Midsummer Dispatch

Every year when summer happens, it surprises me. First I’m like, how is this possible, and then I’m like, oh yeah, I remember this from last year. We’re in it now, and we have some summer reading recommendations for you, but first off, an announcement. 

THL’s substack is going *paid!* But don’t worry, it’s not going to cost you more than a cup of coffee (or, if you’re feeling quite generous, more than a Sweetgreen salad). More below, but first, in publishing summer news, our agents are ready to kick back, relax, and… keep working as hard as they do the rest of the year because summers off aren’t what they used to be. That said, we’ve still got some dedicated personal reading time set aside, with some of us having bigger aspirations than others… 

MW: FINISH Middlemarch, LOL. 

KJL: To be honest, I could use some horror recommendations, written before the year 2000. Readers, what do you have for me? I just finished Stephen King’s THE TOMMYKNOCKERS. Thinking about starting Shirley Jackson’s HANGSAMAN on audiobook but not sure. 

ED: Will I FINALLY read Anna Karenina? Lol we'll see! The recently translated KILLING STELLA by Marlen Haushofer (author of THE WALL, originally published in 1958. Been meaning to read EVERYONE WHO IS GONE IS HERE by Jonathan Bitzer.  Also need to do some research for my own writing project so happily taking suggestions of any books about avalanches! 

RJ: MR. LOVERMAN by Bernardine Evaristo and cool finds I am bound to encounter in little free libraries as I gallivant in the sun across all five boroughs 

NGR: Having a very interesting time working my way through the works of Carl Jung. 

As long as you keep sending us your anonymous reviews (KEEP SUBMITTING!) we’ll keep sharing them… 

 REJECTION by Tony Tulathamutte 

What a blast! Tulathimutte is a true pervert and brilliant master of his craft--writing, reading, thinking, echoing, being, jerking, doing the fucking thing. I imagine if Moshfegh had a dick, she would write like this: obsessive, visceral, lacking any shame whatsoever, bold, razor sharp edges, throwing elbows, insults, and posts at everything that glances her way. Tulathimutte puts it way the fuck out there.

I read the email portion of "Ahegao, or The Ballad of Sexual Repression" on a packed subway car on my way to work; it is perhaps the most graphic porno ever conceived by man, to this reader; but then again, I don't watch a lot of porn and who knows what's out there. Whatever blows your dress up, my dude. Sexual cravings are an organic, lizard brain desire all human beings possess, and to go as far and deep (LOL) as TT does in expressing these feelings, their sidebars, their exquisite detail, and how deep into thought these characters go is so impressive I don't know what else to say other than to read it. There is remarkable internal digging going on here on full public display. This is the art I come for. This is why I read. 

I hadn't read "The Feminist" when it was published five years ago in n+1 and broke the Internet, so that was fun. Hard to choose a favorite. "Main Character" collects everything and brings it to a head, so that is up there for me. But it might be "Ahegao" because: god dammit. 

Traveling: On The Path of Joni Mitchell by Ann Powers

An excellent not-biography-biography. Ann Powers sure is Traveling Traveling Traveling on the path of Joni Mitchell. A lot of this book is for people already familiar with Joni Mitchell, her life, and music, but it's also a great alternate introduction and exploration of Joni that's doing more than a chapter by chapter breakdown of her life; not quite a fictionalized, scripted version but not a straight-laced PBS documentary of Joni Mitchell. Traveling is somewhere in between not just due to structure and aside details, but because Powers includes pieces of her own life in these pages: how she relates to Joni as a woman, in motherhood and parenting, in falling in love, in soul searching, and in a life full of creating.

Which is also why it's 400 pages--which I was surprised by but somehow never noticed. I'm not sure it needs to be...400 pages....but in the tradition of Traveling Traveling Traveling, Powers lets her spirit run free and off into little pockets of music and cultural histories to run along side making Joni's scope bigger and the impression of her legacy deep. They aren't exhausting asides, Powers recognizes that a few paragraphs on the Laurel Canyon folk scene of the 1970s is plenty. (Powers is wise. She knows its been done.) A few Joni-centered details will do. If you are going into this reading with a lot of background knowledge and listening experience to Joni's records (and those of her contemporaries) you might find some of it tired. I'm sure I'm not the EXACT audience for this book despite my love for Joni's music and my constant study of this era of American music, music history, and culture. (I was raised by two boomers who sang along to all the 70s classic Joni albums, both my mother and my father (dad, always a rare Joni bird; I've met very few men who love Joni) where Miles of Aisles was a mainstay on our kitchen stereo. I've also luckily inherited most of dad's Joni vinyl.) I am more than a casual listener.

The most compelling part of this book is the middle third where Powers discusses Joni's blackface drag alter-persona, Art &/ Claude Nouveau. I was aware of Don Juan's Reckless Daughter (1977), the double Joni album where she is in blackface as one of the three people in photographs on the front. (I bought it from my local shop, gave it a listen, and well, sold it back.) I was not aware Joni also painted her face to appear as an Indigenous person on the back cover of the same album. I WAS NOT AWARE at ALL that Joni would **dress up** as Art Nouveau, first as a Halloween costume, and then later at magazine photo shoots (like, go behind the curtain to change your outfit but then come out with paint on your face dressed as a man) and out in the actual physical world. Powers does not shy away from this complicated Art Monster (sidebar: Claire Dederer's Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma is not to be missed.) and questions Joni's decisions, her interpretations, those impressions of the people around her that saw Joni was wearing blackface and what they did or didn't do... there's a lot to unpack here. "Can you go to ugly places with your subject?" Powers asks. "How do you commune with the ugliness in them?"

Wise questions, and there are many more Powers does not ask or answer or consider lightly. Again, in the spirit of Traveling Traveling Traveling, Powers wanders into spaces of her own past questioning poor judgment she's made in the past (singing along to questionable lyrics, giving things a pass that does not deserve one) when interrogating how it's OK to be a fan and hold Joni's iconic energy to such a high standard and devotion when Joni has never denounced Art Nouveau. Powers interviews others, specifically journalist Miles Grier, about this very problem in Joni's career. Powers understood the assignment that in this foul year of our Lord, we cannot look away from blackface Joni. It is a part of the story just as much as California and the Canadian Prairies are. It was when the book was starting to feel long that I hit this middle-third stride and then I blew through the rest.

I put on Blue on my turntable the day I finished Traveling Traveling Traveling (no doubt, my dad's copy from 1971) and managed to hear it with new ears. That's how you know this book is a success. (My favorite is Ladies Of The Canyon.) It makes me, a familiar listener and lover of Joni, hear her records with new light and discovery. An excellent volume for my music history collection, and for the world's greater collection at large about Joni Mitchell, music, art, and the complicated space between life on the record and in the flesh.

A survey and General Updates!

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I’m really excited about this next phase of the Triangle House newsletter. It’s much more exciting than when I started it five years ago to organize our virtual (lockdown) reading series. A lot of you have been reading our dispatches ever since, which we’re proud of. Thank you so much for being a friend of the house all this time, and I’m really hoping to see you at TRUST book club. 

xo, 

Monika & all of TH