→ June 4, 2025
→ By

Assumption.

Percival Everett’s Assumption is a triptych of a novel, three neo-noir detective stories featuring the same character, Ogden Walker, a deputy in a small town in New Mexico who’s confronted with three murders in fairly short succession, each of which seems to revolve around at least one person who isn’t who they claim to be. The first two proceed almost traditionally, although Everett is still playing around within the confines of the genre; the third, however, slides into a hallucinatory haze where Walker’s reality is suddenly open to question.

Walker is a Black man in a town that’s largely not Black, with its share of white racists, but also plenty of Latino and indigenous residents, and as you might expect in a small-town mystery or detective story, he kind of knows everyone and has his usual haunts where everyone knows him. He’s got good enough relationships with his boss and his co-workers, even though it becomes clear that Walker is a reluctant cop, and is close to his mother, who lives in the same town and whose house he visits several times in each story.

The first case starts when the possibly-racist Mrs. Bickers turns up dead just a few minutes after Walker visits her to take away her gun, turning into a larger mystery when her estranged daughter shows up unannounced. The second involves a couple of sex workers who end up dead in not-so-rapid succession, again tapping into a bigger story as Walker investigates it. The third starts out innocuously enough, as Walker stumbles on a field & game warden catching a poacher, with Walker taking the poacher’s nephew – maybe – to try to find the kid’s home while the warden takes in the poacher. The warden turns up dead and the kid disappears, making Walker a suspect and causing him to question everything around him.

Everett can’t help but allude to some of the masters of the form, with a line about “the postman ringing only once,” paying homage to the greats even as he upends and inverts the very genre he’s mimicking. The first two stories read like great works from Cain, Chandler, and Thompson, with the same stoic tone and grim imagery, right down to the matter-of-fact descriptions of corpses and gunfights. The third is where Everett gets imaginative, as the story quickly turns into a fever dream of sorts, with Walker trying to solve the crime to keep himself out of jail, while a second strand follows the cops investigating him, and the two stories seem to diverge in impossible ways.

Walker is a typical Everett protagonist – a stolid Black man experiencing some existential doubts, in a job he doesn’t love, either a bachelor (as Walker is) or someone who has distant relationships with women. He’s an outsider in this town in multiple ways, even though he has cordial relationships with most of the locals; he doesn’t have close friends, and he is keenly aware of his status as one of the few Black people there. The pointlessness of the killings he sees wears on him, as he questions the utility of his job and the meaning of any of what’s happening in front of him, including the scourge of meth and the cycles of poverty and violence. What begins as a traditional detective novel – even the triptych format has a history in the genre, as Rex Stout authored several Nero Wolfe books that comprised three semi-related cases – ends up flipped on its head as a story of deep existential despair.

The contemporary review in the New York Times compared Assumption to the Inspector Maigret detective novels by the French writer Georges Simenon, which also have an existentialist bent, a clear line of descent from Sartre and Camus in style and substance. Maigret has more panache than Walker, though; he’s a gentleman detective in many ways, a French Roderick Alleyn, while Simenon’s stories end with far less bloodshed. The similarity is philosophical, rather than stylistic, although I appreciated the reference to another of my favorites.

Next up: I’m about three-quarters done with Lois McMaster Bujold’s Brothers in Arms.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,
→ June 3, 2025
→ By

The Unicorn Woman.

Gayl Jones was a major figure in 20th century Black literature, publishing her first novel, Corregidora, in 1975, and continuing to write novels and short stories until her husband, who was a fugitive from justice for over a decade, sent a bomb threat to a local hospital and then killed himself in a standoff with police. Jones then withdrew from public life and writing for 23 years before returning with the 2021 novel Palmares, which was one of the finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, losing to one of the worst winners in the award’s history (The Netanyahus).

Jones returned last year with a short novel, The Unicorn Woman, that also made the list of finalists for the Pulitzer, losing out this time to one of the best winners in the award’s history (Percival Everett’s James). The Unicorn Woman is a wisp of a tale that isn’t about the title character at all, if she even exists, but follows a Black WWII veteran named Buddy Ray Guy who becomes obsessed with the woman after seeing her at a carnival freak show, altering the course of his life.

