say 'thank you' to the newsletters you like

A list of nearly 50 newsletters that I enjoyed this year.

(Note: this is going to be a long email. If you want to read it in full, I’d suggest reading it on the online link, which you can access by clicking the title).

An Introduction

In a recent letter from être fleur bleue, Briana Soler shared a conversation from At Eternity’s Gate – a film about the life of Vincent Van Gogh. Vincent is speaking with Paul Gauguin about the many artists that have influenced his work. “Monet is still pretty great,” Van Gogh says. “You have to say thank you for the paintings you like.”

What better character is there to say this than Vincent Van Gogh, who famously labored away in quasi-obscurity never quite knowing the impact his art would have? No one deserves to work in total isolation. All good and beautiful work deserves to be celebrated, whether it’s a symphony, a novel, a painting. Or even a newsletter.

There’s something ephemeral about the form of a newsletter: it lands in your inbox, perhaps you read it or not, likely it has to compete with the attention-grabbing subject lines that say things like ‘if you don’t DONATE to this campaign, DEMONS will pour through a rift in the space-time continuum and DEVOUR democracy!!’. But sometimes you open the newsletter and it’s actually quite good, perhaps even wonderful. To me, it’s such a gift to receive a beautiful little thing amid the overwhelming crap that pervades on the internet. And what do you say to a gift? ‘Thank you’.

Below is a long list of roughly 50 newsletters from this year that have been an absolute joy to read. I’ve split them into categories based on the specific letter shared. But as you’ll probably begin to see, many of these newsletters can’t be easily categorized under one genre or another. For most of these letters I’ve led with a quote, because I want their work to speak for itself. Occasionally I included a brief line or two of my thoughts. It was impossible to list all the newsletters I’ve liked: I tried my best.

I hope you will read them (if you haven’t already). Read their work, comment on it, share it, subscribe to their newsletters, and please pay for their work if you can afford it. Say thank you to the work that you like. No one else will do it for you.

Arts & Culture

‘sixteen thousand flowers per day’: BDM, Notebook (August 28, 2024)

When I’m thinking about the perfume gardens in Grasse, what I mostly think is that a world with fewer people in it is a world with less beauty and less of interest. It would be diminished in the most basic sense of the term—a duller, meaner, colder place. Because it’s good to exist, and it’s good that people exist. It is weird and vertigo-inducing to be linked to so many people I’ll never know.

• Barbara is such a good writer that she was able to get me interested in perfume and Taylor Swift. Seriously.

‘Not Even The Warping Kind’: Becca Rothfeld, Tracks on Tracks (May 9, 2024)

I have lived in New Hampshire, New York, London, Berlin, and Boston, and I have tried to love them, but what my flesh remembers is the white wash of the midday sun, the damp pungency of the mossy dirt, the silver machinery of the mosquitos, the heat softening as the light falls, the burnt smell of some unimaginably normal person grilling in the distance.

• Phenomenal piece in a really great newsletter. Also, I’m excited to finish up Rothfeld’s book All Things Are Too Small, which I have been deeply enjoying.

‘Catholic movies f*ck me up, Vol. 1’: carter st hogan, Patch Works (August 8, 2024)

In my humble, 12-year old opinion, I’d make a great nun. I had the stamina — that is, I knew how to suffer. I knew how to be humiliated. Altar girl, unpopular, weird-looking. I prayed on my hands and knees every night on a small pew in my bedroom until they ached. I gave myself “stigmata” and bruised myself on purpose, to know pain. I read the Bible every night, looked for signs of God in everything. I turned myself into anything anyone wanted me to be, so that they’d feel good about being around me.

• I see Catholic posts, I pounce. Pour it right into my mouth like holy wine.

‘Wicked is making me insane’: Clare, Famous and Beloved Newsletter (December 2, 2024)

The reason people like Wicked is because they saw it as a kid, and because its characters have sparkly dresses and long pretty hair, which you stare at while they sing loudly. The reason people are enjoying the film is because it reminds them of this, and because Ariana Grande is one of the most famous working pop stars. Never has a child of the aughts learned the dangers of fascism from a prequel of the Wizard of Oz that’s about animal rights, despite a post-2016 world insisting otherwise.

• This is one of those newsletters where I genuinely don’t understand ~70% of the references, but I just love the writing. Also, she is really funny. Gives me hope that the internet can be fun again. Thanks, Clare!!

