Of the Week | 9.20.24
Simple living in the city, "sceney" writing, and our changing relationship to art
Happy Friday!
This week //
I’ve been underrating the long weekend getaway: three days in Asheville was the perfect amount of time to go somewhere without taking much planning or money. Back in January, I bought tickets to see IDLES there and the rest was a bonus. I always enjoy a solo trip; I keep a book in my bag at all times and chat with all the bartenders and shop owners.
Enjoying + link love //
Loved Logan’s post on living the simple life in the city. This squares with my experience living in the DC area, where I would could walk to everything I needed — the grocery store, the library, the farmers market, a few bars and restaurants, even my doctor’s office.
Holly discusses three books and several biblical characters to challenge the idea that singleness means being incomplete.
Eleanor Stern looks at the characteristics that unite bad “sceney” writing:
To be curious is to be vulnerable. Curiosity means asking questions, and thereby openly admitting that you do not already know everything or have the answers. That, I think, is why so much sceney writing is incurious: it exists to defend and burnish its own author, to make its author seem invulnerable, or tastefully, gracefully vulnerable.
And:
There is a type of literature populated by very sincere characters, who always behave nicely and whose political, artistic, and aesthetic commitments are perfectly inoffensive to well-heeled Brooklyn or Stoke Newington readers. Just like the irony-poisoned stories I spoke about earlier, these sanctimony fictions are wildly incurious and opposed to exploration. They are not interested in dissecting or understanding morality, only flaunting it.
Two pieces of writing advice: Thomas Kidd on having a word count goal and Henrik Karlsson on keeping a “shit blog.”
Our relationship to art and music is changing (for the worse) as a result of being able to access it on demand.
Currently //
Reading: The Last Man by Mary Shelley, Stasiland by Anna Funder, American Primitive by Mary Oliver, Passing by Nella Larsen, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Watching: Legion (season 2)
Listening: IDLES, Stay for Good - EP by Siobhán Winifred
Misc: sours from Wicked Weed’s Funkatorium
Looking ahead //
Two fun plans this weekend: the North Carolina Symphony’s opening weekend performance and a 40th anniversary showing of Paris, Texas.