Summer Reading, June Edition
Greetings from Montauk! We’ve rented a house out here for the month of June—the same house, in fact, that we stayed in last October, an extremely quirky old Victorian with a front porch, a creaky screen door, and perpetual birdsong. It’s been interesting, returning to the same place during this different season, and at this very different point in the pandemic. It was actually our month out in Montauk last fall that initially sparked my desire to start this blog (a story I will tell at greater length someday!). The sentimental attachment I have to this place is two-fold. I love coming back here for Montauk itself—the beaches, the running routes, the coffee shops and lunch spots and dive bars—but also because it’s a chance to visit that self-from-the-past, Anna circa October 2020, who was perhaps encountering new levels of isolation thanks to the f’ing pandemic, but also perhaps learning that the antidote to isolation is always closer than we think. This blog has been a source of connection in ways I didn’t quite expect, and I am grateful to this end-of-the-world beach town for bringing me to that realization.
Anyway. Why did I sit down and start writing this? Oh yes: summer reading! With this most glorious season upon us (the sky has been staying light until well past 9 p.m., and my ice cream intake has increased by a million percent), I’ve noticed that I’ve been writing these updates less frequently. And this is fine, except that I like writing these updates, and I like this way of keeping in touch with you, so maybe what I need to do is just … give myself a break. Keep these updates a little lighter and looser and freer. (Channeling the spirit of Dumb Shit Summer here, as in everything.) My plan for the summer is to say hello periodically, and tell you what I’ve been reading, and maybe share some related thoughts, but I won’t be getting too long-winded—because after the year you’ve just had, you deserve, we all deserve, to ignore technology and go outside and bask in bask in these long, splendid, sunny days.
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At the top of my reading stack right now is a book called Songs in Ursa Major, written by my dear friend Emma Brodie. This fizzy, delicious, big-hearted debut novel comes out on Tuesday (tomorrow!), although I was lucky enough to get an early copy from the author herself. Emma and I have been friends for almost a decade now, which is kind of hard to believe. We met during our early years in publishing when we were both grinding it out as editorial assistants, a friendship that originated at a book club and then deepened over lunches in the cafeteria and happy hours in Midtown bars. We got to know each other better and better, eventually growing close enough to confide that most secret of secrets: in addition to our day jobs, we wanted to write. Or rather, we were writing, and we didn’t know what would come of it, but this was a thing we were doing. This was a dream we harbored.
And here she is, with her first novel about to be published by Knopf, with gorgeous blurbs from Paula McClain and Kevin Kwan and many more! I’m reading Songs in Ursa Major right now (and loving it), and I find it so cool, and so special, to recognize the spirit of my friend within these pages. Emma is one of those artists who doesn’t just possess creativity, but who also reveres creativity, who deliberately thinks about and reflects upon its power. This shows up, as far as I can tell, everywhere in her life: in her work as an editor, and in her newsletter, and especially in this, her debut novel.
Songs in Ursa Major is loosely inspired by the romance between Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, which, I’ll be honest, even though I consider myself a fan of both Joni and James, even though I have listened to Blue too many times to count, before Emma told me about this, I had no idea they had ever dated. James Taylor and Carly Simon, sure. But James Taylor and Joni Mitchell?!?! Fascinating. The heroine of Songs is a woman named Jane Quinn, a young singer/songwriter ascending in the 1970s rock scene. She’s a rising star with a fierce sense of self who embarks on a love affair with a more established singer. Jane, like pretty much every strong-headed woman who has ever tried to carve her own way as an artist, is forced to confront difficult questions around ambition versus integrity, around the loyalties of love versus the pull of change. This is a novel that asks the questions: What does it mean to live a creative life? What does that life look like?
If you loved A Star is Born and Almost Famous, if you loved Daisy Jones and the Six, if like me you have memorized essentially every word of Blue (this week is, cosmically enough, the album’s 50th anniversary), then you must read Songs in Ursa Major. Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll: it’s just the right thing for summertime. There is something mythical about these behind-the-music stories: they are familiar, and yet that familiarity doesn’t make them any less powerful. In fact, while reading Songs, I was reminded of this piece about A Star is Born, from when the movie came out a few years back. The piece has stuck with me because of this particular observation:
A Star Is Born, meanwhile, is almost explicitly a work of mythology: It retells a fictional narrative arc that’s been passed down over generations. But like so many great myths of ancient times, the story is brutal—so as to make a point about the real world.
There are some stories that get told, and retold, and retold, and it would be a mistake to think that these stories are less powerful as a result. The act of retelling is the starkest possible evidence that these stories contain a certain essential power, a certain universal depth, which means we can’t help but retell them, over and over again.
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What else am I reading? I’ve recently finished the fourth book in the Cazalet chronicles. There are five books in total, which means I have one book left, which is frankly devastating. This is the most delicious family saga that I’ve read in a very long time. I LOVE these books. They follow the upper-middle-class Cazalet family through the years surrounding World War II, through marriages and babies and deaths and divorces and broken hearts of all kinds. There are many trials and tribulations, but Elizabeth Jane Howard writes with such an English understated-ness, and I think this is the key to making the people feel so real. The matter-of-fact-ness only seems to amplify the story’s emotional impact. I’m envious of her narrative assurance!
I find myself falling into the world of these books in the same way I did those English novels I read as a girl, books like I Capture the Castle and Swallows and Amazons. I don’t know why I have such a fixation on these English stories! Maybe it’s my Canadian upbringing. Anyway, if you’re looking for a book series to keep you busy for a while (it does require some upfront investment; it wasn’t until about 50-100 pages into the first book that I felt totally hooked), consider the Cazalets. And if you don’t trust me, just listen to Hilary Mantel.
For something considerably shorter, I loved (LOVED) Anne Helen Petersen’s recent piece about Peloton. She totally nails it, and I can’t wait for the rest of this mini-series. I have an infinite appetite for content about Peloton. Probably because I formed some kind of weird psychological attachment/transference to Matt Wilpers and Denis Morton during the early days of the pandemic.
Speaking of transference, the last thing I’ll mention is a little random, from way back in the day, in honor of Janet Malcolm, who just passed away. Eerily enough, just a few days before Malcolm died, I was telling a girlfriend about my love for her book Psychoanalysis, which I read several years ago, and was completely fascinated by. Like, beyond fascinated. Malcolm’s death may prompt me to finally revisit that book, but sections of it also exist in the New Yorker, and so maybe this is just the thing to keep me busy while I ignore the work I really should be doing! And what are articles on the Internet for, if that not?
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Happy solstice, friends. Summer is officially here. No matter where this finds you, I hope you are finding a way to make this season feel extra summer-y. As Joni would put it, I hope your fingernails are filthy, and you have beach tar on your feet.