‘Would Beethoven have loved Boston? Would he have gone to the aquarium? What about Kowloon?’: Fran Hoepfner, Fran Magazine (August 28, 2024)

That we don’t know what would have happened during an event that never actually happened is kind of a thrill. Think about how much stuff we do know — I’d have much rather never learned about Prokofiev’s bad time in Chicago when I could have otherwise imagined him going to Portillo’s.

• Fran Hoepfner has single handedly made me love the movies again. No, I’m not joking. Wonderful newsletter. Also, her writing introduced me to the yeehaw feelings that come from listening to Sexy Oklahoma.

‘ways of seeing differently’: Helena Aeberli, twenty-first century demoniac (July 29, 2024)

The yellow Buck Moon rising tonight is the same colour as the glow of the dusk-lamp on the garden path, and the reflection of a bright window opposite on the river’s calm water. The clambering rose thorns and the single soft fist at the top invite mystery, magic, something more than the simple process of plants growing and flowering and eventually dying back. The river is low, but tomorrow it will be high tide and the banks at risk of flooding. It is a strange space, the threshold, its stitched together root and suffix, which clasp their hands around you and hold you loosely in the middle, rocking between fingers.

• Phenomenal, beautiful. Made me see things differently. Title lived up to its name.

‘Let's Go Outside’: Huw Lemmey, Huw Lemmey's 'Utopian Drivel' (August 14, 2024)

As I arrived to my office, unable to settle, I looked out of the window at the square below, and decided to sketch the leaves of the tall palm tree that sits at eye level directly from my desk. They are framed by my window, and they frame the windows behind them, and as I sketched, I drew this beautiful and enormous palm right in the centre of my page, a thumbprint, adrift again in the sea of paper. I stared at the window frame, its peeling brown paint in the August morning sun, and I stared at my phone, a rectangle cut out in black, and I stared at square, the tourists taking a morning coffee, the parched, waterless fountain. I wanted to put a frame around my day, to clip this particular view, half sky, ranks of shuttered windows, tops of trees, like the painter Alice Neel, whose windows frame the New York streets just so.

• Excellent reflection on art, process, framing, Alice Neel. Also includes some surprise dicks and butts...

‘get a weird job!’: Mary Rose, Shoulda/Woulda/Coulda (October 8, 2024)

Get a weird job! Become a bicycle repair person, bookbinder, an sheep wrangler, an ass model, Levi jeans designer. Drive a tractor, operate heavy machinery. Be a construction worker, a window washer, pour concrete out of one of those big rolling machines. Become a scientist and work in a lab to create different kinds of concrete. Mix chemicals together and see if you can make anything explode.

• Mary is great. She is also a Chicago gal and a fellow DePaul University alum, so I’m morally obligated to support her work. Fortunately, it’s very good work.

‘Money Changes Everything’, Millicent Souris, Attitude Adjustment Facility (September 2, 2024)

The property owners decided to sell the building, it will probably become condos. Joe is one of the owners, he was outvoted by his family, who collectively own the building. It is time to get market price. The market doesn’t allow for the amazing things Crest did, only the highest bidder. Liza and Joe did a lot of things that didn’t make money, by putting the community first. Everything cannot be monetized. Everything cannot be transactional.

• Lovely but bittersweet piece about how the small institutions we love are fighting an uphill battle. Support the things you love.

Personal Essays

‘Swimming in molasses: depression and how to stay afloat’: Anna Katherine Scanlon, rockfoils (November 24, 2024)

Learning to suffer correctly has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. Before I learned, I was always running away from it, angry about it, sad about being sad. Drowning myself in coping mechanisms to dull all my senses, because when all you can feel is bad, an obvious solution seems to be to try not to feel anything at all. But of course it doesn’t work in the long run. Unresolved suffering cannot be suffocated. It will fester within you and wrap itself around your soul like a parasite, and feed on your vain attempts to strangle it in the darkness.

• Lovely reflection on depression. Anna’s writing is great.