Buddy can’t get the image of the woman, whom he finds unspeakably beautiful to the point of questioning not whether her horn is real, but whether she is a real person, out of his head, and spends much of his itinerant life afterwards chasing her, either literally or just metaphorically. His relationships with other women do not last, in large part because he is still obsessed with her – or the idea of her, of some sort of unrealistic, unattainable perfection that lodges in his mind and doesn’t leave enough room for a real romantic relationship. He repairs tractors as an irregular job, but moves around the country, sometimes chasing word that the Unicorn Woman is appearing in this city or that one, but more often seeming to move without purpose.

There’s just so little to this novel – aside from some dense prose that contradicts the wispiness of the story – that it lacks the tangible hooks to connect you to the story. There are side characters here and there, but none has much depth or even exposition time; there’s mention of one, a woman named Kate who worked on the tractors during the war but lost her job when the soldiers returned, and who refused to take a clerical or other lesser job. Her story might have made a better novel, and it certainly would have added some depth to this one.

Instead, it’s a work of metaphor and symbol more than it is a conventional novel, the sort of book that works better in a literature class than it does on your night stand, like Pedro Páramo or The Unconsoled, or maybe even The Vegetarian. The Unicorn Woman is on display to be seen, judged, and ogled by the world, but appears to have no agency or even an identity independent of her horn. Her value is what someone else can extract from her. She doesn’t exist as a character in the novel, so by default she must stand for something or someone; my interpretation is that she stands for all women, objectified, used, and discarded by the men in our society. Buddy doesn’t fare much better, though, as he’s returned from war to find a country that doesn’t have a place for him. Even is name is generic, as if Jones wanted to be sure we saw him as some sort of faceless everyman.

It’s probably clear that I wasn’t impressed by The Unicorn Woman, as it just seems like such a meager work to take the honor of one of the three (four) best American novels of its year. It’s possible this was just another way to honor Jones herself and her return to writing. I just don’t think of awards that way; this isn’t a lifetime achievement award, but an award for a specific book. There may be layers of meaning here I just didn’t get. The story itself wasn’t strong enough to sustain the rest of the book for me.

It’s still better than Mice 1961, though.

Next up: I’m reading one of the Miles Vorkosigan novels, Brothers in Arms, which I think is the only one I hadn’t read from the time period where his alter ego, Admiral Naismith, is part of the stories.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,
→ June 2, 2025
→ By

Sinners.

Twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, return from a few years in Chicago working for Al Capone to their hometown in rural Mississippi, where they plan to open a juke joint for their fellow Black Mississippians, with booze, gambling, and good old-fashioned Delta blues. It’s all good, profitable fun, at least until the white vampires show up, and the whole show turns into a battle royale.

Sinners, the latest film from director and writer Ryan Coogler, is that story – but a whole lot more, with layers upon layers of meaning below the surface of a film that starts out as a celebration and ends up a horror film, although it plays with the tropes of all of its genres. It’s imperfect, to be sure, but with some strong performances and incredible music, it’s an unusually good time at the theater among the sequels and the IP- and merchandise-driven pablum.

Michael B. Jordan stars as Smoke and Stack, oozing charm and panache, although the two characters are largely indistinguishable beyond their attire. They come home and buy a decrepit mill from the obviously racist (Boss) Hogwood, planning to turn it into their new juke joint. They ask their young cousin Sammy, also known as Preacher Boy (perhaps a nod to Samuel Sharpe?), to come play his guitar at opening night, only to discover that he’s become an exceptional blues guitarist with a deep, powerful voice – so powerful, in fact, that it calls out to the devil himself in the form of Remmick, an Irish immigrant and vampire who has already infected a married couple who are Klan members and who are more than happy to join him in an attempt to invade the joint and turn everyone inside.

There’s so much story here that that alone would make it one of the most interesting American films of the last five years; so many movies work with less plot and equivalent run times, yet Sinners seems to abound with story and subplot, to the point that crucial characters, including Stack’s white-passing ex-girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld, in her first significant film role since 2018) and Smoke’s ex Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), get a fraction of the back story they deserve. There are multiple movies’ worth of material and strong characters here, and Coogler knows it, playing with genre and tropes, starting the film out as a glorious celebration of Black culture and music, then turning very hard into a neo-horror film with revenge-fantasy elements that pits its white vampires against the Black heroes, literally surrounding them and threatening to burn the place down.

