Bad motivations with good outcomes, and the wedding photos of Ted Hughes and Sylvia PlathNick Hornby selects his top Substack readsThis week’s Substack Reads is guest edited by bestselling author and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Nick Hornby, who writes A Fan's Notes, by Nick Hornby on Substack and is best known for his novels About a Boy and High Fidelity and his memoir Fever Pitch. On Substack he writes across genres, including sports, culture, and the craft of writing novels and screenplays. Some of his most popular posts to date include “FAQs about scriptwriting,” “My patron,” and “Writing and mental health.” If you enjoy his selections today, be sure to subscribe to his Substack. I have been here for about three months, and almost immediately I discovered writing that I couldn’t believe I’d been going without. I am someone who reads a lot and thinks a lot about the arts, and Substack provides me with both illumination and introduction—to new music, new books, new writers, old movies. The whole of creative life is here, covered in as much depth as you can stand. It’s been a joy. ART“This is the best piece I read this week. Brandon Taylor responds to the furore surrounding Alice Munro, who died recently: Munro’s husband abused her daughter, and Munro chose to stand by him. Taylor writes with a terrible honesty about his own experience of being abused, while at the same time expressing great clarity of thought about the whole monsters-in-art problem.” What I’m doing about Alice Munro— Brandon Taylor in sweater weather
COMMENT“Ian Leslie is one of those thinkers, like Malcolm Gladwell, who can spin something smart and important out of just about anything: a recent post charted the changing nature of English patriotism through TV ads. He has written several about politics recently, mostly because there has been a lot of it about, but whatever he turns his attention to, he is always insightful, and usually has the results of, say, a Finnish research project to underpin his argument. This piece, which discusses egotistical ambition, selfishness, pretentiousness, anger, and envy, as exemplified by Joe Biden, Thierry Henry, David Bowie, and others, is typically eclectic and stimulating.”Five bad motivations with good outcomes
LITERATURE & HISTORY“Ann Kennedy Smith writes about all things Cambridge, England, with a particular focus on women and literature. I’ll be honest: I didn’t think it was going to be for me when I first came across it. No rock ’n’ roll in that title. But the stories she unearths are gripping, culturally significant, surprising. One of the joys of Substack is that it allows clever people with very specific interests to explore them at length. Her two-part piece about the 1897 protests in Cambridge—men taking to the streets in what looks like their thousands in an attempt to prevent women from taking a degree—is dumbfounding. Here is an extract from her piece about the wedding photographs of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, which gives her a way into a particularly sharp piece of literary biography. Oh, and I was introduced (via footnotes) to the studio photographers Ramsey and Muspratt. The photos are not especially imaginative, but the people in them, looking so young … Vanessa Bell, Rosamond Lehmann, the Cambridge spies Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess, preserved in the time before their fame or their infamy.”The wedding photos—Ann Kennedy Smith in Cambridge Ladies' Dining Society
CULTURE“Ted Gioia is why I am here. I can’t remember now how I discovered he had a Substack page, but I had read one of his books on jazz, so I suppose I must have gone looking for what else I could find. And what I found was, in my opinion, extraordinary; certainly I got a lot more than I bargained for. Gioia has become one of the shrewdest and most informed commentators of the culture—he regularly posts prognostications about what will happen to movies/music/TV, and it’s always underpinned by a thorough examination of things like stock prices and engagement numbers. (The message: Stop scrolling or we will soon have nothing to watch or listen to.) It is because of Gioia that I am now aware of some of Spotify’s more nefarious practices. Did you know that if you want a jazz playlist and you’re not really bothered about what’s on it, you might end up listening to AI creations that are royalty-free? (The ‘artists’ invariably have one or two songs, and they appear on multiple playlists.) But he also wants us to push ourselves harder and become smarter. To this end, he has launched a humanities course—if we read 250 pages a week, he reckons, we’ll have covered the basics. I am going to have a go, but I fear I may be an early stumbler.”A 12-month immersive course in humanities—Ted Gioia in The Honest Broker
SPIRITUALITY“I found Chloe Hope’s Substack in my first week, and she embodies so much of the spirit of what goes on here. Chloe works in a bird sanctuary and is also an end-of-life doula. I didn’t know there was such a thing as an end-of-life doula, and now I want one. Maybe not immediately, obviously, but Chloe’s writing is so still and calm and wise that I might give her a 10- or 15-year run at me. Once a week for the next decade, then we’ll take it from there. In my couple of months of Substacking, the death part has been oblique, but it’s there, just off the edge of the screen, in just about every line.”Love
DATA“I love stats. I love pop culture. And Daniel Parris, a data analyst, combines both in a very winning way. Sometimes just the task he has set himself makes you laugh: ‘Why do people hate Nickelback so much?’ ‘Which movies popularized or tarnished baby names?’ (There was an uptick in babies named Lolita after the movie, believe it or not, although nothing like the Ariel boom after The Little Mermaid.) And Damien took a hit after The Omen. Parris goes on to discuss other real-world factors: for some reason, Isis and Alexa aren’t as popular as they once were. This piece is a long, ambitious analysis of changes in popular music since the 1950s.”How has music changed since the 1950s? A statistical analysis—Daniel Parris in Stat Significant
HOLLYWOOD“Holly Solem, model, actress, musician, writer, tells first-person stories about the darker side of Hollywood, the stories that we normally hear only after something bad has happened. Sometimes we read them in the newspapers, and sometimes we come across them in memoirs that tell all about a long-vanished time. But Holly Solem’s experiences are contemporary, and, for this English man, they really feel like news from elsewhere. Some of them, like this one, make you fear for her. But they can also be funny, and real, and she doesn’t spare herself: ‘That is the point of so many of my stories. I’m embarrassing as fuck, so I better make something of it.’ ”The chosen one— Holly Solem in HollyWould
ART & WELLNESS“Some of you might know Allison Moorer’s music—she is one of my favorite folk/country artists. Like me, she has a son with autism. She’s a very good writer. Her two memoirs, Blood and I Dream He Talks to Me, are both piercing. Her Substack column is the most spiritual that I subscribe to, I suppose. (She has taught me that the word ‘autotelic’ means ‘having an end or purpose in itself’ when applied to creative work.) Her Sunday list is joyful and calming, a breathing exercise for the soul. I loved this.”Intention for the week to come—Allison Moorer in Allison Moorer: The Autotelic
Recently launchedComing soonCongratulations to the following writers celebrating publication. Nate Silver’s new book is out very soon, and available to preorder:
Leigh Stein sold her novel If You’re Seeing This, It’s Meant for You, to Ballantine, announcing it to subscribers: Notes from our guest editor
Noteworthy
Inspired by the writers featured in Substack Reads? Writing on your own Substack is just a few clicks away: Substack Reads is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, and audio from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and this week’s edition was guest edited by Nick Hornby, who writes A Fan's Notes, by Nick Hornby on Substack. Substack Reads is curated and edited from Substack’s U.K. outpost by Hannah Ray. Got a Substack post to recommend? Tell us about it in the comments. |
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Bad motivations with good outcomes, and the wedding photos of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath
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