Reading, Watching, Writing

A book you've never heard of, a couple panels

On Thursday, I participated in a panel discussion of the white paper I worked on with Highsnobiety called Luxury Redefined. It was on the roof, in Nine Orchard’s Greenhouse, and the AC wasn’t working, but I was told we (Head of Strategy Harry Bainbridge and CEO/Founder David Fischer) seemed unbothered or at least not beading with sweat. I actually had a lot of fun. I hope there’s no video.

A question in the audience about understanding Generation Z prompted me to say that if I don’t get what a Zoomer is saying, they might be just as confused themselves, looking to us/each other for cohesion. Example: Love Island USA contestants use a strange patois of slangs, but I doubt they truly understand it all. In fact, several got kicked off the show precisely for using words incorrectly (that got a laugh).

The snacks were very Girl Dinner (love): prosciutto and potato chips, a goblet of green olives, a stick of butter stuck all over with sage leaves, cherries that got covered in candle wax, loose crudités in stacks on the tablecloth.

I had a glass of wine and then was on my way to Artists Space for a panel about, vaguely, whether it’s always been difficult to be an artist in New York or whether now it’s harder than ever. I’d say most artists, whatever their age, think that in some ways they have it the worst (what else is new?).

I’ve been reading some new fiction, and if I might generalize about the debut novels and literary journal short stories getting published now, they are moody yet bright, ennui as meme, magical realism if the internet is to be considered both magic and real, wiki-like in the sense that the trendiest of today’s terms slink around ye olde language as indication of layered perspective.

They are indebted, stylistically, to Joy Williams, Mary Robison, Semiotext(e)’s Native Agents Series, and the Alt Lit movement, but reading them is reminding me of a book I accidentally picked up my freshman year of college and couldn’t put down. To this day, I’ve never met another person who has read or heard of it.