‘Care-tending one, another’: Antonia Malchik, On the Commons (November 16, 2024)

The fruit is now all bedded away for winter. It’s nearing time for stews and soups, for roast things and digging food out of the freezer, longing for fresh fruit as the months slip past. Wanting to hang onto the long, dark nights wrapped in stars and moonlight as long as I can while February days lengthen. I love winter. The cold. The snow. The dark. The hours I get to myself watching moonlight play with the clouds. Wondering how many billions of humans have watched that same Moon wax and wane over tens of thousands of years as their worlds crumpled with darkness of the heart.

• Beautiful. Antonia’s writing gives me a feeling of meandering from place to place, which I love.

‘Reading with the Queen of Coins’: Cameron Steele, interruptions (October 27, 2024)

It was impossible, almost immediately, to miss the similarities of our daily lives, despite how different we were from each other, despite how different I wanted to be from a sick, hurting, Republican man who enjoyed being on his phone almost as much as he enjoyed talking to God. But you couldn’t miss it: Everyone else on our little road, in our little town, headed out in their cars every morning to go to work, or garden club meetings, or school board meetings, or school. Only Jimmy and I hung back, always on our porches, always facing the hours of the day alone.

• Cameron’s newsletter has been such a joy to discover this year! Full of warmth, compassion. Cameron is one of the ‘good ones’, as we say.

‘20 years gone’: Cat Jones, Sardines (July 18, 2024)

A few years after my dad dropped dead, he called into an NPR gardening show to talk about some kind of tomato nymph. I should’ve been shocked, hearing his voice crackle over my car radio like that, but I’d already been seeing him around town for years.

• Beautiful previously-published essay that Cat shared. I keep thinking about it.

‘The First Prayers of the Soul’: Charlotte Shane, Meant For you (June 4, 2024)

But my fear, essentially, was this: what if I let myself believe something untrue merely because it offers me the most beautiful, meaningful life possible? Like, oh no, what if I look foolish, what if people see me looking foolish, wanting fortification, comfort, improvement, admitting that I am weak? Yeah, oh no! Imagine being foolish, a thing I’ve never been before and would otherwise never be! Imagine me risking one wrong thought, one wrong conviction because I found a proposition appealing. Imagine if I became the first human being to die with a wrong belief in her head or heart. I’d look like such an asshole.

• I can feel my spirits lift when Charlotte’s writing pops up in my inbox.

‘In Search of Sleep’: Clare Michaud, Beurrage (December 19, 2024)

My dad passed away in the middle of the night, just a few hours after we moved into a new calendar day. I woke up just a minute before getting the fateful phone call from my mom, who had spent the night in his hospice room. I’ve often wondered, was it my restless sleep that woke me then, or something more spiritual, my body somehow reacting to losing someone who had contributed to its making?

• Incredible reflection on sleep, and loss. Also, it was just published yesterday!!

‘XII. On Solitude’: jamie hood, regards, marcel (September 3, 2024)

People keep asking what I “learned” from the relationship and the question’s nearly as bad as the grief; I tell them I’d rather die than imagine those I love as extractable resources, I say my years with K were a blessing. With this little distance I try to carry our time with gratitude. We couldn’t make it work and I feel so lucky to have been loved by him—both of these things hold true.

• It’s a very special thing when you read a sentence or a paragraph that is precisely what you needed to read. Thank you, Jamie Hood.

‘Five trains.’: Jill, Life Litter (August 30, 2024)

Tilled fields on 60 degree slopes called to mind Southeast Asia but this is the land of Luther and religious wars. We passed a Gasthof zum Landsknecht, bearing the image of a cartoon fighter, gripping a halberd. I imagined Landsknecht fighters roaming these bluffs, incongruous, alongside a modern holiday park with caravans and a pizzeria and a carousel full of children. Then, a quiet riverside churchyard, speckled with graves, in the town of Bingen, of Hildegard fame. What an odd history this country has, at once grandiose and depraved.

• A phenomenal essay that is sharp, biting, and all good fun. I love a narrator that is not a perfect little angel. Thank you, Jill.

‘digestif’: Julia Harrison, orzo bimbo (October 6, 2024)

Instead of being the nubile, nepo baby of bestsellers, my twenties have been the poorest, loneliest years of my life. I’ve felt massively unprotected, at bay, untrusting, disappointed in myself—deceived, slighted—for thinking I deserved more than what I ended up having, which was a series of intense and depressing relationships, no savings, sinister and performative friendships, often built upon competition and imitation. This, I found out, is extremely standard for your twenties.

