May 2023

A Review

Dublin 2018

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Here’s a comforting paradox: I don’t need a single original idea to create original writing. If you have a writer in your life, you can offer that as everlasting solace. Because everything that’s created is, in some ways, the consequence of experience, and experience is always individual. Two people with remarkably similar backgrounds will have read different books, met different people, argued about different subjects, felt different passions, suffered through different relationships, and travelled to different places. Even when someone merely regurgitates the ideas that they’ve absorbed, their past, in all of its uniqueness, shapes those ideas in a way that will be original.

Nevertheless, I would like to believe that I do have at least a few original ideas, although readers, of course, are the actual judges of that claim. So here are the eight essays that I wrote in May—which are certainly the result of my experiences, but that have, ideally, a bit more on the page too.

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1. Issue 157 — If a Light (🔒 Paid Subscribers)

   As much as I have a hunger for information and endlessly strive to learn more, I also, without any contradiction, enjoy unknowns, imperfections, mysteries, asymmetries, and the beauty of the wordless.

2. Issue 158 — Some Notes on American Presidents and British Monarchs

   One consequence of the cultural divide between Britain and America is that Americans pretend that they don’t think about class and the British pretend that they don’t think about money.

3. Issue 159 — How to Practice Writing (🔒 Paid Subscribers)

   There are good methods to practice and improve your writing abilities.

4. Issue 160 — The Addressless

   The real map is a hidden network of relationships and memories and associations.

5. Issue 161 — Walls that Whisper

   Summertime in Bucharest is hot and salty and oppressive, which makes it rather easy, I discovered, to stumble into Gestapo Headquarters.

6. Issue 162 — First Drafts (🔒 Paid Subscribers)

   Wine is best for first drafts and coffee is best for second drafts. The reverse, I have learned, is less true.

7. Issue 163 — The Sentence Writer

   Certain writers inspire you to put down their books and start writing. On Martin Amis, influence, and writers who prompt you to write.

8. Issue 164 — Some Notes on Self-Sabotage (🔒 Paid Subscribers)

   Self-sabotage is the most efficient type of sabotage. It is streamlined, precise, and justice comes without any delay: doing a job yourself, as it’s said, is sometimes the best way.

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Thank you, as always, for reading.