In an introduction to a SSENSE Q&A, Natasha Stagg considers the revival of Eve Babitz, tracing it all the way back to a Vanity Fair [under Graydon Carter] story in the early 10s. She predicts renewed interest in the author’s work for the years ahead. “There are way too many examples of horrible people who are exciting writers, or exciting people who are horrible writers,” she writes. “Babitz appears an exception to that rule.”
If people were quick to draw comparisons between her debut Boy Parts and American Psycho, Eliza Clark is ready to call their bluff, opting for a Lynchian direction with her sophomore project. She has traded Influx Press for Faber in a two book deal, with the first dropping in Spring 2023. The yet-to-be-titled novel will explore in true crime style the murder of a teenager alongside the dark underbelly of the “deprived seaside town” it is set in. Book #2, She’s Always Hungry, which has an as of yet unspecified publication date is a “collection of cinematic body horror and speculative fiction.” Anyone referring to Timothee Chalamet as a “white-bread, absolute fucking baguette of a lad” in their debut has my vote of confidence. [My review of Boy Parts is forthcoming].
Combining elements of murder mystery and detective fiction, John Steinbeck’s “rediscovered” unpublished 223-page manuscript Murder at Full Moon has been pushed in the press as a werewolf story. The literary agency in control of Steinbeck’s estate has clarified they will not be publishing it and do not consider it a lost work at all, as academics have always had access to the manuscript. Gavin Jones, a Stanford Professor leading the charge against the estate, spoke to The Guardian in his bid to gain the public’s vote. He believes the work to be a clear demonstration of the author’s curiosity for “violent human transformation” even though it has little in common with the work that made Steinbeck famous: “It is Steinbeck the naturalist, interested in human nature.” To what extent publishing it would be exploiting Steinbeck’s legacy and not publishing it would be a cultural loss is a conversation for someone else.
Benjamin Moser has been preoccupied with the book in which Lispector “humanised” herself, An Apprenticeship or the Book of Pleasures. Of the protagonist, he writes: “Lóri might be a mess. But who isn’t?” I’m waiting for Norman to finish it so I can steal his copy, but all the criticisms Moser expected to be levelled against it, such as accusing Lispector of subverting the feminist movement or even upholding so called “toxic” masculinity, are ones I am used to growing up with Anais Nin and flocking to the work of other writers like her. At University, myself and a friend I no longer speak to were obsessed with Nin’s immeasurable capacity for love, her incessant quest to melt at love’s altar, all consequences to her person be damned. I guess what I’m trying to awkwardly express is that what is described in this book, is what I, much like most of my friends and people who are not my friends but who’s point of view I’m interested in, aspire to: total and utter release to another person.
That Sheila Heti has written the afterword is by no means a coincidence: consider what she said in a Paris Review interview which I previously quoted: “the whole point was to hurt each other as much as possible and feel sort of invincible in withstanding the hurt. We thought we were living in a Henry Miller novel, basically. Or at least I did.” For Heti, the crux of the book is “to love and be loved.” The protagonist, according to Heti, “undergoes a lot of suffering — but also gains more illumination than many people find in a lifetime.” So to love and be loved, to surrender to love utterly, is to find illumination and experience life on a level not possible if you don’t. Love as a deliberate search for enlightenment; love as discipline; love as suffering through which you can gain access to higher consciousness. “I think she is overall more comfortable with disintegration, whereas I am always trying to find and make order,” Heti says in an interview with the NYRB. In the same interview she talks about her days as interview editor at The Believer: “I thought every conversation would change my life.” If any did is something locked inside her mind.
Nico Walker hasn’t watched the adaptation of Cherry and isn’t planning to in order to keep the book “intact” in his mind. In an interview with Jacobin the indie babe describes the process of being brainwashed by the army. “They break you down and build you up again,” a process through which he wasn’t able to maintain his individuality. The interview rests a little too long on his already well documented time robbing banks and subsequent incarceration for the best part of the 2010s, but reveals interesting aspects of his psychiatric evaluation and his literary influences, including Dostoevsky. Isn’t there something Myshkian about him? Brian Alan Ellis got a lot out of him on Vol. 1 Brooklyn with his interview series Currents. Press clips: Nico’s workout routine consists of “pull-ups, smoking, sex… in no particular order”; he watched On Becoming a God in Central Florida and realised that “Rachel [Rabbit White] is a Kirsten Dunst.”
Layla Halabian considered the most underrated Kirsten Dunst performances for Nylon, a genuinely difficult task seeing as she’s the most underrated actor of our time. Cole Doman loves Rohmer. Ditto for Alex Kong who wrote a beautiful blockbuster essay about watching his films in quarantine for N+1. Philippa Snow also watched films in lockdown and wrote about it for the LA Review of Books but the subject is nothing if not darker.
