Reading, Watching 04.07.24
The Cruelest Month
This is a regular feature for paid subscribers wherein I write a little about what I’ve recently been reading and/or watching. Hope you enjoy!
I had a very fun time talking to my buddy Jay Caspian Kang on his podcast
about the fascism debate:
My friend
of the indispensable Know Your Enemy podcast has just started his own Substack. This promises to be something really special: anybody who knows Matt knows he’s a wonderful writer with a real wealth of revealing observations and anecdotes. I’m particularly looking forward to this feature since I’ve long coveted Matt’s library:Subscribers will receive at least two items every week: First, on Mondays, a feature I’m calling “Personal Archives,” where I treat you to glimpses into my ever-growing collection of first edition, rare, and simply beautiful books, as well as literary ephemera—letters, postcards, and more. As the “personal” in the title indicates, this collection grew out of my own obsessions, so expect a lot of Christopher Isherwood, W.H. Auden, Edmund White, Gore Vidal, the “New York intellectuals,” and a few of the rightwing intellectuals I’ve long read and pondered. But there also will be posts about, say, some of my favorite dust jackets from the 1950s and 60s. In all cases, you’ll not only get to see interesting and fetching images; I’ll also offer historical context or a telling anecdote related to the author, book, or document in question, drawing on the author’s diaries, a rival writer’s memoirs or letters, or whatever seems relevant to help you understand why I care about it, and why you should, too.
Let’s all give Matt a warm welcome to Substack!
I’m sure you’re all aware of Trump’s speech where he referred to migrants as “animals” and not human, but
over at Posse Comitatus adds some more context to those remarks. I’m not sure how anybody at this point can hear the rhetoric he used and see him flanked by uniforms and not say to themselves, “Okay, yeah, that’s a little fascist.”