Andy Hunter—the publisher of Lit Hub otherwise known, to me, as the man who reissued Mary Robison’s books—emailed me a simple question: Why not use Bookshop.org links? I thought it was a good question! So, housekeeping: In order to better support local bookstores, I’ll be using Bookshop.org links when possible. More about their business model here. Note the step where you can select which small bookstore you want to support. (A general reminder not to cross the picket line at the Strand.)
Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison is on the syllabus of every MFA course in fiction in the United States. This sounds like an insult, but it’s actually one of the few points in favor of an MFA — that you get to read Mary Robison in your early twenties!
Media
I was pleased to see a client of mine featured on “In the Papers” on NY1 this week, where “Pat Kiernan takes a look at what's in the papers.” He looks at the front page and highlights major stories in every major American newspaper, starting with USA Today, the newspaper they drop outside your door at the Holiday Inn. It’s good to know what “the people” are reading. (I need a media reporter to give me a clearer picture of how skeletal the New York Daily News actually is these days.)
Please join my group chat in reading the legal documents filed by actor Justin Baldoni. (Start with the New York Times article that caused Justin to sue.) His case rests on hundreds of text messages between publicists and clients, publicists and journalists, and publicists and publicists. There’s a deterioration of language at the heart of what amounts to a text battle. I find it largely incomprehensible/amusing. (“She told me that Melissa is not a real PR agency and that they don’t have any good clients.”)
Full PDF here:
The painter Sam McKinniss, one of my dearest friends, has a print spread of his country house in Vogue. (“He has truly catholic taste—to Sam a gay Fragonard is the same as a TMZ shot of Lindsay Lohan in her car.”) I’m a blind item, a pleasure.
Watching Meghan Markle fail to capture the sympathy of the internet with her latest venture stands in sharp contrast to the ease which with the earth mothers of instagram authentically peddle their wares. This week, I started following Harriet Were, homemaker of doll houses and child-centric recipe books. (She also runs an online shop of quaint knitwear made by “local makers around New Zealand,” where she is from.)
Meghan’s strained Netflix trailer for her cooking show (“we’re not in the pursuit of perfection”) had me re-reading Jenny Diski’s writing on Princess Diana:
So where, in the personality stakes, does this leave a 30-year-old woman with two kids, a minimum of education and no qualifications, trapped in a dead marriage to an absentee husband? Nowhere, of course, if she happens to live in a housing estate in Leeds: but right bang on top of the interview list if her old man happens to be the next king of England.