• Unfortunately, Julia, I believe this might also be standard for your early thirties… or perhaps I’m just built different…

‘The whale’: Julia Bedell, vessels (December 3, 2024)

Scientists identified it as a juvenile female fin whale whose death was undetermined. In other words, a baby, at most three years old. She didn’t seem to have been hit by a boat, but they said it wasn’t common to see fin whales this far up the inlet either.

• Sad, slightly heartbreaking, but beautiful. Julia Bedell’s writing is always such a joy!

‘russian lessons’: millie, The Dybbuk Diaries (November 28, 2024)

The man had married Lena on a whim; they had met three months ago, unceremoniously ending his previous relationship, or maybe even not ending it at all, treating her like a fucking idiot while she knew deep in her gut that he was gone. How much of that can be gleaned from my dialogue? Maybe the кто это and the новая жена give it away, the sarcastic приятно познакомиться, the surprise of it all, the wariness. The indignity. The betrayal. I don’t know the Russian for that.

• I love this, and have been really appreciating all the care that Millie puts into her newsletter.

‘In Praise of Draft Beer: Community, Sustainability, and Care.’: Kate Van Genderen, Tender Lens (December 10, 2024)

Draft beer is, to me, indescribably gorgeous. The various shades of brown, yellow, and red that cascade into the glass change depending on the light available. Bright, glowy afternoon sunlight is my personal favorite - it makes the beer almost luminous. The pillowy, fluffy head, sometimes bright, clean white, other times a more gentle creamy color, throws every other color in further contrast.

• Mmmmm, beer. A wonderful reflection on the joys of craft beer. Kate’s writing has been great this year — give her a read.

‘The Muslim Men I Know’: Noha Beshir, Letters from a Muslim Woman (November 5, 2024)

So you will picture the way Baba slices mangoes at our kitchen counter, the way Ammo holds a spoon of sauce up to me mid-recipe and asks, “More salt? More basil?” I want you to think of the olive skin that holds the dearest people in the world to me. I want you to know the texture of my boys’ hair that I twirled around my fingers when I rocked them to sleep night after night. I want you to imagine how the men in my life feed us, love us, care for us. And how my own boys will one day be men who walk through the world, eager to offer the same care.

• Beautiful piece. I am so, so thankful for not only Noha’s writing, but also how consistently she has used her platform to speak up about Gaza.

‘Lady in the Medieval City’: PartTimeLady, PartTimeLady’s Substack (August 22, 2024)

Markus — the man I've since married, this writer-director who is possibly the gentlest, most intuitive empath I've ever met — turned to me and said, matter-of-factly, “I fuck you later.”

Excuse me?

He took a deep breath, slowed down to enunciate, and said, “I FACK-uum later.""

My man was going to vacuum. As in: clean the apartment with a device meant to suck up dust and debris. Who said German wasn't sexy?"

• I laughed a lot at this. Excellent newsletter.

‘Come for the Super Mario Brothers, Stay for the Kropotkin: A Love Story’: Robina Khalid, Small Things Growing (May 19, 2024)

The first time we hung out together alone together, I lugged my original NES to his apartment — where he paid $300 a month to live in 3 bedroom on a tree-lined street in Ditmas Park, directly across the street from the subway station that he shared with two women who were both lovers and opera singers — to play the original Super Mario Brothers.

• Anarchism? Love stories? Video games!? Come on, you know I’m reading that.

‘you are the horizon.’: Raechel Anne Jolie, radical love letters (August 1, 2024)

When I think of Jesús I think of him like O’Hara thinks of “the warm New York 4 o’clock light.” I think of him the way Muñoz thinks of the horizon. With awe. With reverence and appreciation. And with all the flavors of grief you can imagine.

• A magnificent letter. Raechel’s newsletter is wonderful, and so is her memoir Rust Best Femme, which everyone should read.

‘A Parking Lot Apple Tree’: subsomatic, Novitas (August 16, 2024)

When the teenagers came out from their shopping and saw us harvesting the apples, they were shocked but excited. They wanted to get involved. One climbed up the tree while we were riding away, giggling and laughing and exclaiming out loud that she was proud of herself for making it up. At the end of the day, it feels like a gift to give each other these shared experiences—not just harvest, but finding, climbing, and sharing together—the adventure of breaking out of the mould of the mindless shopper to do a little bit of the unanticipated and unexpected.

