18 Comments

Oh! Thanks for articulating why I can't read Cusk.

Expand full comment

Oh nooo. 🙈 I love her, but I can totally understand why she'd be hard to take.

Expand full comment

I couldn't figure it out ... because I *almost* like her? But it's that self-hating thing. Thanks for diagnosing it ... and love your general critique of vapor characters.

Expand full comment

This is the first thing I read this morning. An absolutely great way to start my day!

Expand full comment

Yay. I'm thrilled to hear it!

Expand full comment

It’s great to read a brilliant essay that also makes me laugh, “miasma of thought spritzed between two asterisks.”

Expand full comment

Alison, thank you! Haha. Glad it made you laugh. And thanks for leaving a comment. Hope you're doing well.

Expand full comment

Brutalism, nude Lucian Freud portraits in architectural form.

Expand full comment

This is...stunning, and I cannot unsee it, oh no.

Expand full comment

First thing I read this morning as well - remarkable. And better than coffee for jumpstarting the brain. Thank you!

Expand full comment

Thanks so much for reading and for leaving a comment! I appreciate it!

Expand full comment

Reading this newsletter is probably how basketball players felt going up against Jordan in '96. a la "I'm about to see some sh*t". Came for the intrigue around Lahiri's book, stayed for the line "And I know enough to stay out of grown women's business!" Your writing is absolutely sensational.

Expand full comment

This is the best thing I’ve read in months. I immediately bought second place based on your description.

Expand full comment

Thank you for another great read. “And I know enough to stay out of grown women’s business.” I am thinking you’re wise beyond your years.

Expand full comment

Wonderful piece that articulates better than many an essay on autofiction what I find so alluring, and yet frustrating, about contemporary autofiction (and I say that as someone who has perpetrated the stuff). “Contemporary novel of subjective consciousness” is a much more useful term, I think. And you also get at the counter-longing such writing arouses—for me, I find myself looking to SFF to provide some of the objective substance that’s missing from Cusk, et al (whom I love).

Expand full comment

Wow "the psychedelic incoherence of experience in the face of deterministic social forces...the incoherence turns to static". Amazing piece. Articulated so well the vibe of works that I have loved reading although it's also a state of mind that I am awkwardly trying to find a way out of in my own work (and life). I think I've read too many of these works and now I have to break the pattern of learned, easy, cool disaffection 😂

Expand full comment

I’m subscribing on the strength of this essay alone! Thanks Brandon - thought- provoking, articulate and funny in all the right doses.

Expand full comment

Hi Brandon. This piece got me to subscribe! Can you say more about why that paragraph about the chicken was electric? That was really interesting, and would love to hear more about what it does well, and why it jumped out at you.

Expand full comment