Autofiction Syllabus
hot springs hotel
I am always curious about “master perfumers.” Chanel’s PR team really got me with the this story on the many generations of families making Chanel No. 5. (Six generations of flower farmers, two generations of perfumers.) I think, like most women my age, I’m not actually interested in wearing the perfume! But it’s been a few years since I smelled it (a combo of jasmine, rose, and ylang-ylang).
Ex-T editor, and known basket maker, Deborah Needleman weighed in on the Wicker trailer. “I’m excited that the basket weaving community now has our own hot, woven leading man, but I’ve also got issues. Why is a dude woven in an English fishing village not made of willow — or even rush? This CGI fellow appears to be a Japanese basket woven from lacquered bamboo. Not to go all Emily Wilson and the Odyssey on this, but all the studio needed was a bit of expert advice.” You can watch the trailer here.
I was very taken with Picasso model Lydia Corbett’s house. It’s what Vanessa Bell’s house thinks it is. Which is a thought I had before reading the piece, only to come across this sentence: “Pilgrims and angels adorn the walls of the first-floor bedroom known as the Jesus Room after the murals that Corbett painted here. The artist says she got the idea from a visit to Charleston in East Sussex, once home to Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.” I guess you could say, she just improved the idea! Hilarious. I love…my brain.
Aaron said this image reminded him of The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch. One of the funniest novels I’ve read in a while—the total opposite of what I thought her work was like. I got an email that Picador is releasing new editions of M.F.K. Fisher’s Art of Eating series this fall: How to Cook a Wolf, An Alphabet for Gourmets, The Gastronomical Me, Serve It Forth, Consider the Oyster. The same day, Aaron Artem, who runs one of those pleasing-images instagrams, posted this image from her book, The Cooking of Provincial France. You know, I haven’t read any of these, and I’m really looking forward to it!
New York magazine reported that Zohran Mamdani is reading The Gods of New York. Makes sense. “The Gods of New York is a kaleidoscopic and deeply immersive portrait of a city whose identity was suddenly up for grabs: Could it be both the great working-class city that lifted up immigrants from around the world and the money-soaked capital of global finance? Could it retain a civic culture—a common idea of what it meant to be a New Yorker—when the rich were building a city of their own and vast swaths of its citizens were losing faith in the systems meant to protect them?”
Actress Tanya Reynolds in Duke + Dexter hand-painted shoes. I started following her after watching The Decameron on Netflix. Very, very funny.
