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'There is love wherever there is a shared goal to create it'

Also: 'the national vibe,' the ‘hawk tuah’ aesthetic, 'good boy' shirts, and more in the weekend roundup.

Tracy Clark-Flory

Jul 7

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Preview

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Everything is totally surreal. It’s that we’re-living-in-a-moment-in-history feeling.

I’m coping by reading. Not just the obsessive minute-by-minute play-by-play in the news, which I’ll spare you here, but books. Beautiful, beautiful books.

Plenty of recommendations on that front below.

To the links…

“It’s funny how much the national vibe right now is exactly like working at a company where you know they’re about to lay everyone off,” says Anna Merlan.

Rebecca Traister and Brittney Cooper on one of “the weirdest and most perilous weeks in American political history.”

Trying to swear off the genre, but I want to watch this Japanese reality-TV show.

Lord help me, do I have to get to the bottom of “hawk tuah” as a move, an aesthetic? Off the top of my head, I wanna say it emerged in early 2000s-era porn. I have thoughts(!) on what this viral moment says about straight men’s fantasies about femininity and desire. LMK if you think I should tackle it this week.

Addie Citchens on love:

I am in love, and this love is defined not by its duration but by its intent. There is love wherever there is a shared goal to create it. Other things I learn: love should be planned and spontaneous. It is not possession. It is always temporary. I’ve also come to know that love is all around me. It’s in the person whose arm I grip on a turbulent flight. Or in the stranger who asks to borrow a pen before we end up sharing life stories. Or in anyone who sees me just at the moment when I need to be seen. All that is love, too.

Finally made it to Womb House Books in Oakland, where the proprietress makes excellent book recommendations. My first read from my haul: Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy, an itchy and unsettling novel about platonic obsession and sadism at a girls’ boarding school in postwar Switzerland. Can’t stop thinking about it...