Vulture named Moffie’s leading man as 2021’s first breakout movie star, which I find overblown. Some thoughts from an aborted essay last summer: “…We’re here to watch Moffie, a South African tale of homoeroticism and male-on-male desire in the army during Apartheid. Parallels to [REDACTED] are everywhere, such as an aggressive play of volleyball, a brutal game of spin the bottle where kissing is supplanted with boxing-like punches, the effervescent inability to vocalise desire and the inescapable draw to other bodies, the secrecy, the impossibility of national service (the impossibility of not pounding ass in the barracks)…”
Jasmine Sanders is into Marguerite Duras. Lily Lynch took time off to read forbidden texts. I just wanna do LSD with Daphne Guinness on a Soho rooftop:
At the end of December, I thought of finally getting around to Yukio Mishima. Confessions of A Mask, Sun and Steele, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion were recommended to me by different people. He’s a writer I’ve always been fascinated by but somehow have never read a single word he’s written. I had an idea for an essay about his work against that of Bronze Age Pervert. It never materialised [I still haven’t read Mishima] and now Zach Langley Chi Chi has beaten me to it with BRONZE AGE PANSIES, where he is joined by James From Tokyo.
The duo consider BAP as “artistic trolling” of sorts that fails to translate into a sound literary project. Langley Chi Chi initially found it compelling that BAP was cultivating a movement of corporeal beauty, but ultimately believes BAP to be offering false promise to lost men looking for something to live for. James agrees that the lack of solid direction is what draws men to BAP, seeing it as “the other side of inceldom.” He’s setting people up for failure on par with the liberal myth of being special. James goes further to say that he doesn’t buy into the idea of supporting the few that BAP is trading in - that society should focus on helping the men BAP is writing for to realise their potential of becoming the “prototype of the perfect male”: “It doesn’t hold up when you see the people who have bought into it,” he says. Langley Chi Chi agrees. “There are so many more interesting ways to live,” he says, noting that the experience of something that moves you emotionally is a far better option. Emotion is key for Langley Chi Chi, which he sees as lacking in BAP’s book. The duo conclude that those drinking the Kool-Aid would be better served by watching art movies and reading books that “make you feel something.” On the question of Mishima, Langley Chi Chi is resolute. BAP has brutally bastardised him. He has also failed in his interpretation of Grecian cultures. “He’s always on the verge of making the realisation that the answer is to fuck twinks but he just won’t get there.”
Langley Chi Chi has been exceptionally busy over the last two months. In addition to the love letter to Mishima, he also stopped by Twink Revolution. “I hate love,” he says in an episode dedicated to Eurovision. “I literally don’t care about love as an emotion. If it’s not a crushing, destructive love I’m not interested.” He discussed subversive, visceral films with Michael Martin del Campo in VIOLENT HEARTS including the works of Gaspar Noe, which he arrived at by seeking out extreme experiences. Masculinity, violence and “the beauty of masculine violence” are discussed at length. The duo lament the lost element of passion, why it shouldn’t be just fags that are preserving masculinity and the “transcendental experience” of watching films. In SICK HEINOUS PERVERSION he chats with John of Telepathy Party about how gay culture has lost “its texture of evil.” Mishima, Pasolini and Fassbinder are invoked alongside a wider discussion of Samuel R. Delany’s’ Hogg and references to Alissa Nutting and The Rosy Crucifixion. “The overall snap back from this absolute disaster culture we’re in will be the most apocalyptic thing we’ve seen yet,” he says of the current state of affairs, before ending with a call to arms about creating new avenues for sexuality, art and culture that are not depended on legacies.
There’s a new podcaster in town and for once that town is London.
Jana Surkova has come on the scene with I Hate Fiction, a podcast devoted to “untangling the repercussions and side effects of what Tumblr created.” Her favourite writers are Anais Nin and Jacqueline Susann. “I’m a huge fan of Henry Miller and Anais Nin,” she says in the show’s pilot. She shares my disappointment in Pam Anderson going off twitter, who would occasionally share quotes from the latter.
“It will hurt,” she assures of the podcast.
In Back When I was on Tumblr!, she discusses the impact of social media on art with Lindsay. She observes a lack of courage and a lack of vision in artists, referencing her days at art school where nostalgia disallowed people to do anything beyond creating imitations of things they were inspired by. Lindsay believes it is down to fear; they’re afraid to be weird and too fixated on fitting in, mirroring some of the sentiments expressed in John Kelsey’s Next-Level Spleen essay for Artforum published almost a decade ago.
Surkova believes that there are talented people out there spending far too much time “tweeting into the void” some of whom would have made great “traditional” artists if those mediums were still accessible. It isn’t clear if she has anyone specific in mind. She sees podcasts as an alternative [to social media], although she points out that they’re not as impactful as a good novel or film. A new form will appear, she predicts. When the conversation shifts to books, the pair are amazed at some of the stuff on display at bookstores. Lindsay is holding out hope for a cultural renaissance that will create new literary and underground film movements, seeing COVID as an opportunity for artists to do something that will shift the culture.