• 2025 is the year of harvesting fruit from city trees, I’ve decided.

‘Holy Gifts’: Veery, Not the Whole Story (September 14, 2024)

I loved her—she was the most saintly person I have ever known: her heart as soft as butter, her generosity flowing out to every living thing from the blighted birch outside her window to the ants behind the kitchen trash can to her grandchildren and great grandchildren and all of their friends. Oma’s life was full of impossible hardship and yet she was never dismissive of other people’s lesser hardships. She encountered their joys and sorrows as if they were her own, her eyes filling with tears at the news of engagements or births or deaths. But she was too wise to be sentimental.

• A truly saintly and divine reflection on family, love, and loss.

Politics & The World

‘Both Joyful and Killjoy’: Alicia Kennedy, From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy (January 1, 2024)

o And while I spent years angry at my brother, at the world, now I feel soft. I feel almost weak. And I think that weakness is a strength, even if it brings me ultimately back to an enormous platitude: I just want everyone to be happy, to be fed according to their needs and desires, to have what they need and also some things they don’t need—things that are just beautiful, things that just bring them peace.

• So incredibly thankful for Alicia’s writing, which is serious and precise but still great fun and full of warmth.

‘To All the Anarchists I've Loved Before’: Dusty Le Roux, The Bottomfeeders Banquet (September 2, 2024)

The portrayal of im/migrant and working- class cultures in the dull hues of a black and white wretched existence has become iconic in American visual culture. However, this conventional representation of workers packed like sardines in tenements and covered in the muck of the street can perpetuate an equally oppressive trajectory of victim-hood and erase the thriving legacies of resistance, through both militancy and recreation, which stood face-to-face with the hardship and exploitation spawned by American industrialism.

• There’s going to be a lot of ‘radical reading lists’ at the beginning of 2025. Why not start with Dusty Le Roux’s collection here?

‘The Honesty Thing’: Hamilton Nolan, How Things Work (July 18, 2024)

We’re talking about lying about the fundamental ability of our candidate for president to do the job of president. That is a big lie. Asserting it as a fact makes us liars. And lying to voters is something that makes voters cynical and dismissive of all political messaging and, ultimately, receptive to a guy like Donald Trump, who gives the appearance of “telling it like it is.” Credibility, a reputation for honesty, is a priceless thing in the cynical world of politics. Sacrificing it is a mistake.

• Hamilton is great. Solidarity, my dude.

‘"living Danishly" isn't the solution we think it is’: lala thaddeus, i was cooking (June 13, 2024)

When our American writing refuses to engage with the multifaceted reality of the history of other countries, when we write only about the experience of a country’s ethnic/religious/racial/sexual majority, then we end up leaving so much prejudice and outright discrimination unexamined. By writing these imbalanced, unnuaced pieces, we are propping up the same systems that already disenfranchise millions here in the US.

• I dare say that Lala, in this letter, was indeed cooking.

‘Good Ancestry’: Phil Christman, The Tourist (December 11, 2024)

If, at the end of a productive day, I find myself on the verge of watching some dumb science fiction movie from the 1970s that every sane person has forgotten, and I ask myself what 90-Year-Old Phil would want 46-Year-Old Phil to do, it’s probably to watch the damn movie, unless my wife is, like, actively trying to make out with me right at that moment, in which case he’d say “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, dumbass.”

• Do the thing! Watch the movie! Follow Phil’s advice!

‘A Keening For Our Sterilised Lives’: Ramona McCloskey, Stone soil and soul (May 1, 2024)

Keening, noun. An action of wailing in grief for a dead person. An eerie wailing sound. Prolonged and high-pitched sound, typically in a way that expresses grief or sorrow. From Irish caoinim, “I wail”.

• I love the Irish and their commitment to resisting genocide.

‘Capitalism Creates Hungry Ghosts’: River Selby, navel gazing (July 21, 2024)

I think that buying things, for me, has historically affirmed that I am not poor anymore. But buying things kept me poor. There was always a tension inside me: the tension of wanting the thing, knowing I didn’t need the thing, and knowing that I’d regret buying the thing at some point, because I couldn’t really afford the thing.

• Awesome reflection on consumerism, especially as it relates to people from poor and working class backgrounds. Support their work.

