Our recurring playlist of links, stories, podcasts, reviews. KC = Kyle Chayka, NG = Nate Gallant.
Someone should buy this charming $1.7 million Provence villa in the medieval downtown of Eygalieres, a faux-rustic village where Hugh Grant happens to have a house and frequents the local liquor store for whiskey, which they stock specially for him. — KC
If it feels like trend cycles are accelerating right now, it’s not just confined to TikTok. Curbed reports on “The Immediately Outdated Renovation,” in which home interiors change aesthetic fashions in the time it takes to construct them in the first place. “The attention span for style and color is far shorter than it was even two years ago,” as one former renovation company executive says. Further evidence that taste in all things is driven by online consumption habits. We get bored at the speed of the internet, but it’s much easier to change digital wallpaper than physical. — KC
Yon Ko-Eun is not your average travel writer. While many fret over the cultural cache of their next vacation, she uses the existential challenge of travel, intentional displacement, and perhaps most importantly, the loaded question of "where to go next," to scaffold an increasingly surprising literary journey. This was a significant part of her novel The Disaster Tourist, translated into English in 2020 (and recently slated for an on-screen adaptation), but is also the entry point for her short story, “Iceland,” (trendy, I know!), from the latest issue of the incredible digital magazine, The Dial. Her prose darts in and out of a very familiar vocabulary of travelog, but disorients whatever your sense may be of the world as a series of semi-permeable boundaries. For the dedicated reader, follow her into even stranger territories in the book from which this story was excerpted, out this year from Columbia University Press, entitled Table for One. — NG
“Iceland was a country of emptiness. Its area was similar to that of South Korea, but little of the land was inhabitable. Because it was so far north, the guide told me, Iceland was sometimes absent from world maps. Iceland: a land casually omitted from the earth, like the invisible words following an ellipsis at the end of a sentence. A country located on a fault line, where volcanoes exploded as if they were fireworks. And lastly, a country with an ill-fitting name, thanks to greedy Vikings who wanted to deter visitors. I imagined that if I traveled to Iceland, I too would vanish, with only my footsteps remaining behind like the periods of an ellipsis.”
Speaking of literature, Lauren Oyler’s new essay collection No Judgment has been the subject of much judgment since it came out. Becca Rothfeld had an expert pan in the Washington Post, as detailed as it is incisive, and thus hard to argue with. But also Ian Wang’s in ArtReview: “...it’s confounding how bland many of Oyler’s observations are.” There were positive reviews, too. The problem with selling books is that they have to function as fandom swag while also bearing up to the scrutiny of more or less every word. — KC
The Oscars were a few weeks ago, but at this point, does anyone care? Or remember? Well, if you still aren't sure what to make of their questionable place as an arbiter of taste or laudable culture, check out the pop-culture and news podcast Vibe Check's episode on the troubled awards show. Writer and poet Saeed Jones, along with journalists Zach Stafford and Sam Sanders, are as decorated as a group of writers/reporters as anyone in the Oscars' audience, and are experts at breaking down pop-culture issues of taste, (with an immaculate and varied sense of taste as a group). Subscribe to get news and pop-culture takes, even if you're ready to forget Oppenheimer ever took three hours of your one precious, precious life. — NG
For another podcast episode to queue up, try How Long Gone’s hilarious conversation with the chef and restaurateur Nancy Silverton. Hosts Chris Black and Jason Stewart function best in competitive or combative modes: trying to one-up the guest in an arms race of riffs or not-so-subtly making fun of them. Silverton, a source of endless taste and wisdom, beats the bros every time. Wait for the moment that she asks what the name of the podcast is, and then later admits that she has never listened to a podcast, even though she has her own. — KC
If you're not ready to forget Oppenheimer, or can't, I was a fan of Ben Cosman's piece in Cleveland Review of Books talking about the film in relation to National Book Award winner Benjamin Labatut's new, genre-bending book, The Maniac. It has been rightly lauded by many as an impressive follow-up to his When We Cease to Understand the World, however I remember the instant I heard the announcement of this sequel, I was drawn into the same connection, which Cosman unpacks with critical insight. Representing the technological sins of the 20th century, as he argues, may come down to a bit more than one’s taste in anti-heroes. — NG
“Are there any steaks left to be discovered?” You know you want to read the Financial Times on this. Meat is marketing. — KC