You can watch Sinners as is, without even considering the subtext beyond the obvious racial stuff – one of the film’s few moments of outright humor is when the vampires start talking about their belief in racial equity, and act offended that they’re not invited into the club because they’re white – but there appear to be layers upon layers of meaning below the surface. My first thought as the film ended was that the entire story might be a metaphor for the Tulsa Race Massacre, a real-life atrocity where Black residents of Tulsa built businesses that were profitable and part of the community, and white supremacists burned it all down and murdered dozens of Black Tulsans. But it could apply to all of Black history in the U.S. after the abolition of slavery, right up to our modern moment of a white minority seizing power to reverse decades of gains in civil rights. The blood-suckers aren’t just coming for the Black lives in that juke joint, but to feed off of the culture inside it, to profit from Black music and dance and traditions and leave the Black progenitors poor, wounded, or dead.

Jordan is going to earn much of the praise for his twin performances here, and he’s very good, but the two characters aren’t distinguished by much beyond their clothes; there are some references early in the film that imply that one of them is the more responsible of the two, the better business mind. The story just doesn’t do much with this, and the main distinction between them becomes their women, not anything innate to their characters. Steinfeld and Mosaku are tremendous in their supporting roles, as is Delroy Lindo as the drunk harmonica player who just wants to be paid in beer but ends up a voice of wisdom when calamity strikes. Sammy is played by a newcomer, Miles Caton, who boasts an outstanding, deep singing voice and apparently learned to play a mean blues guitar in just two months, and who delivers in what turns out to be the movie’s most pivotal role.

Sinners is overly ambitious in the end; as much action as there is, by the time it hit the two-hour mark I was ready for the conclusion – which it sort of telegraphed in the opening scene, a gimmick many filmmakers use that I really don’t care for at all. Let the ending surprise me, or at least let me come to it on my own terms. The largest action scene is very hard to follow between all of the very fake blood spurting everywhere (vampires, you know) and the dim lighting; I missed the fate of one of the characters entirely in the melee because I just couldn’t see. There’s also a mid-credits scene that I would say only sort of works – it’s sentimental where the rest of the film is anything but, yet it’s also true to some of the broader themes of the story.

This one is going to show up in all of the awards talk later this year, as it was a resounding commercial success, hits on a lot of themes that the voters seem to love, and was made by an acclaimed director who only has two tangential Oscar nominations to date – one for producing Judas & the Black Messiah, the other for the original song from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. I would be very surprised if we get to January and it’s not nominated for Best Picture, with a smattering of other nods, definitely for Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Score, maybe for Coogler’s directing or Jordan for playing two parts. Regardless, it’s the kind of movie that I love to see succeeding, because there’s at least some small chance that future projects like this, untethered to any IP or previous films, have a little more chance to secure funding. I liked Sinners a lot, but I doubt it’ll be my favorite movie of the year; that said, if it wins all the things, I won’t be upset in the least.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
→ June 1, 2025
→ By

Music update, May 2025.

I believe this is my longest-ever monthly playlist, at 42 songs and 205 minutes, and I even cut a few tracks (like one from Nilüfer Yanya) before settling on this set. We had a ridiculous number of new albums of note come out last month, along with some big announcements of new records and/or tours, plus any month with five Fridays is going to have more new music by default. As always, if you can’t see the widget below you can access the playlist here.

The Beths – Metal. For now, it’s a one-off single from The Beths ahead of a big tour this fall – and yes, I bought a ticket – with no word of a follow-up LP to their grade-80 album Expert in a Dying Field.

Suede – Disintegrate. Singer Brett Anderson (not the left-handed pitcher) has said Suede’s upcoming record will be their most post-punk album, and this lead single clearly leans that way. It’s amazing to me when a band can produce one of their best singles thirty years into their careers.

Wolf Alice – Bloom Baby Bloom. The Mercury Prize-winning London rockers are back, with this lead single ahead of their fourth album’s release on August 29th. The piano riff that drives this song is almost smooth-jazz, channeling Jethro Tull’s “Bourée” or something similar, before drifting into hard rock and back again, Wolf Alice at their unpredictable, imaginative selves just as they were on their last album, the magnificent Blue Weekend.

Obongjayar – Not In Surrender. Obongjayar’s latest album Paradise Now is about as genre-spanning an album as you’re likely to hear all year, which means it’s pretty inconsistent but has some incredible high points like this pulsing Afrobeat/rock track and the earlier single “Sweet Danger.” I actually can’t stand the collaboration with his frequent musical partner Little Simz, “Talk Olympics,” because … well, listen to the intro and you can probably guess why I find it so annoying.

