Here’s a photo of my kiddos’ dresser from a few years ago, when I realized it was basically a museum of technology. I almost typed “obsolete technology,” but these things all still work — the Casio and the Sony Dream Machine were both possessions from our own childhoods. I wrote about these items in a recent newsletter about the objects we love and live with.
A word from Steve Albini for the “you don’t need a vision” file:
I’ve lived my whole life without having goals, and I think that’s very valuable, because then I never am in a state of anxiety or dissatisfaction. I never feel I haven’t achieved something. I never feel there is something yet to be accomplished. I feel like goals are quite counterproductive. They give you a target, and until the moment you reach that target, you are stressed and unsatisfied, and at the moment you reach that specific target you are aimless and have lost the lodestar of your existence. I’ve always tried to see everything as a process. I want to do things in a certain way that I can be proud of that is sustainable and is fair and equitable to everybody that I interact with. If I can do that, then that’s a success, and success means that I get to do it again tomorrow.
Read more in last Friday’s newsletter.
In today’s newsletter, I write about the new Cindy Lee triple album, Diamond Jubilee:
[It] isn’t streaming — you can only listen to it, officially, via a YouTube video or by downloading the WAV files on a Geocities website. As I was drawing KBB-style diamonds on my newly burned CD-Rs — yes, I still have a CD drive and yes, I still have a CD player — I suddenly wondered if the album release was engineered to be a big craft project for old nerds like me!
You can read the whole newsletter here.
Stephanie Zacharek is the film critic at Time, and Dwight Garner is a book critic for The New York Times. They’re two of my favorite writers to read, so when I found out they were friends, I thought it would be fun to interview them together for the newsletter.
We had a good time talking about honesty in criticism, having a sense of humor, the writing process, our favorite books and movies, how to develop your personal taste, and much more.
You can watch the video or read the transcript in today’s newsletter. (You can also click the podcast options in the sidebar and listen to it.)
A few highlights, below…
Dwight on the importance of a sense of humor:
I agree with the great Australian-British critic Clive James, who said that a sense of humor is, I think he put it, “common sense, dancing.” Which I just love. You don’t trust someone without a sense of humor. Donald Trump — no sense of humor! You meet someone without one and… 9 times out of 10 I don’t trust or like writers who have no sense of humor. Every once in a while you get a Dostoevsky, who, you know, has his moments. Sheer power can win out. But I increasingly like to be made to smile when I’m reading. To me, that’s a sign of a first rate intellect. Critics want to deliver pleasure, right? All writers do. And humor is just part of that pleasure. Pleasure is an elevated thing to deliver, if you’re doing it right.
Stephanie on her favorite movie, The Lady Eve:
It’s funny, sometimes you go to a dinner party, and people are like, “Oh, you’re a movie critic, so what’s your favorite movie?” And other critics that I know, it’s like, “Oh, my God, I hate that question.” But I love that question! Because I always have a ready answer. And my answer is: The Lady Eve by Preston Sturges, which is a comedy. A lot of people might think, oh, no, I have to choose a really serious movie as my favorite movie. But The Lady Eve, not only is it funny and great in so many ways with fantastic performances by Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, but it’s actually about something very serious. This idea of looking at someone and thinking that you’re in love with that person and not seeing exactly what’s in front of you.
And Dwight on his commonplace book (which he turned into Garner’s Quotations):
I’ve kept it for so long now, it’s been transferred from print to various laptops. I sort of keep it obsessively. Everything I read, I end up writing things down from. I know, generally, I don’t like a book, if I end up putting nothing from it into my commonplace book. Not to every writer has to be pithy and perfect, but if I read a book, and I don’t want to put a single thing from it? And I keep all kinds of categories, I can open up to flying, social class, violence, war, sex, drugs, conversation, theater, music. I’m just obsessive about it…
It’s [in] Microsoft Word. And the files are so large that they get hung up and the beachball spins… They’re broken up. I’ve broken up Food, because Food is so big. I’ve broken up Drink, because Drink is so big. I’ve broken up Writing because writing breaks down into so many aspects of writing to talk about, right? But even the A-M and M-Z are just large and unwieldy. And I don’t know, it’s a boring topic, but… I take great pleasure in it!
I highly recommend reading or watching the whole thing here.
Today’s newsletter, on how quantity (usually) leads to quality was inspired by this NYTimes profile of Matt Farley:
“If you reject your own ideas, then the part of the brain that comes up with ideas is going to stop,” he said. “You just do it and do it and do it, and you sort it out later.” Or, as the case may be, you don’t, but rather send it all out into the abyss, hoping that someday, somebody, somewhere will hear it.
You can read it here.
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