Five Recs
This month has been busy and weird in the best way possible. I’ve pitched and applied for lots of exciting things, gave my first reading in years, spoke on a really cool writing panel, and successfully made French toast for the first time. This draft has been languishing in my drive for too long, so world, here’s what I’ve been reading/watching/listening to:
1. Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? | Roz Chast
I read all of this graphic memoir in a coffee shop while working on an essay about only children, and, woof, I almost sobbed into my latte. New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast chronicles her journey through helping her parents navigate the end of their lives—moving them out of their Brooklyn apartment and into a care facility, then hospice. As sad as some moments are, some are hilarious. The illustrations also probably took off some of the edge.
I love the project of turning one of the worst things that can happen in a person's life not only into art but art that could make someone laugh.
It was also a pretty nice way to confront my fear of death, which I guess I've always had but has recently come front of mind. Read this if you want a quick read on a heavy topic that will make you laugh and cry.
2. Intention | Watsky
He says don’t call it a final album, but it seems likely that this will be the final project we’ll get from Watsky for a while. Watsky is probably the last artist I had a true parasocial relationship with, and I'm clearly not completely over it just yet. The final iteration of my graduate school thesis (and the current iteration of my first essay collection manuscript) opens with a Watsky quote:
Do you ever feel strange? Wonder how the world's gaze has shaped you?
It’s fun, open, and honest, but some of it’s pretty dark and broody. "WHAT'S THE MOVE” features T-Pain and is super lively and electric. My favorite track shifts each time I listen, but "PAPER NIHILIST” and "MILE AWAY" are the two I've hit replay on most often.
Check it out if you like dope beats and big feelings.
3. Barbarian | dir. Zach Cregger
I've written and rambled about this film a hundred times since I watched it last October, and I still don’t think any description I can give will do it justice.
If you haven't watched it, stop reading, and watch it immediately (it’s on HBO Max). Seriously: don’t read a single review--go in as blind as you can.
I’m gonna try to avoid giving too much away, but one thing that’s stuck with me is that the reason a certain character can’t go out in the sunlight is that she was kept in the dark for her entire life. The horror of the film is that the stuff that’s never shown--we fill in the blanks ourselves which makes it all the more horrible. Writer and director Zach Cregger did a stellar job of trusting the audience to fill in the gaps. That said, what we don’t know does contain some plot holes that I keep trying to mentally fill, but the film is still successful based on his intention.
Zach gave an amazing interview on the Too Scary, Didn't Watch podcast (highly recommend) where he gets into the origin of his project.
I can't say enough great things about this movie--the casting was absolutely perfect. I'm saving most of my thoughts because I'll probably write more comprehensively about this somewhere later since I still can't stop thinking about it.
Watch this if you want to watch a smart horror film that you’ll be thinking about for months after it ends.
4. Pachinko | Min Jin Lee
This book sat on my shelf for a couple of years because--can I get vulnerable?--it’s very long. I read the first couple of pages a dozen times but inevitably got worried that I would forget about what happened in the beginning by the time it finished. But! Once I got past that first chapter, I couldn’t pry the book out of my own hands. It was that good. I stayed up past three in the morning reading it multiple nights in a row and finished it in a couple of weeks.
It's one of those books that made me realize just how much we can learn from fiction. The characters are so alive and real, and I had to know what would happen next. I felt connected to each of the characters and felt equal parts astonished by the craft and lost in the story.
Read this if you want a story you can get lost in that runs the gamut of the human conditions throughout generations of a single family.
5. Sweetbitter | Stephanie Danler
Part of what drew me into the story was the familiarity. Though the restaurants that narrator Tess and I worked at couldn’t have differed more, I connected to her story because of the emotional truths within the work. Starting over in New York City, uncertainty surrounding what your life will or should look like, scrambling to memorize the rules that are written and uncover those that aren’t, deciphering people’s intentions—all in a setting that floods the senses: air thick with the smell of garlic, clanking silverware and buzzing voices, the twinge of lower back pain, unfamiliar faces swarming around, bright kitchen lights against the dim dining room, scalding plates and chilled glasses. The ebb and flow of adrenaline: slow lunch boredom contrasted with the rush of a chaotic section full of large parties. All of this while plastering on a smile and never letting the mask slip in front of the guests who are entitled to a perfect dining experience—who should they not receive less than perfection—will either laugh it off, withhold their tip, or attempt to have you fired. It read like a fever dream in the best way & I didn't want it to end.
Read this if you want to get lost in a poetic account of restaurant life in early aughts NYC.
Until next time,
Kayla