Elbow – Sober. Elbow is releasing a five-song EP, Audio Vertigo Echo elbow EP5, including this track and last fall’s tremendous “Adrianna Again,” on June 6th; I believe this track is from the Audio Vertigo sessions, unlike the previous single, but whatever, it’s all great and I think Elbow is peaking.

The Itch – The Influencer. One side of a new single from this Georgia duo who’d previously released just a single track, last year’s “Ursula,” which is about one of my all-time favorite novels, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. This is straight-up ‘80s new wave with some goth influences – think Bauhaus, Heaven 17, mid-80s Depeche Mode – and as such couldn’t be more in my wheelhouse.

Peter Murphy – Hot Roy. “Cuts You Up” is Murphy’s peak; when I did a list of the best songs of the 1990s back in (gulp) 2010, it was at #118; I might have it higher now, honestly. This is the first thing he’s done in probably 20 years that recaptured even some of the glory of that song for me.

Sunday (1994) – Doomsday. It’s a bad commando name, I admit, but if you like dream pop at all, especially the 1990s version, this band and their new EP Devotion are for you.

Indigo de Souza – Heartthrob. I can’t figure out if I’d heard de Souza’s music before and didn’t care for it, or if this was the first track by the Asheville singer/songwriter I’d heard. I thought it was a new song by Weakened Friends given de Souza’s warbly delivery and overly earnest lyrics, but the hook won me over. Her fourth album, Precipice, comes out on July 25th.

Deep Sea Diver – Emergency. I’ve hadat least one Deep Sea Diver song on a previous playlist, and reader Brian in SoCal recommended I check out their newest LP; I found the album kind of uneven but when they let ‘er rip, as they do on this song, it’s fantastic, with a great pop hook in the chorus but enough roughness around the edges to keep a more authentic, almost college-radio sound.

TURNSTILE – BIRDS. I’m not sure what’s going on with TURNSTILE; they were a great punk band, and some of that is still evident on the new record, but they’ve gone well beyond that genre on this album, Never Enough, due out on June 6th, and the experimentation doesn’t work as well as it did for the comparable record from Fontaines D.C. “SEEIN’ STARS” is almost a pop song; “LOOK OUT FOR ME” is a six-minute opus where the first half sounds too much like early Helmet. Also please stop writing everything in all caps, I feel like you’re yelling at me.

Black Honey – Insulin. I’ve been a Black Honey fan since their first handful of singles in 2015-16, which is hard to believe now. They started out as more power-pop but they’ve had a harder edge between their last album and this single. Their fourth album, Soak, is due out in August.

Hotline TNT – Candle. This noise-rock band’s last single, “Julia’s War,” was my favorite track from them to date … and this might be my second-favorite. Their third album, Raspberry Moon, comes out on June 20th. I actually don’t like the third single, “Break Right.”

Jehnny Beth – Broken Rib. Beth was the lead singer of the short-lived post-punk band Savages, whose debut album Silence Yourself was #18 on my ranking of the best albums of the 2010s; she released a solo album in 2020, but has mostly appeared as a guest vocalist on other artists’ works, and even appeared in the film Anatomy of a Fall in a significant supporting role. Her second album, You Heartbreaker, You, is due out in August, and this lead single is a welcome return to that Silence Yourself form of raging feminist post-punk.

Preoccupations – Panic. Ill at Ease, the latest record from one of the most authentic post-punk bands out there, is solid if a little familiar, very much in that Joy Division/The Sound/Bauhaus vein.

Siracuse – Chase the Morning. Kind of Oasis meets psychedelic rock, a little less Madchester-y than their 2023 song “Saviour,” which made my top 100 for that year, more like the music I hoped the DMA’s were going to keep making until they threw up their hands and started making electronica instead of rock.

Sleigh Bells – Badly. Another band that seems to be good for one great song per album, although I think there’s a bit of gimmickry in their lyrics and sometimes videos (“Comeback Kid”) that I think takes away from the music. This isn’t quite up to “Rill Rill” or “True Seekers” but it’s in my top 5.

We Are Scientists – Please Don’t Say It. This song sounds like someone merged Sparks with a math-rock band, so it’s catchy but also has this intensity that I find grabs me early in the track and doesn’t let up.