‘If We Burn’: Swamp Ophelia, herstrionics (August 26, 2024)

On Lake Shore Drive, liveried CTA drivers shuttle delegates back to their hotels. The buses, white and freshly painted, lumber through rush hour traffic like circus elephants. Whenever a black SUV gets close to a bus, the delegates press their faces into the glass and wave to the silhouettes in the tinted windows below. The Democrats’ feet won’t touch the ground during their week in town. They float, horse-blinded, from one air-conditioned canyon to another.

• Phenomenal piece about an awful time. Wish I had been there in Chicago. Solidarity!

‘We have one person to blame for the Democratic Party right now’: Marion Teniade, Teniade Topics (July 12, 2024)

Like everything else in his oeuvre, The West Wing is created entirely in Sorkin’s image. And his image here is very fucking smug. Your mileage may vary somewhat, depending on the actor—I love a smug Allison Janney, because she deserves; I want to give smug Rob Lowe a swirlie, because he does not. But regardless of the mileage, smug is the overwhelming vibe. These people believe themselves to be the smartest, most righteous, and most charming humans to walk-and-talk their way through the White House. And at least two generations of liberals watched this show and came to Washington with visions of Sam Seaborn dancing in their heads.

• Marion and I are united in our deep hatred of Sorkin. If there is a Sorkin renaissance in the Trump years, I will make it my mission to destroy his work (kind of joking, mostly not).

‘To See with Eyes Unclouded by Hate’: Swarnali Mukherjee, Berkana (November 7, 2024)

So here I am, urging you to inspect and inquire, to observe without discrimination, without the specter of fear and judgment haunting your conclusions, without simply nodding along with someone who appeals to your sentiments and fears, to avoid hearing without truly listening, and to resist letting the five senses possess us through grotesque means.

• So thankful for Swarnali’s writing, which is a continued source of joy and light in a dark world.

The Reading and Writing Life

‘research as leisure activity’: Celine Nguyen, personal canon (May 27, 2024)

The idea of research as leisure activity has stayed with me because it seems to describe a kind of intellectual inquiry that comes from idiosyncratic passion and interest. It’s not about the formal credentials. It’s fundamentally about play. It seems to describe a life where it’s just fun to be reading, learning, writing, and collaborating on ideas.

• Look; this piece is awesome! Celine’s writing has been phenomenal to read, and I am so impressed by her commitment to longform writing. Keep on writing, Celine — excited for what you’ve got in store for 2025.

‘Gary Indiana, In Memoriam’: Grace Byron, Female Small Business Owner (November 14, 2024)

o It seems doubtful we could ever have another like Gary Indiana. Few have the grit or ability to alchemize the shit that now surrounds us. He wrote as if every word mattered because he was intimately aware of the stakes. If you aren’t writing for your life, who are you writing for?

• Lovely reflection on the writer Gary Indiana, and how essential it is to keep reading him. Have been appreciating Grace Byron’s writing a lot!

‘Martha's Monthly’

• Martha publishes a monthly collection of book recs, and they are always incredible. She even gave me a personal recommendation, and I ended up loving the book (so now I’m ride-or-die for ‘Martha’s Monthly’. Highly recommend! - MR

‘About love’: Miri, Small Wire (September 23, 2024)

Intermezzo is also a sealed-off world in some ways. The realities of life intrude harshly upon it. Naomi is evicted from her squat, Ivan gets behind on rent, Margaret’s mother ostracizes her for daring to be happy. But it is still a world suffused by warmth and by grace. It asks sincerely, and with deep spiritual conviction, how we are meant to love each other and to live well. The questions a novel should ask, really.

• A review of Intermezzo that was so good, and full of love, that it convinced me not to post my half-baked take on Sally Rooney’s newest novel. Small Wire is a great newsletter — read it!

‘The most important news you'll hear about today’: Naomi Kanakia, Woman of Letters (November 5, 2024)

How is it possible that one man, in the course of about five years, sat down and translated about 200,000 lines of Sanskrit poetry into pretty readable English prose?

• Woman of Letters is a consistently phenomenal newsletter. It’s sharp, confident, and crafted with a lot of care. Thankful for Naomi’s writing!

