Study Hall Culture Blast

By Angelica Frey & contributors 

This is an experiment! Short, original cultural coverage as a guide for what you should listen to, watch, or read. 

SUMMER NOVELS: The Return of the Literary Asshole

Do you ever get so involved with a set of characters that you actually miss them after finishing the book? This happened to me with The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P, Adelle Waldman’s 2013 novel set in a Brooklyn (wannabe) literary milieu. Five years after the publication of this ultimate literary-scene comedy of manners, the summer of 2018 has some welcome additions to the genre that we love to hate. Pick the one that suits you best.

Tara Isabella Burton’s Social Creature features Louise, a 29-year-old sociopathic underachiever, who writes copy for a knockoff fashion site called GlaZam and reads clickbait on a women’s site called Misandry! But she dreams of (and slowly contributes to) fictional publications like The New Misandrist, and literary site The Fiddler, a world inhabited by trust-fund kids with names like BEOWULF MARMONT. By contrast, co-protagonist Lavinia, a moneyed version of Sally Bowles who likes to quote opera lines, is toiling away at a purple-prose novel about a character named Larissa who wants to live her life as a work of art. The motto the two girls swear by? “More Poetry!!” — which they actually get tattooed on their forearms.

In his Charlottesville, VA.-set debut novel Early Work, Andrew Martin introduces us to a group of archetypal “writers who don’t write” who indulge in various kinds of intellectual masturbatory activities without producing much on their own accord. Peter, the great male lead, has been at work on a novel since forever and new-girl-in-town Leslie just can’t bring herself to write a script. Peter’s girlfriend, Julia, who set her literary ambitions aside to become a pediatrician, manages to publish more than the other two combined. Reading about Peter and Leslie’s inevitable affair is like watching the Girls episode “One Man’s Trash” on repeat. At least you can avoid scoffing “Ugh, New York literati!” while reading.

Ten years after New York (Brooklyn) literary fixture Keith Gessen’s alter ego “Keith” tried to deal with his literary ambitions in All the Sad, Young Literary Men, his new Russian-American alter ego Andrei Kaplan in his new novel A Terrible Country is a failed academic who, after falling behind in his field and getting dumped by his girlfriend, makes a temporary move back to his homeland of Russia to take care of his ailing grandma. The novel spotlights the Putin era, but Gessen indulges in crafting another great literary asshole: Andrei adopts the work of a Moscow socialist named Sergei as a subject. “I placed his work in the context of quixotic Russian attempts to reorganize the world,” Andrei writes. Sergei might have an actual intellectual project, but Andrei still has an American passport.

Why so many assholes, and why this summer? Maybe it’s crowd-pleasing: Anyone can hate on the literary asshole. They provide thinkpiece fodder while feeding writerly narcissism. All novelists are TV writers now, anyway. I look forward to potential screen adaptations of these works: Social Creature’s aesthetic will be Baz Luhrmann crossed with Gossip Girl, Early Work will make a halfway decent Noah Baumbach film, and A Terrible Country a glossy miniseries on any of the cable and streaming services unafraid of dealing with Russia. What’s the opposite of The Americans?

WATCH: Sacha Baron Cohen Takes the Art World

Cohen’s new Who Is America (available on Showtime, Hulu, and Amazon Prime) is a mockumentary on post-2016 America ridiculing liberals and conservatives in equal measure. However, one of his new characters, an ex-convict and an aspiring artist, managed to create a great piece of cultural commentary. While in character, Cohen pranked art expert Christy Cones, whom he enthusiastically showed his painterly efforts made with feces and semen. Cones calls it genius, even though she now knows it was fake. “I still think a lot of the ideas are real. Art is what we say it is. Is it art for rain to fall on the sidewalk in a certain way?” she told The Washington Post. The segment is a mirror image of Ruben Östlund’s art-satire film The Square. Both works manage to demonstrate that there is a lot of (bull)shit in the art world.

