Scenes from the Lowbrow
New dating rules, new to Substack, trash recs
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My father used to say, “You’re okay in my book, but I read trash,” a quote that isn’t easily searchable but I’m sure can’t be attributed to him alone. It’s exactly the type of non-compliment one might expect from my (any?) dad and more true than he might know. We don’t have the same taste in books, but I much prefer lowbrow to middle, as anyone at all intelligent must.
We’ve seen the True Crime genre become bloated beyond recognition, but some series stand out as serious attempts to set it back on track. There’s a moment in The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets when the wife gets some clarity, and we see, in her stony expression, a split second of terror followed by defense mechanism: a woman entering, in realtime, the mindset of that Lana Del Rey lyric, “If he’s a serial killer, then what’s the worst that can happen to a girl who’s already hurt?”