probably kind of twisted how cozy it feels to read WWII fiction right
Lázár Peaky Blinders Sylvia Plath T magazine Jody Quon Adam Faze Podcasting is saved
I have more or less resigned myself to the daily trials of an ever-tense jaw + neck, probably until I muster up the will to Botox all that into submission. But then last weekend I was dawdling at the Red Hook IKEA last weekend and picked up this ergonomic pillow. It actually….. helps?? Not an affiliate link, just me falling in line for Big Pillow’s agenda…
The cachet of illustration and a general handfeely aesthetic over ever-glossier photography (already catching in fashion) has seeped into the realm of magazine covers. The painted cover star portrait is starting to feel inevitable — Vanity Fair hired Issy Wood to do Charli xcx last October (and famously pioneered the form with the Amy Sherald x Breonna Taylor cover in 2020); Office magazine’s Zara Larsson cover, launched two weeks ago, was painted by Jess Valice. I’m also liking the more abstracted ones, like Byline featuring a Tallulah Dirnfeld painting of wonderfully silky baby blue shorts for their spring/summer issue, and the pleasingly marshalled tones of this colored pencil work by Zack Rosebrugh for the latest New York Review of Books (though NYRB’s illustrated covers have been fabulous for years now.)
One wonders whether Jody Quon, the formidable New York magazine creative director who has officially nabbed the T magazine editorship, might dabble in this vibe for her first issue (which maaaybe could be the late August women’s fashion issue if the team hustles??), though as Lauren Sherman pointed out in Puck, Quon’s background is deeply rooted in photography. We’re probably nowhere near ready for what she has planned. Elsewhere on the streets, it’s interesting to see how the professionally visually-minded work to differentiate themselves from the scrum — everyone’s shortform video guy Adam Faze, for example, recently hired a sketch artist to capture the essence of his 29th bday, because of course iykyk the ironic Polaroids are sooooo overdone.
Meanwhile, in the audio world, my friend Harry Krinsky is experimenting with a whole new model for creating, releasing, and profiting off of podcasts. Billed as “a lit magazine for chat podcasts (kinda)”, Tranche 001 is a mixtape of five one-off podcast episodes from various contributors, on subjects as wide-ranging as Kith, Pete Hegseth, and aging. The bundle is $5, with the idea (since the podcast is released on Metalabel) that participants share in the profits. I liked the one on the history of the word “Based” and the overall idea that not every talk show podcast needs to put out a weekly episode sponsored by Hims antidepressants forever and ever.
I finished Nelio Biedermann’s novel Lázár last night (note: I am trying out affiliate linking on books…observe as I push the limit on this), and it was kind of a funny companion read for the Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man movie, which I also finally watched last week (not very diehard Peaky Blinders fan of me, considering that it’s been out since March). There is always something about WWII-era Europe as a fictional setting that feels so…cozy? in the way a well-worn storybook is, with the villains so knowable in their monstrosity, the codes of honor so legible, the lads being ah just lads ye know.
The strongest endorsement I can give about Lázár, which I mentioned earlier that I was reading because I jealously wanted to see how good a 22-year-old’s sensation of a debut could possibly be, is that it is not annoying. Which is feat! They almost got me in the beginning by rhapsodizing over how pale the newborn son was, like George R. R. Martin et. al, but then the first half otherwise scoots along just fine with its vignettes of the first and second generations of the aristocratic Hungarian Lázár family at the center of the novel.
Where things pick up, of course, is the arrival of WWII and the third generation — predictably, the real protagonist in any multi-generational epic (the first is always the table-setter; the second/sandwiched generations that follow are to me the most interesting ones because they usually have the big fall from grace — thinking of Middlesex, Pachinko, The Kite Runner…wow look at her all set up on ShopMy…). The semi-spoiler alert (stop reading here if you actually plan to pick up the book) — but also the source of the real dramatic tension throughout the book — is that the Lázárs remain largely insulated from the war and their country’s ensuing upheaval. Sure, their manor gets expropriated eventually, and they’re sent to live in the countryside and have to work, but the definitive traumas in their lives are overwhelmingly and ironically quotidian (which is not to say trivial or meaningless, an important distinction Biedermann makes.)
Meanwhile, it’s their neighbors and crushes and servants who bear the brunt of the war’s specific violence and dehumanization. In one pivotal scene, a housemaid is forced to endure a soldier gang rape on behalf of the wealthier women of the family; she is bestowed a family heirloom afterward for her efforts. In another, the third-generation son (and make no mistake, this is mostly a book about the men in the family) returns to post-war Budapest in order to search for his high school sweetheart, who he never realizes was Jewish. You can probably guess how that ends; afterward, he falls for a tall, beautiful blonde and lucks his way into freedom.
Again, it’s not a totally annoying story, even if it borders on WWII fanfiction at points, but I appreciated the sort of anti-moral in that the Lázárs are depicted as neither heroes nor villains. They more so come off as cowardly as they are lucky, so preoccupied with their own problems that they barely even talk to each other in the book. There’s not much to “take away” other than a grudging familiarity with the type — ah yes, some families are like that! And always have been.
In comparison, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is a much more conventional tale of inheritance, trauma, and the passing of the torch between father and son. It’s the capstone movie to the six-season run of the TV show on Netflix (which last aired four years ago), and you know what, as far as fan service goes, it was satisfying! I stand behind my belief that Tommy Shelby is Cillian Murphy’s best role, and I think the film did the best it could without the rest of the beloved principal cast, or the temerity to revive Tom Hardy’s Alfie Solomons from the dead a second time. (Thankfully, no one asked Anya Taylor Joy back to do whatever she thought she did in Season 5 & 6. And Barry Keoghan was like, fine.)
The stakes feel satisfyingly high for the end of Tommy Shelby’s story — it’s WWII, and the threat of total disorder to Britain is at stake — and director/writer Steven Knight chooses well in revisiting Tommy’s origin story as traumatized WWI “clay kicker” who must of course go back underground in order to defeat da Nazis. Fine and good by me! Soundtrack was fresh; plenty of lingering shots on Cillian’s baby blues were had; interesting ideas about the Sisyphean nature of redemption were had. You can end it for real this time; thank you God for not letting Barry actually carry on in the spin-off, amen.
Lighter fare: Casey Lewis’s recap of the discourse on Vogue Summer School is pretty amazing; one imagines a Gen Z Sylvia Plath trying to make sense of it all. (In this house, we agree that the first half of The Bell Jar, when she’s at the magazine internship, is the best half.) (Okay now Shopmying that link is just egregious.)
And finally, apropos of everything, yesterday Today in Tabs raised the excellent point of: Think of all the crackpot longform we don’t have to read, thanks to the diligence of our brave mainstream magazine editors. To our brave soldiers, we salute YOU.
Very much in agreement about the not-annoying threshold of the book; is it because he’s European and not terminally/chronically online? My partner saw him do a book talk that the hosts ended early because he seemed so painfully shy!