Saturday Night/Sunday Warning: A weekly miscellany of good things (Series 2, Episode 1)
Recommendations, mini-essays and behind-the-scenes insights for the weekend crew.
In a previous era of this newsletter, I used to do a paid subscriber-only weekly roundup and… I’m bringing it back. The ‘week’s five best articles’ section will be free to read for all but the other parts of these editions will be a paid-subscriber bonus.
5 Things I Actually Enjoyed This Week
1. ARTICLE
The Writer Who Burned Her Own Books by Audrey Wollen for The New Yorker.
Rosemary Tonks was an incredible poet and novelist whose conversion to evangelical Christianity led her to want her work and literary reputation erased. Audrey Wollen’s essay explores Tonks’ life and work, and includes this meditation on the almost literal magic of reading:
She was afraid of finding someone else’s thoughts left behind in her personality, like a strange scarf unearthed from the sofa cushions after a party. Books were the most acute threat to the sanctity of the bordered self. Of course, Tonks is right: that is what reading does—it places another’s mind in your own mind. It is the swiftest metaphysical delirium we have, impossible to replicate. The immensity of what reading feels like should not be discounted by its omnipresence in our daily lives. How do we distinguish between the sentences that sprout and green from our own selves, the arcane loam of the individual, and the sentences that fall and land there, alien and already bloomed? Is there even a difference to discover?
Related reading/listening:
On Rosemary Tonks, Patrick McGuinness for the LRB (July 2 2015)
Bedouin of the London Evening: Collected Poems, Rosemary Tonks (Bloodaxe)
2. NEWSLETTER
Casey Lewis' Substack on youth culture and trends is always fascinating and occasionally baffling. If you want to understand the brands, celebrities, memes, and music that excite Gen Z, it’s a must-read and will save you from being misinformed when the papers get around to writing about the same things 6 months from now.
3. PODCAST
Minion Death Cult
A left-wing podcast about the depths of terrible Facebook feeds and horrendous right-wing social media trends. Recent episodes have covered the Taliban stanning Andrew Tate, the aforementioned alleged trafficker’s pathetic attempt to “own” Greta, and Tim Allen claiming to have restored the “Christ” in Christmas.
4. ARTICLE
The Art of Bidding… by Eric Borsuk for The Marshall Project
Borsuk’s essay about searching for a sense of purpose during his time in prison is a mesmerising piece of writing.
“Man, you gotta get a bid,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“You know — a bid. It’s how you do your time.”
We went back and forth on the details. It seemed like an arcane term that didn’t really make sense until you’d lived in the system for a while. From what I could gather, the word seemed to derive from the noun “bit,” pertaining to the length of a prison sentence, much like a “stretch” or a “stint.” Something like: “This seven-year bit is a fuckin’ bummer.”
“Bid” was something entirely different, more like a purpose or raison d’être. It was all about how you did your time, like finding a hobby or hustle to get you through your bit. For many guys, it was about winning, no matter what the endeavor was. Others just wanted to make money. Some guys used it simply as a way to occupy their minds. For everyone, though, it was all about escaping the slog of captivity. My celly told me he bid off a lot of things, but mostly just gambling — although he did like to dabble in some prison hooch from time to time. He said if I could find this thing — this sense of purpose — it would make all the difference in my life. Without it, he said, my sentence would feel like an endless misery. “Do the time,” he said. “Don’t let the time do you.”
Further reading:
American Animals, Eric Borsuk (Turner Publishing)
5. ALBUM
The Idiot, Iggy Pop (1977)
Apple Music | Spotify | Vinyl
Iggy Pop has just put out a new record (Every Loser) but I haven’t come to a conclusion about it yet. On first listen, it doesn’t sound very January to me. Instead, deal with this pitiful month by listening to the icy-cold sleaze of his debut solo album, which he called "a cross between James Brown and Kraftwerk".
Beyond the (pay) wall, you will find such monsters as a mini-essay on Times profiles of Labour frontbenchers and this week’s list of newsletters which went unwritten…
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