Of the Week | 6.21.24

Babette's Feast, Hilary Mantel, and acedia

Happy Friday!

This week //

A fun week — my roommate was out of town over the weekend and I got Juneteenth off work, so I had plenty of free time and space to fill. I baked (veggie quiche [using Alison Roman’s pie crust recipe], peach galette, blueberry cardamom muffins), attended a number of evening plans (sci fi book club, pizza night with friends, a church-hosted “anything but a cone” ice cream party), saw Do the Right Thing at the Alamo, and joined my church’s new Friday morning running club.

Enjoying + link love //

I watched Babette’s Feast over the weekend and it’s as good as everyone says. Simple, moving, humbly beautiful. I felt like a different person after watching it and I’ve been thinking about it all week. (For more context about the story and its themes, read this essay published by the Criterion Channel last year.)

“What if you think of yourself more as a worker than as an Artist?”

I’m working through my NYRB backlog and enjoyed this May review of Hilary Mantel’s memoir and Mantel’s 1989 review of two English novels.

An older article from the American Reader in praise of distaste: “Unwavering critical open-mindedness has, for a very long time, become the correct intellectual posture, and it’s never clear if at any point one can allow oneself to have a visceral reaction against a genre, an industry, or a situation without feeling either childish or curmudgeonly.”

Harrison Garlick walks through acedia and its antidote.

the "ugly but tasty" food club

Currently //

Reading: Passing by Nella Larsen, Emma by Jane Austen, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Watching: Babette’s Feast, Pretty Woman, Do the Right Thing (rewatch), Endeavour

Listening: a few tracks on repeat — “Do You Feel” by Aurora, “Thrown Around” by James Blake, “Kool Aid” by Royel Otis, “Buddy, Come Over” by Everything Everything, “Salad” by Blondshell

Misc: Aslin’s Volcano Sauce Sour

Looking ahead //

We’re hitting triple digit heat this weekend, so I plan to spend most of my time indoors: visiting the library, watching old films on Max, and maybe catching a showing of The Bikeriders.