluding point about Texas.
In Knicks, funny clip of Mitchell Robinson and this incredible Ben Stiller court side clip of him blocking a shot.
In terms of the vibes, incredible living room here (total saturation) and a beautiful home is on the market.
Light book commentary
So two things. I read Pedro Páramo this week — what a trippy little book. This is like 100 pages of monologues and scenes impressionistically dissolving into each other, with people literally speaking from the grave, and voices appearing in abandoned towns, and people talking to each other who once existed but might not currently exist. This is the story of a man who goes seeking his father (Pedro) after his mother’s death, and finds a haunted space, that eventually becomes the story of what happened years ago.
It also features some passages like this where there are interlaid conversations from across multiple decades with kind of classical intonation, and you just have to decide who’s speaking or let it wash over you:
I thought the woman was listening to me; but then I noticed that her head was cocked as if she were hearing some distant sound. Then she said:
When will you rest?
**
“The day you left I knew I’d never see you again. As you walked away, the afternoon sun bathed you in a reddish hue, in the blood red sky of dusk. You were smiling. You were escaping a town about which you’d often said: ‘I love this place because of you, but I hate it because of everything else, even for having been born here.’ I thought: ‘She’s not coming back.’”
The reason I picked it up was last weekend, I was trapped at my apartment waiting for hours waiting for a replacement phone to show up, and ended up clicking through practically every ballot on this Guardian 100 books of all-time list. (Pedro Páramo is on there, in part because of its major influence on Gabriel Garcia Marquez.)
This list is really fun, albeit very English (a lot of Thomas Hardy). The only book I’ve read on this list that I’d really skip is Madame Bovary (sorry). Anyway, while everyone should of course read Middlemarch and Anna Karenina (and why not this summer!!), if you’re looking for something that is a little less unwieldy to carry around but is on that list:
Absolutely pick up The Transit of Venus, the GOAT, discussed here.
Same with The Master and Margarita if you’ve never read it, it’s really like nothing else (it’s also not depressing, which is nice).
One advantage of the pure English-ness of that list is Persuasion is on it, and that’s a nice book for this time, in the sensitive, warm/sad way it is about a woman who’s made a choice she deeply regrets and about change and second chances.
Nervous Conditions is really good about the poisonous effects of colonialism and sexism, but also leaving and being left behind in a way that’s universal.
Lastly, consider The Age of Innocence:
The Age of Innocence, baby.
A note on all this
Thanks for subscribing. Hope you enjoy. The goal here is just to offer up some links you may have missed, and maybe the occasional commentary on something in politics or a book I may have read that you, the reader, might enjoy. If you have thoughts on any of this, hit me up at katherinemillernyc@gmail.com.