How to peel a whale
today we're fetishizing The Process
I swear, Brighton Beach does not get enough love in the power ranking of New York beaches. It’s right off the B/Q train, one. Two, when you get snacky, you can leave your towel and umbrella alone on the (likely empty) beach, walk over to Tatiana, and eat potato dumplings on the boardwalk before toddling back to your spot on the sand. Hit a Russian grocer or caviar purveyor on the way home…can the Rockaways do that for you on a Monday?
Stuff2Discuss: My Q&A with Susan Orlean for Puja Patel’s new fiefdom, the gnarliest part of Moby Dick thus far, + an art show off Wooster with the most glorious quality of light you must experience in person…
There’s a new arts magazine on the scene focused on creative work and the creative process — which sure sounds like it has the potential to be unbearably fluffy, until you factor in former Pitchfork editor-in-chief Puja Patel at the wheel. The publication is called Totei, it’s free to read, and there are no advertisements (the founder is the investor and philanthropist Gaurav Kapadia, who “wanted to launch a high-quality publication that focused on artistic creation, but was also easily accessible to readers.” ← Which, wow! You just really never read that combination of words together anymore, eh?).
For the magazine’s launch, I had the pleasure of interviewing Susan Orlean (hence the random deep cut reference a few weeks ago lol) last fall, and the resulting Q&A — on her latest memoir and, amongst other things, interviewing technique, which was quite meta — is also live now. This was such a great excuse to talk shop with one of the journalistic masters; I loved the way Susan held forth on how to develop a “posture of quiet confidence” when one goes into the field as an outsider, or how she’s noticed that subjects open up way more when you’re taking notes vs. recording them on tape (to say nothing of shoving a camera in their face).
Anyway, between this convo and Totei’s launch overall, I’m feeling quite optimistic about the potential of the profile/deep interview form to get into really niche process-y how-they-do-it territory, which I suspect will only gain currency as the rest of the culture shifts toward quick-hit Automationville.