The Supernaturals – Don’t let the past catch up with you. The Supernaturals hung around the fringe of the Britpop movement without quite breaking through to commercial success, splitting up in 2002 after their third album came out. They returned in 2015 and have now put out four albums post-hiatus, with this latest one, Show Tunes, coming out in May. I was and still am a big fan of Britpop’s original era, but I’d never heard of these guys until this record.

Sports Team – Boys These Days. The title track from their follow-up to the tremendous Gulp! is a good indicator of their downshift in style; the record has plenty of solid tracks but doesn’t hit as hard as the last record did, still playful and snarky, just lacking the huge hooks this time around. I also liked “Bonnie” and “Bang Bang Bang.”

The Head and the Heart – After the Setting Sun. I like when they stomp. That’s really it – when their songs build to a big stompin’ finish, like “Shake” does, I’m in. This one does that.

The Minus 5 – Let the Rope Hold, Cassie Lee. That is Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh Fellows and, more importantly, The Baseball Project, along with his TBP bandmates Peter Buck and Linda Pitmon. The two bands will be touring together this September.

Peter Doherty – Felt Better Alive. Fresh off the triumphant return last year of his band The Libertines, Doherty followed it up with his first solo album in nine years last month. This is the title track from the record, which is a more subdued experience than the last Libertines record and which I at least interpreted as the work of a more mature, sober Doherty.

Natalie Bergman – Gunslinger. Bergman is a folk-pop singer from LA who is also half of the duo Wild Belle with her brother Elliot, and her second album, My Home Is Not in This World, is due out in July. Her previous record leaned towards some very religious material, but this song is secular and, I think not coincidentally, a real banger. Wikipedia says she’s the late Anne Heche’s niece.

Ty Segall – Possession. When Segall’s good, he’s very good – he crafts some really great rhythm-guitar hooks. He’s good for about one of them an album, which I guess is better than some artists.

Ezra Furman – Power of the Moon. Never been a fan of Furman’s music but this song is the best of hers I’ve heard, reminding me a lot of the Waterboys; I need to listen to the full abum, Goodbye Small Head, which came out on May 16th.

Blondshell – Thumbtack. As I feared, “Two Times” turned out to be far and away the best song on Blondshell’s new album If You Asked for a Picture, and the album overall is a mixed bag. Sabrina Teitelbaum’s earnest lyrics and delivery wear pretty thin for me, unfortunately.

Shamir – I Love My Friends. Almost every Shamir song leaves me wondering why I don’t like his music more, but more often than not there’s just one thing that turns me off a song. This is the best track from his latest album, Ten, and an example of how good he can be when everything clicks … if you can live with his creaky delivery on the verses that belies his strong singing voice.

Wu-Tang & Mathematics – Mandingo. I suppose it’s a matter of semantics whether Black Samson, the Bastard Swordsman is a proper Wu-Tang release, but I would vote yes, as it features every living member of the Wu-Tang Clan on at least one track. It’s also pretty old-school, not exactly 36 Chambers level but in with similar music and, of course, a lot of snippets from kung fu movies.

Kae Tempest – Know Yourself. I still think of Tempest’s style as spoken word rather than hip-hop, although the chorus on this new track is at least more derived from the traditions of the Golden Age of the latter. I don’t think this is his strongest work lyrically – “I Saw Light” remains his best in my opinion – but it’s one of the best backing tracks he’s used to date.

Tune-Yards – How Big is the Rainbow. I used to hate “Water Fountain,” which I think is probably still Tune-Yards’ biggest hit, but it’s grown on me over time, probably because I’ve just become more open-minded about music that veers from what’s expected. Anyway, Tune-Yards’ latest album Better Dreaming dropped in May and I completely agree with Pitchfork’s comment that it’s their most melodic and accessible album to date. It’s almost poppy, at least within their typical framework of drum loops and globally-inspired beats.

Steve Queralt feat. Verity Susman – Messengers. Queralt is the bassist for Ride, the pioneering British shoegaze band, and here he teams up with Susman, the vocalist in Electrelane, for a spacey, time-out-of-joint sort of electronic rock track. It definitely seems like the sort of music you’d listen to while high, and I mean that in a good way.

deary – I Still Think About You. This dreampop duo has a couple of EPs under its belt, but this song, which reminds me a ton of early Lush (pre-“Ladykillers”), was my first exposure to them.

