Fall has begun. A plaid flannel shirt covers my t-shirt as I walk through the neighborhood, green tea is replacing Diet Coke as my morning beverage, and pumpkin spice everything is everywhere.
Fall is when we go back to work. Back to school. Abandon summer Fridays. I’m trying to catch up on my reading, finish several essays, finalize my memoir.
Largehearted Likes
Pendleton flannel shirts - Last fall I picked up a Pendleton flannel shirt and fell in love with the wool blend. Since then I have bought several more, and will be found in them until at least March. Warm, comfortable, and plaid, that’s all I need.
The Sun Ra Arkestra - The discography of the Sun Ra Arkestra is massive, but I am working my way through it, an album a week, and am continually amazed at both the inventiveness and musicianship of these pioneers of Afrofuturism.
Paulie Gee’s Slice Shop - Often I will pick up a slice or two here for lunch (usually a Mootz and a Hellboy) and eat them while reading in the park catercorner to the pizzeria. When we moved to Greenpoint over a year ago, I joked that I wanted to be closer to Paulie Gee. Now, I say that seriously.
The chess cheating scandal - I am only a casual chess player, my career ended when my younger brother started continually besting me when I was ten. This case is unfolding slowly, with many more surprises to come.
Dmitry Samarov’s portrait of my dog - The first piece of art we put up in our apartment when we moved, and the first thing you see when you come in the front door. Dmitry Samarov is as talented a writer as he is an artist.
Debutiful - One of my favorite literary websites, Debutiful is dedicated to covering debut writers and their books through interviews and recommendations.
The Maris Review - Maris Kreizman’s interviews with authors are as smart and funny as the Vulture books editor. The only literary podcast I listen to every week.
I Will Dare - I love Jodi Chromey’s blog (yes, she is proud to call it a “blog”) for many reasons. Her writing is heartfelt and funny, and her music and popular culture knowledge is broad. Her website is even older than Largehearted Boy, and she maintains THE Replacements fan site, PaulWesterberg.net.
P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves novels - Occasionally I leave the house without a book to read on the subway. When that happens, I turn to my phone and the collected Jeeves novels of P.G. Wodehouse. Comedic and often surprisingly moving, these books have me chuckling through the tunnels.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital - My partner has surgery earlier this week at MSK, and the level of care was beyond amazing. Every person I interacted with, from the security guard to the cafe staff to the surgeon was engaging on both intellectual and personal levels. By far the best medical experience of my life.
Fall - A change of seasons is welcome. This summer was hectic. Our dog passed away, my partner changed jobs, the bookstore where I worked closed, and we dealt with some health issues. The new season brings new opportunity, a clean slate, and sweater weather.
Largehearted Links
BOMB interviewed Basie Allen about his poetry and painting
I like that my painting and poetry can exist as one thing and not have to be quantified as a singular idea—that my work, like so many other parts of all of us, are contradictory and explanatory.
There is a pervasive disquiet throughout the novel beneath the immediate worries about the virus. “I do feel that we’re in a desperate place,” she says. “It’s a very anxious time to be an American.” Spending time in both New York and Maine, Strout is acutely aware of the divisions in her country. She has a real fear of the possibility of a civil war. “I actually mean violence,” she says. “There’s a quiet rumbling. We just don’t know where it will go. Is it going to expand and explode? Or will it sort of go along like other parts of American history have in the past?”
Video games as music discovery portals
I would love to tell you that I was first introduced to dance music in underground Berlin clubs, where mysterious resident DJs blew my teenage mind performing indescribable magic with beats and synth lines. But that would be a lie. My first introduction to dance music came in the form of a futuristic 90s racing game called WipEout.
Porochista Khakpour on the work of artist Nadia Lee Cohen
I was raised in Los Angeles, and so it surprised me that this English-countryside–raised artist grasped West Coast excess so well. It wasn’t my L.A., but it was L.A. Maybe a California more California than actual California, it was, like so much of her body of work, a ’60s and ’70s eternal-magic-hour Americana that permanently stained the perception of this region.
Chelsea Martin on her new novel
I’m interested in the idea of how you are with different people, and how to be an authentic person when you have to have such different relationships and different priorities within those relationships.
Kamila Shamsie on her new novel
When I went to university in America, and I was writing, people started to make comments about bringing politics into fiction, as though politics was something that stood outside. But when I was growing up, it wasn’t something standing outside of daily life. Some of my earliest memories include the day Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged when I was six.
An interview with Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner
[Vocal processing] changes the way you are as a singer. It works well for a guy like me; it’s the mistakes that make it interesting. So if you’re a little out of tune or something like that, that’s when it kicks in. And that’s when it gets exciting. So you actually have to sort of ride this weird line between being on pitch and out of pitch.
Last Week on LHB
Dmitry Samarov's playlist for his book Paint By Numbers
Jayme Ringleb's playlist for their poetry collection So Tall It Ends in Heaven
Joe Meno's playlist for his novel Book of Extraordinary Tragedies