‘The 5+ Club: On "author completionism" & keeping track of who you read’: Regan, Regan's Newsletter (November 30, 2024)

• This is a really fun insight into Regan’s process for tracking how much of an author’s work she has read, which has changed how I read! I plan on implementing some of her ideas in the new year. Thank you, Regan! - MR

‘Oh groan, oh groannnnn’: Who knows? Who knows? (September 24, 2024)

The idea that left wing artists and writers are open to a line of critique which can simply never be applied to right wing artists and writers is certainly a convenient concept for right wing artists and writers. I can’t see that it has much use beyond this, I can’t see that it has any use in terms of helping us understand or situate art better.

• Going to be lots of bad-faith criticisms of artists in the next few years, especially towards artists on the left. Thankful for this piece that calls this trend out for what it is.

‘Phase Imprinting’: Karmela Padavic Callaghan, Ultracold (July 22, 2024)

So there is the issue of me, my confidence and who I look to for validation and conferral of authority. And then there is the issue of the actual book, of Entangled States entangled with the state of me, emotionally, intellectually, by the fingertips. If I can hide behind the persona of a cold and rational scientist from time to time, if I can reach for that character when I feel like there is no other way to hold my own against those mediocre but confident white men or the true believers in the kinds of institutions that have not anointed me, my memoir cannot. It’s all in the title anyway: the book is not just about physics, it is also about my life.

• Excellent reflection on the writing life, and what it means to identify as a writer.

‘the own-work woodshed’: Kate Wagner, the late review (October 7, 2024)

Like a polished piece of writing, a performance of a symphony is simultaneously practice, the culmination of all practice, and not practice at all, but something different: the work. Before there can be symphonies, there are individual musicians in tiny apartments and music school cubbyholes “woodshedding it” – endlessly repeating scales and excerpts, sculpting phrases, working on accentuation. It is not practical for the symphony musician in the practice room to say, I will play my whole part – all forty minutes of it – from beginning to end without stopping. And then I will do it again. And again.

• Keep thinking about this piece. A beautiful reflection, especially if you’re a writer (or an artist of any kind) who is feeling stuck in the craft.

‘publishing is a fake industry’: Lyta Gold, Lyta's List (September 26, 2024)

This is a fake industry. It survives off the cheap labor of writers who are desperate to express themselves and will settle for pennies, and the ranks of publishing professionals which are made up almost entirely of rich kids who weren’t smart enough for law school. We’re not supposed to say these things out loud, of course. When you’re a writer you’re supposed to smile and network and promote your books and speak passionately about the worth and value of writing, even though the very people who write your checks constantly demonstrate that they value you and your work about as much as they value the gig workers who bring them their groceries.

• Publishing might be a fake industry, but fortunately Lyta’s writing is full of warmth and truth.

‘character is dead, long live character’: meghna rao, a machine, learning (November 18, 2024)

We assume people are stereotypes, not because we are seeing them as they are, but simply because we have read and engaged with endless reports of how they should be. We believe others are fixed. When, in reality, most people are partial, half-in, half-out, half-attentive, half-asleep, half-awake, moving in and out of different states at will and against their wishes, inhabiting character as experiences rather than as fixed things.

• Excellent reflection on character!! Read this right after my deep-dive into Rachel Cusk, and it was a wonderful supplement.

‘Unplanned obsolescence’: terry Nguyen, Vague Blue (April 22, 2024)

‘Do Everything In The Dark’ is set in 2001 New York but the messy and incestuous social dynamics between Indiana’s reputation-obsessed characters feel as relevant as ever. Except now, selling out is a given, an act not even worth castigating. People either think, “Oh, this person is already rich.” Or, “Good for them, they secured the bag.” At least in the arts, I don’t think we can honestly characterize selling out as a conspicuous act but a contemporary sensibility entrenched in the brine of late capitalism that we all swim in. A reflex of our social system and its economic structures.

• AGREE, AGREE, AGREE. But really, Terry Nguyen’s writing has been great this year, so glad that I was introduced to it this year.

And finally, ‘Thank You’.

Just as we all say ‘thanks’ to these newsletters, I wanted to briefly say ‘thank you’ for reading mine. It’s been a weird year, but I appreciate everyone who has taken some time of their life to read Three Chairs. If you’d like to say ‘thank you’ for the work that I do, consider sharing or recommending the newsletter, or even reaching out! This is all incredibly appreciated, especially since I write this newsletter for free.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, and happy reading,

Michael