Gray hours
Murakami, Joyce Carol Oates, Joan Didion—everything I read the past two (three?) weeks.
The holiday season unwinds for me as a strange aimless block of time that stretches in one long hour between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Which is to say I missed last week’s newsletter and am combining two (or possibly three, who’s counting) weeks into one.
Because it’s cold and gray where I live, I have been thinking about California. For a self-serious writer from the East Coast, thinking about California means thinking about Joan Didion. I admire her writing so much that it’s hard not to emulate her when I’m in the midst of re-reading her books. Sometimes I’m gripped by a fascination with another artist that temporarily makes me want to rebuild myself from the ground up in their image. I’m reminding myself that I could only ever be a second- or third-rate Joan Didion copy. But I can take the lessons I learn from reading her and use them to become a first-rate something else.
What I Read This Week (and Last)
One of the less weird Haruki Murakami books I’ve encountered, following several characters’ movements through a city at night.
A ‘90s-era Joyce Carol Oates about a girl gang in upstate New York in the 1950s. While it feels like an “early” JCO, she’d already written something like twenty-three novels by the time this one was published.
I was inspired to pick that off my shelf by the latest New Yorker profile of the author. According to Pocket, it’s a 41-minute read, but I flew through it.
Another author profile, this time in the NYT, about spy thriller novelist Mick Herron. His US publisher, Soho Press, is also releasing my latest novel (a horror satire about the beauty industry that is currently available for pre-order) and I’m inspired by his story of slow-burn success.
A fascinating look at how the friendship between two men in the 1960s launched the sushi craze in Los Angeles.
This combination memoir/biography/analysis of Joan Didion’s life and work, which naturally led me…
Back to the source. (It’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem if you don’t want to click.)
What I Did This Week
Spilled coffee on my laptop’s keyboard.
Put the laptop in a box of rice overnight.
Did not save the laptop.
Pre-order my upcoming novel, YOUTHJUICE (6/4/24) here.