Nation of Language – Inept Apollo. This track is the new wave/synthpop trio’s first since signing with Sub Pop, and one of my favorite songs from them. No word yet on a new album, which would be their first since 2023’s Strange Disciple.

SENSES – Already Part of the Problem. I liked this Coventry-based quartet’s atmospheric rock track “Drifting” a couple of years ago; this one has a bit more energy and some more prominent synths, reminiscent of 1990s college radio rock.

The Chameleons – Saviours Are a Dangerous Thing. The Chameleons straddled the line between post-punk and new wave in the early 1980s but never found commercial success, even in their native UK, before breaking up for the first time in 1987. They reunited for one album in 2001, then broke up again, re-forming a second time in 2021 with two original members, singer/bassist Mark Burgess and lead guitarist Reg Smithies. They’re set to release their first new LP in 24 years, Arctic Moon, on September 12th.

Jorja Smith – The Way I Love You. Idon’t love the frenzied techno beat behind Smith’s vocals, but I love her voice enough that I put the song on here anyway.

James BKS – Assia. TheFrench-Cameroonian musician/producer and son of legendary Afrofunk saxophonist Manu Dibango released his latest EP See Us Rise last month, including this midtempo, lite-jazzy number.

Suzanne Vega – Witch. I’ve never been a huge fan of Vega’s and this is the first song of hers I’ve put on a playlist, although that’s probably because Flying with Angels is her first full-length album in eleven years. Her lyrics can still get a little wobbly but I attribute that to her trying to be more ambitious in her storytelling. This song really rocks in a way I don’t totally associate with her, although she certainly has flashed that in her career (including on my favorite song of hers, “Blood Makes Noise,” covered surprisingly well by British thrashers Acid Reign).

The Budos Band – Overlander. So I’d never heard of the Budos Band until now, even though VII is, as you might have guessed, their seventh album, and their first came out 20 years ago. The whole album is like this, although this track has the best riff, and every song sounds like it belongs in a trailer for a movie you will be 30% more likely to go see because of the music.

Pelican – Cascading Crescent. How have I not heard of Pelican before? It’s mostly instrumental doom and sludge metal, and it’s awesome. This is one of several great tracks on their latest album Flickering Resonance. There is just too much music out there, dammit.

Witchcraft – Idag. The title track from this longstanding Swedish doom metal band’s latest album, their first rock album in nine years, is also its strongest, although the tempo is a little faster than typical doom – and that’s indicative of the album as a whole, which bounces around various styles, including some 1970s-ish blues metal, and has tracks in Swedish and in English. Some of the English lyrics are really silly (“Burning Cross”), but there’s some fantastic riffing across most of the LP.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , ,
→ May 31, 2025
→ By

Stick to baseball, 5/31/25.

For subscribers to The Athletic this week, I re-ranked the top 50 prospects still in the minors, updating the list to reflect various graduations and some of the new information from the small sample of 2025 so far. I also did a Q&A on the site to answer questions about it.

I’m due for another newsletter but got a little caught up with the top 50; you can subscribe here for whenever I send the next one out, hopefully over the weekend.

And now, the links…

  • Elon Musk’s legacy in Washington is “disease, starvation, and death,” writes Michelle Goldberg (accurately) in The New York Times. Musk’s decision to unilaterally shut down USAID programs has killed thousands, and may end up killing many more, around the globe.
  • Sen. Jodi Ernst (R-Iowa), who is up for re-election next year, responded to a constituent’s question about SNAP and Medicaid cuts by saying “we’re all going to die.” This clip should appear in every Iowa Democrat’s campaign ad from now until November 2026, regardless of what office they’re running for.
  • Ohio State Rep. Rodney Creech (R) was accused by his own daughter of sexually abusing her, yet his Republican colleagues – who knew of the investigation – backed him for re-election last November. Let me repeat that: Ohio Republicans backed a candidate who may have molested his own daughter.
  • As a man who often eats alone in restaurants, I loved this Times piece on how weird people get when women dine alone. Some of it was familiar to me, but of course much of this never happens to me because I’m a man. People in restaurants or bars who serve me or sit next to me often just assume I’m traveling for work. Clearly that is not the assumption people make about women. Also, eating alone can be a wonderfully restorative experience.
  • Zohran Mamdani’s poll numbers are rising and he appears now to only trail the $60 million man Andrew Cuomo – who resigned as Governor after multiple women came forward to say he sexually harassed them in the race to be NYC’s next Mayor.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
→ May 26, 2025
→ By

I Am Not Sidney Poitier.

