Hello and welcome to another edition of Substack Reads.
This week, a colorful array of writers from across the world offer the heartfelt, the absurd, and the astute to spark your imagination. From Hanif Kureishi writing about sex, drugs, and music from his hospital bed in the U.K. to Michael Estrin taking a trip down memory lane in the form of a porn convention in Las Vegas, we have a particularly fruity edition for you today. Read on!
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We hope you find something to enjoy, and, as ever, please let us know in the comments who you are reading and obsessing over this week.
Writing dispatches via dictation and the help of family from his hospital bed since last year, one of the British writing greats relays intimate stories from his life, including how being seriously ill doesn’t stop you from thinking about sex, or writing
Yesterday, in the gym, my physiotherapist placed my own claw-like hand onto my own face. It was certainly a horror, as if several semi-frozen vegetarian sausages had been draped across my face by a prankster.
The hand felt cold and inanimate. But Miss S claims I should forgo the self-pity. If I persist, I will soon be waving at London taxis and giving my enemies the finger. At the moment, my right hand is more lively than my left, which feels nearly dead.
What I would like, what I wish for, what I dream of, is the ability to pick up a fountain pen and make a mark in the page; to write my own name in purple ink.
Last week the author and academic Richard Hanania wrote a case for the American press that sparked a debate, including this reply by Professor Bryan Caplan
Hatred of the media is not simply a conservative pastime but is found among others who feel alienated from establishment centrism, including critics of American foreign policy, socialists, and tech entrepreneurs like Balaji Srinivasan and Elon Musk. In fact, it’s hard to think of groups that actually like the American press, other than the press itself, which has in the Trump era taken to advertising its own indispensability for maintaining a democratic society (“Democracy Dies in Darkness”). At most, those on the center left will choose to focus on the flaws of media critics, without offering much in the way of a defense of journalistic institutions themselves.
In this essay, I’m going to argue that everyone is wrong, and the media is actually good and honest. You should be glad it exists, admire those who work in the industry, and hope for its continued influence and success. Scott Alexander recently said that the media very rarely tells explicit lies, a view he got a lot of pushback for. My position is more extreme than his. It’s that while the American media has serious flaws, it is one of the most honest, decent, and fair institutions designed for producing and spreading truth in human history.
As a trade reporter, I thought I was chronicling porn’s death rattle. Sure, porn was more popular than ever, but for webmasters and old-school pornographers alike, unlimited free porn—as opposed to promo content like picture galleries and 30-second clips—spelled disaster for the industry. Right before my eyes, the profit was being sucked out of the industry, as legions of budget-conscious wankers discovered that the tubes were loaded with full-length, high-quality videos that could be streamed with the click of a button.
To me, it was obvious that free porn was a sign of the end. How can you have an industry when the product is free? I wondered. But to [porn publisher] Oz, free porn was creative destruction—a cleansing fire that would purge the industry of its dinosaurs and usher in new innovators.
Who would those innovators be? According to Oz, anyone and everyone would join the porn industry.
The response to Jacinda Ardern’s resignation as New Zealand’s prime minister is to ask if women can ever “have it all.” But we should refuse to accept the premise of the question
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern with her family, via HONEY STAY SUPER
Women are punished for having families. They’re seen as worn-out, stretched-out, no longer fun, no longer sexual, dry as a bone, and unable to think about anything else other than their children. How on earth will these ditzy broads do their lady jobs?!
To take that a step further, single dads are fawned over, their self-sacrifice is seen as sexy. They’ve proven they’ve “gone against type”—their own self-interest—to prioritize the care of vulnerable creatures. Single moms? Wow, way to fuck up your kids. Nice going.
In her Substack exploring cover art across decades, photographer and designer Rachel Cabitt unveils how frames and borders first appeared on the 12-inch record canvas
The concept of the frame dates back to ancient Egyptian and Greek art. They first existed as border-like shapes on pottery and partitions before the three-dimensional frames that we all know today came into popularity in the 12th and 13th centuries. Just like how frames have lived within artwork of ancient relics, album covers throughout the years have experimented with borders in their composition.
Terracotta Panathenaic prize amphora ca. 530 BCE. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 1971, British artist Nick Drake released his second album, Bryter Layter. The LP may be one of the most lauded records in indie music, and the cover has had an equally profound influence on the aesthetic of many releases today. Simple at its core, the art centers around a photo of Drake candidly sitting in a darkly lit studio. The photo is framed by an oval shape with a thin orange stroke and a purple background.
Nick Drake, Bryter Layter, released 1971 on Island Records. Photography and design by Nigel Waymouth.
Four years prior in 1967, Bob Dylan released John Wesley Harding with a tombstone-shaped photo gracing its cover, alongside Dolly Parton’s Jolene, which sports a delicate ornamental frame. The negative space surrounding the frame guides the listener’s eyes to the central focal point.
Bob Dylan, John Wesley Harding, released 1967 on Columbia Records. Photography by John Berg.
Dolly Parton, Jolene, released 1967 on RCA Victor. Art direction by Herb Burnette, photography by Hope Powell.
Advice columnist Heather Havrilesky knows a thing or two about shame. She reflects on one of her most-read posts, about how it really feels to just be yourself
“Black Hills with Cedar” (1941) by Georgia O’Keeffe, via Ask Polly
I used to think I was the one who had it all figured out. Adventurous life in the city! Traveling the world! Making memories! Now I feel incredibly hollow. And foolish. How can I make a future for myself that I can get excited about out of these wasted years? What reserves or identity can I draw from when I feel like I’ve accrued nothing up to this point with my life choices?
Haunted
Dear Haunted,
Art isn’t something you need an outside license or a paycheck to pursue. It’s a way of life. It’s a way of adding up what you feel and where you’ve been and what you fear and what you can imagine. It’s a way of seeing your life through a lens that makes everything—good and bad, confusing and clarifying, uplifting and depressing—valuable.
Shame is the opposite of art. When you live inside of your shame, everything you see is inadequate and embarrassing. A lifetime of traveling and having adventures and not being tethered to long-term commitments looks empty and pathetic and foolish through the lens of shame. You haven’t found a partner. Your face is aging. Your body will only grow weaker. Your mind is less elastic. Your time is running out. Shame turns every emotion into the manifestation of some personality flaw, every casual choice into a giant mistake, every small blunder into a moral failure. Shame means that you’re damned and you’ve accomplished nothing and it’s all downhill from here.
You need to discard some of this shame you’re carrying around all the time. But even if you can’t cast off your shame that quickly, through the lens of art, shame becomes valuable. When you’re curious about your shame instead of afraid of it, you can see the true texture of the day and the richness of the moment, with all of its flaws.
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 curated and edited from Substack’s U.K. outpost by Hannah Ray.
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I think we can do without the porn convention articles and racy photos. There is so much better original contact on Substack and you choose this one to highlight?
Porn articles? Really? I honestly didn't sign up to substsck to get headlines articles about Porn in my inbox, thanks all the same. How do I opt out of getting these updates? I know you want to grab attention (and you succeeded) but am just not interested.
I think we can do without the porn convention articles and racy photos. There is so much better original contact on Substack and you choose this one to highlight?
Porn articles? Really? I honestly didn't sign up to substsck to get headlines articles about Porn in my inbox, thanks all the same. How do I opt out of getting these updates? I know you want to grab attention (and you succeeded) but am just not interested.