You should read “weather” by jenny offill
Sometimes I worry this newsletter is devolving into Extremely Random Missives From My Apartment With An Occasional Bit Of Media Analysis And Off Math as that is not exactly what you guys signed up for, but you know what, I’ll use any excuse to signal boost the novel Weather by Jenny Offill.
I had this book recommended to me by a few people, so I knew it was supposed to be this hugely thoughtful meditation on impending doom via climate change, the end of the world, etc., and I ended up reading it in two gulps over this week and feel just...astonished by it.
It’s funny because technically, not a whole lot actually “happens” by way of plot in the book. This isn’t some action-packed dystopian thriller kind of storyline. You have the main character Lizzie, a librarian, who lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son. She takes care of them, she takes care of her brother, who’s a recovering addict, and she participates in all the usual life events: weddings, births, a good mid-life crush.
Mostly, though, she contemplates the impending climate catastrophe, and that’s what gives the novel its central tension — it’s a sickening, barely contained dread that no matter what she does or how many Buddhist meditation classes she attends or how many doomsday prepper YouTube videos she watches or how ethically she tries to live and shop and consume, she can’t prevent what is inevitable.
The entire book is written in these poetic, darkly funny missives that almost read like text messages, like this section...
When electricity was first introduced to homes, there were letters to the newspapers about how it would undermine family togetherness. Now there would be no need to gather around a shared hearth, people fretted. In 1903, a famous psychologist worried that young people would lose their connections to dusk and its contemplative moments.
Hahaha!
(Except when was the last time I stood still because it was dusk?)
...And they’re full of so many oblique references and vague antecedents that in a few decades, future generations will probably need footnotes to understand that Offill is talking about the 2016 election or the healthcare crisis or overzealous liberal parents. But for exactly right now, we get it — boy, do we get it.
There’s a part where Lizzie gets asked by her crush, this hot journalist named Will (i feel this detail is important given the audience here), what “skills” she has for survival for when shit hits the fan. It felt like a revelation to watch this scene play out while also eyeing social media. Like, isn’t this the question we’re all subconsciously asking ourselves right now? Isn’t this what all this sourdough nonsense is about, this urgent need to see if we could actually make something good out of nothing with our own hands? We want to know whether, when disaster strikes, we could truly cut it on our own.
According to Offill, the answer is: probably not. But that might be the whole point.
Pssst. I’m gonna have a little recurring ~Signal Boost~ section here (ty Michelle for the name!!) and fill it with classified-style listings for anyone in media (including PR, advertising, marketing, etc.) who’ve lost work/been laid off/furloughed. If you want to add yours, DM me on Twitter a line or two about what you’re looking for + any links to your work you wanna include + your contact info! (And give me a coupla days to get it all together, I’m gonna try to get these out asap!).
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