I Am Not Sidney Poitier is the seventh of Percival Everett’s books that I’ve read, but the first for which I did some homework, watching four of Poitier’s movies to which I knew Everett alludes in the novel. This was hardly difficult, as only one of the movies (Lilies of the Field, for which Poitier won his sole non-honorary Academy Award) failed to hold up. I’m glad I went through the exercise, however, as it made reading Everett’s novel even more enjoyable. It’s a riot, and another incredible feat of imagination, and while it has its serious moments, it is Everett at his least serious among the books I’ve read.

The main character in I Am Not Sidney Poitier is named Not Sidney Poitier, which, as you may imagine, presents him with all manner of difficulties, including bullying in school. He is, however, quite rich, as his mother invested very early in shares of Ted Turner’s media company, making her one of its largest shareholders and, at her death, putting Not Sidney in Ted’s care, in a way. Turner himself becomes an amusing if caricatured side character, prone to rambling non sequiturs, but he makes for an entertaining conversationalist as Not Sidney tries to make his way through the world.

I Am Not Sidney Poitier proceeds into a sort of modern picaresque, as each chapter is a new adventure modeled after one or two of Poitier’s movies. Early in the book, for example, Not Sidney sets off for California in his car, choosing to avoid the interstates, and finds himself in a hick county in Georgia where he is arrested for the crime of being Black. He’s soon chained to a racist convict, and an accident gives them an opportunity to escape, which, if you haven’t seen it, is the plot of The Defiant Ones, which starred Poitier and Tony Curtis. Everett’s trick here is adhering very closely to the plots of several of these movies, often to the point of repeating key quotes (“They call me Not Sidney” might be the best), but then turning something inside out at the resolution.

Not Sidney drifts back and forth from his home on Ted Turner’s estates, including interactions with Jane Fonda, to these vignettes from films like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (but with a family of light-skinned Blacks prejudiced against darker-skinned people), In the Heat of the Night, and No Way Out, the last of which appears in a dream sequence.

Everett’s gift for comedy shows itself more in wordplay and in the humor he mines from absurd situations, rather than some of the more situational and highbrow humor in books like Dr. No. The protagonist’s name is obviously a source of repeated gags at his expense, and Everett creates all kinds of improbable interactions that allow him to poke fun at something, whether it’s the movies he’s referencing or Black literature or really anything that crosses his mind. Everett has referred to himself as “pathologically ironic,” and I have never felt that more in his writing than in his novel, even though I think it’s the least serious or thematic of any of the seven I’ve read.

I will say I think I enjoyed this novel the most of the seven, but that doesn’t make it the “best” or my favorite. It’s the funniest, it was probably the fastest to read, and it’s endlessly rewarding if you’ve seen any of the movies involved. I did notice that it was lighter in tone and subject, which isn’t a criticism, but it’s a change of pace from James or So Much Blue or Telephone. The guy still hasn’t missed for me, though, and there are very, very few authors about whom I could say that through even four books.

Next up: Another of this year’s Pulitzer finalists, The Unicorn Woman by Gayl Jones.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,
→ May 24, 2025
→ By

Stick to baseball, 5/24/25.

My first Big Board, ranking the top 100 prospects for this year’s draft, is now up for subscribers to The Athletic; I held a Q&A on Thursday to take questions about it and other prospects. I also posted a minor-league scouting notebook from my recent looks at Andrew Painter, George Lombard, Jr., Jhostynxon “The Password” Garcia, Mikey Romero, and others.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the game Diatoms, which has some incredible art and high-quality components, and almost plays too quickly – I wanted a few more rounds to keep building patterns.

I’ve now sent out two issues of my free email newsletter in the last two weeks, which I think counts as a streak.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: The best thing I’ve read this month is this San Francisco Chronicle story by their food critic, MacKenzie Chung Fegan, about her experience eating at The French Laundry and how chef-owner Thomas Keller treated her. It is nuanced, thoughtful, and ultimately allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.
  • Matthew Cherry won an Academy Award for his short film Hair Love, which then turned into a book and an animated series on HBO Max. He’s now working on a new short film, an animated musical project called Time Signature, and has a Kickstarter up for it.
  • My editor at Paste, Garrett Martin, reviewed a new video game called Despelote that is about sports but not specifically a sports video game. It sounds fascinating.
  • Two new boardgame Kickstarters this week: Tangerine Games has one for Sauros, a dinosaur-themed trick-taking and tile-laying game.
  • Board & Dice, which specializes in heavy Eurogames, has one for a new edition of Trismegistus, which is very highly rated on BGG but also has a game weight rating of 4.18/5.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,
→ May 20, 2025
→ By

Mice 1961.

