Here’s what’s making us happy this week.
Hello, Lit Hubbers. It’s been a while. But the spring sun has put this staffer in a joy-lifting mood once again.
What’s been making us happy recently? Earlier this month, Molly Odintz enjoyed the Austin Psych Fest, which brought a bunch of indie rock icons and shoegazers to her hometown.
And this week, Drew Broussard went analog. Our podcasts editor has been seeing horror movies, in the theater, with friends—and he is glad to report this activity is as fun in adulthood as it was during middle school. Says Drew: “There’s something so downright joyful to the communal scare, the shared laughter, the real ‘bodies in space, together’ vibes.” No one asked, but I cosign.
Recent Broussardian freaky Fridays include Exit 8 (“fine, weirdly conservative”), Hokum (“absolutely delightfully nerve-shredding, love an olde witch”), and Psycho (“yes that one!”). Fun fact: Drew caught the classic with his author friend Leah Rowan, to celebrate her new book, Marion!
Jonny Diamond is looking up with awe. “Now’s the time of year when the Canada Geese fly really low over our house on the way to finding the Hudson River, which is their route north,” our editor says.
“They make an incredible honking chorus as they move across the land, and are so near to us in the backyard that we can hear the flutter and whoosh of their wings. My late mum loved Canada Geese (and famously rescued one from a frozen lake as six-year-old me stood by in awe) so we make a point to tell the kids ‘there goes your grandma’ when the geese fly by, which frankly confuses the hell out of the almost 3 year old.”
Suitably, given the Knicks spirit in my town, Calvin Kasulke is enjoying playing the “outrageously addicting” 82-0 web game. In this trivial pursuit, one tries to create the ultimate, un-defeatable NBA team across teams and eras.
“I have succeeded twice; once with a team that would be incredible to watch, and one that would have truly odious vibes,” says Calvin. “A great mechanism through which to remember some guys.”
I, Brittany Allen, stumbled upon two art objects this week that reminded me why I love New York.
Ann Rower’s If You’re a Girl is a fizzy auto-fictional chronicle—billed as a story collection—about a downtown life lived well. On its initial release in 1990, Rower’s book drew comps to Eve Babitz. A fresh Semiotext(e) reissue updates the old material with new stories written from Rower’s octogenarian uptown perch. The result is an auto-fictional star chart that spans a huge, whole city life.
There’s a restless curiosity running through all of Rower’s work, and I love the way the good old days and the good new ones are laid side by side in this collection. If you like tales of late-breaking sexual awakening, Richard Hell and Wooster Group cameos, complex grief, and diaristic scene reports, I think you’ll like this one. I must thank the lit gods for bringing it to my attention; it only landed on my radar because a cool-looking person was reading it next to me on a recent plane trip.
The last thing I’ll leave you with is a film. (Thanks, recent Criterion flash sale!) John Berry’s Claudine (1974) stars James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll as a star-crossed couple trying to make it work—and make it to work—in Abraham Beame’s Harlem. This movie includes some of the sharpest, funniest writing about the (rigged) economic situation for working class strivers that I’ve ever seen on screen. Also, its ferocious leads have so much chemistry that I blushed while alone in my house.
That plus a Curtis Mayfield/Gladys Knight score left me strutting into the spring day. It’s a hard town to live in sometimes, but it sure is good to be here in spring.
Wishing you a weekend of analog awe, bodies in space, and friendly ghosts.
Brittany Allen
Brittany K. Allen is a writer and actor living in Brooklyn.