LISTEN: The biggest pop star of 2018? Cher.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again opens July 20, and all eyes are on Cher, who, in her role as Meryl Streep’s Mom (huh?) already mesmerized listeners worldwide with her rendition of “Fernando.” On top of that, she just announced that she indeed recorded a WHOLE ALBUM of Abba covers. Artistically speaking, it’s a compelling combination: the schlager melodies of most of the ABBA tunes will take on a new dimension with Cher’s distinctive alto vocals. And more Cher: Her jukebox musical The Cher Show just ended its pre-Broadway previews in Chicago, and will officially open on Broadway this coming fall. When, in the 2010 movie Burlesque she sang the heartfelt ballad “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me” she really meant it!!! Watch out for lots of profiles.

LISTEN: Childish Gambino’s “Summer Pack”

Donald Glover released a bite-size project last week under his musical pseudonym Childish Gambino. The two-song Summer Pack pairs a hazy single off his rumored-to-be-final forthcoming album with a similarly mannered b-side. It’s packaged for a bevy of monetized streaming services as a minimalist EP, Snapchat filter, and multi-city pop-up event all in one: the musical equivalent of a viral blog post. Summer Pack is a departure from the guns-blazing commentary of March’s “This Is America” video. The songs want to be understood chiefly as sweltering seasonal jams. They’re destined for poolside streams on portable speakers.

The percussion, at least, nails this aim: undeniable steel drums on “Summertime Magic” and strutting maracas on “Feels Like Summer.” But the hooks stretch over too many beats and the lyrics feel a little heatstruck themselves: “Air that kill the bees that we depend upon. Birds were made for singing. Waking up to no sound.” In Glover’s TV series Atlanta, there’s a couch that the protagonists laze around on in an overgrown field, smoking weed and shooting the shit. Summer Pack sounds like it was made on that couch, tossed off as a passing afternoon thought. But when it’s this muggy out and the steel drums hit, you won’t even mind. — Jack Denton

WATCH: The Bold Type’s Media Doppelgangers

I used to loathe The Bold Type (available on Hulu) when it premiered last year: I thought that the newsroom of Scarlet magazine was a playpen where the EIC was more of a Mother-Hen figure than a good boss and the three protagonists lacked any depth. Now that season two is almost over, I realized that The Bold Type is actually a decent media digest of the 2010s: the dubious benefits of yoni eggs, Miki Agrawal-like personalities, and the commodification of body positivity are only a few examples of content Scarlet has to create. The writer character, Jane, is torn between writing politically engaged pieces and the requisite viral articles on “butt facials,” and then choosing between a safe job at a legacy publication and a position at an “edgy” start-up called Incite (lol?). Jane is also a corny cosplay of Lauren Duca, if that’s something you’re into.

WEEKEND READS: Immersive Cultural Criticism Edition

How Finland Rebranded Itself as a Literary Country, The Paris Review. Let’s see how a bragging-averse nation fostered its literary talents to international recognition. Norway’s clearly struggling.

The Generation That Grew Up on Stephen King Is Taking Him Back, The Outline. Great deep dive. I still await the announcement of a remake of Misery starring Lena Dunham.

This Is Your Brain on Cirque du Soleil, Fast Company. Follow writer Daniel Terdiman as he undergoes a neurological experiment (complete with an EEG headgear) during a performance of Cirque du Soleil’s “O,” which is meant to quantify “the emotion of awe.”

Ottessa Moshfegh Plays to Win, The Cut. This is what happens when a writer with an outsized literary persona (does Kaitlin Phillips tweet in character?) profiles one of the great contemporary literary figures. The writer gets as much screen time as her subject: “[Moshfegh] told me she doesn’t give a shit about what she wears now, which made me feel gauche for wearing a white blazer in the desert, though it was linen. But I should have been prepared.”

Now More Than Ever, New Yorker. Zadie Smith’s latest short story takes aim at the meme of “cancellation”: when a cultural figure does or says something seemingly beyond the pale. Of course Smith advocates a deeper ambiguity of good and bad, an ethics that shows through the playfulness of her language itself. — Kyle Chayka

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