hot gazpacho summer
In that eerie, horrible summer of 2020, I started fiddling with an idea for a book about Joan Didion and Hollywood. In October 2021, I at last signed a deal with a publisher. Almost a year ago, in August 2023, I handed in the manuscript for We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine. Production got a little delayed for reasons inevitable at a small imprint (Liveright, my publisher, is a celebrated little corner at W.W. Norton), but my copyedits came back this week. The only people who have read this book cover to cover are essentially me, my editor, and the copyeditor, but my husband is reading it now. He claims he loves it, which is an immense relief, in part because I know he couldn’t make that up if he didn’t. (And yes, I took him to see You Hurt My Feelings, a.k.a. the scariest horror film of all time, if you’re a writer in a long-term partnership.)
I hope you like it too. (Pub date forthcoming, but probably post-Oscars next year.) Nobody is getting much money from writing books these days, including me, but we do it for other reasons, and one of them is you.
A Facebook post reminded me that this week marks a year since the college I’d taught at since I was 25 closed, and I lost my full-time academic job. That means this has been my first full year without teaching. In truth, I haven’t minded at all (though I desperately miss the income). But I have long maintained that writers ought to teach, for the good of their writing. Luckily, after putting out some feelers, it appears I will spend a little time in the classroom again in 2025, which is good news for me. I am in the very nascent stages of working on a syllabus for a graduate course (and, simultaneously, a proposal for a new book related to the topic). Maybe there will be more? We’ll see. (Hit me up if you’ve got something.)
And for my job, I am writing a busy but very manageable amount, and reading through the stacks on my desk as rapidly as I’m able. I’ve also been suffering a pretty lousy stretch of insomnia brought on by a pile of medium-sized stresses that together make a much larger midnight monster. But let me tell you something: that’s been good for the reading.
Been reading
For my own project research, I’ve read a few books so far this summer: Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing, which was a bit of a sensation when it came out and is, in fact, very good, and the follow-up Saving Time; Claire Bishop’s Disordered Attention, which was not at all what I thought it was going to be and all the better for it; and Your Brain on Art, by Ivy Ross and Susan Magsamen, a reader-friendly book on neuroaesthetics that’s full of intriguing nuggets.
Otherwise, I have been reading fiction, often books by friends, which is always a blast. So far this summer: Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (epic, hilarious, razor-sharp); Lo Fi by Liz Riggs (delicious, whirling, kinetic); All Fours by Miranda July (wild, unputdownable, perimenopausal); and I’m in the middle of Alexis Landau’s The Mother of All Things and Lauren Elkins’s Scaffolding. Jamie Quatro’s Two-Step Devil is next up.
I also usually have an audiobook or two on the go, because I need something to distract me when I’m running or commuting or just cleaning the kitchen. They are disproportionately gothic campus novels involving murder. Right now, it’s Rebecca Makai’s I Have Some Questions For You.
Been enjoying
I love a tequila soda or a glass of rose in the heat, but I find myself reaching for an unboozy drink a lot of the time, especially if I’m reading or just hanging out. Have really loved this michelada-dupe from Athletic Brewing Company — which is to say, it’s non-alcoholic, and really delicious, if you like a michelada. Also a big fan of this non-alcoholic Aplos Chili Margarita.
Making jars full of Julia Moskin’s amazing gazpacho, the kind that requires no bread, every weekend, and leaving them in the fridge for when hunger suddenly strikes. I just drop by the grocery store and pick up some tomatoes, a mild onion, a pepper, and a cucumber, and we’re good to go. (For readers of my book Salty — yes, this is roughly the recipe in that book.)
I made this recipe for chile-crisp tomatoes, cucumbers, and tofu (only cooking required is searing the tofu in a pan for a few minutes) for a backyard barbecue last weekend, on a ridiculously hot day, and it was absolutely scrumptious.
Thanks to some health issues, I’m on a somewhat restricted diet this summer, and so I’m kind of obsessed with these low-sugar macadamia snack bars.
It is buggy season. I live in a very buggy place; most of it is basically a swamp. And I have recently been in backyards in Connecticut and in Brooklyn, plus evening jaunts to Prospect Park to watch the swans and roller derby skaters. I am also extremely delicious to bugs, as it turns out. I don’t love breathing in DEET if I don’t have to, so I have two remarkably effective natural bug-stuff recommendations: this luxurious bougie “lotion stone” from Kate McLeod, which leaves your skin all nice and moisturized; and the genuinely magical “Golden Hour” repellent from Kinfield, which comes in both spray and extremely travel and bag-friendly wipe form.
Been writing
It’s been so long that I don’t really know where to start here, so let’s just go with some stuff from the summer?
I now write the formally-named “Documentary Lens” column, which is a brief look at a new documentary (or, occasionally, two) that publishes online every Friday and in the paper early the following week. Some recent columns looked at the surprisingly good “Dancing With the Devil” series on Netflix, about the TikTok cult and its megachurchy leader; Copa 71, about a major sports event that was completely erased for depressingly predictable reasons; a documentary about Norman Mailer that skips the hagiography that plagues most biographical docs; and “Made in England,” aka Marty’s Love Letter to Powell & Pressburger.
I sometimes write appraisals (not obituaries, which are a whole other thing!) when important people die. That recently included Shelley Duvall, Gothic heroine, and Donald Sutherland, who never disappeared.
I have been reviewing, of course, and some of those movies will be among my favorites of the year. But I don’t want to tip my hand too hard on that (and of course, the point of a review isn’t really to thumbs-up or thumbs-down it, but to give you space to figure out what you like). So go read the reviews of movies like Great Absence, Twisters, Janet Planet, Kinds of Kindness, This Closeness, Ghostlight, Tiger Stripes, The Exorcism, Space Cadet, and the very remarkable, very nerdy Eno.
I was delighted to publish my very first book review with the, uh, Book Review. It’s of the memoir by Joan Didion’s former assistant.
And as part of a fun little audio package themed around “beach” (thank you, Ken) — if your beach day gets rained out, or if it is thirty thousand degrees outside as it has been here, then here are some movies to hole up with.