Mice 1961 was one of the three finalists for this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which ended up going to a fourth book, Percival Everett’s James, causing a minor kerfuffle that I didn’t think was warranted, given how amazing James is and the awards it had already won. In the interest of completeness, however, I decided to read all three finalists to see if any had a reasonable case. Not only does Mice 1961 not have any argument that it should have won over James, it’s just a badly written, badly constructed book, one that never should have sniffed the final three (four).

Mice 1961 is built around two sisters, Jody and her albino sister nicknamed Mice, who you might have said at the time was a little off or perhaps “touched,” and today we might speculate was on the spectrum or something of the kind. The sisters are orphaned, their father long out of the picture, their mother recently deceased, and they live on their own in an apartment with the narrator, a peculiar woman named Girtle who was herself an orphan and ran away from some kind of institution. Mice, the younger of the two, is still in high school and is mercilessly taunted and bullied by the other girls because she’s different – she looks different, of course, and she tends to fixate on small things and ask the same questions repeatedly. The story takes place the night of a big party, to which their whole Miami-area town has been invited, and Jody’s efforts to get Mice to the party so she can socialize while also keeping an eye on her sister.

The fundamental problem with Mice 1961 is that these characters all suck. They’re not interesting, they’re not three-dimensional, and they’re certainly not sympathetic. Mice feels like a parody of an autistic person, and the fact that she’s an albino (Levine never uses the word, but I’m fairly sure that’s the case here) and also somewhat developmentally disabled feels particularly insulting; albinism is a recessive genetic condition unrelated to intelligence. Jody is constantly worried about her sister, but in the way you might worry about a valuable piece of jewelry, not another human; there’s no sense anywhere in the book that Jody cares about Mice, and she does almost nothing to addressing the bullying other than complain to the police officer who (I think) is sweet on Jody and humors her whining. I spent most of the book wondering if any of these characters weren’t really there, especially Girtle, because so much of what they say and do seemed nonsensical, and Girtle often describes things that she couldn’t have seen without becoming part of the scene. It might have been a better book if she were a ghost or spirit or something else unreal, because I couldn’t figure out what her purpose was other than to be a sort of third-party narrator without requiring Levine to use the third person.

The party takes up most of the latter half of the book, and it’s full of local people who speak and act in bizarre and totally unrealistic ways. The party is a potluck, and at some point there’s a contest, sort of, although it’s more like each person announces what they brought and then maybe someone jumps in to insult them. I mean, I wasn’t at any potluck parties in 1961, but I think they were probably more fun and less full of assholes than this one.

Needless to say, I hated this book from start to finish – and I can’t even figure out what its point is. Why does this book exist? What is it telling me? This isn’t some moment in time or history or the culture that required documenting. It’s not a story about interesting people, and it’s not a story about larger issues like gender or race or the times a-changing (which they were in 1961). Absurdity for its own sake wears out its welcome very quickly. How this book made the final three in the Pulitzers is completely beyond my understanding.

Next up: I just started Josephine Tey’s The Man in the Queue, the first of her six mysteries featuring the character Inspector Alan Grant.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,
→ May 19, 2025
→ By

Congo, Inc.

I hadn’t heard of the Congolese author In Koli Jean Bofane before seeing the Oscar-nominated documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat this spring, which featured Bofane and mentioned that he was an novelist. Two of his novels have been translated into English, the second of which, Congo, Inc.: Bismarck’s Testament, marries satire with hysterical realism in an insane and sometimes inscrutable story of life in the D.R. Congo today, with its endless corruption and continued meddling from colonial interests. It does not work, ultimately, although it’s an entertaining read anyway for its madness.

Isookanga is a young Pygmy living in a village where his uncle is the chief and life is reasonably prosperous by local standards, spending much of his time playing a 4X video game called “Raging Trade” which, frankly, sounds pretty badass. He’s learned that the path to riches in the game is through violence and intimidation, though, rather than innovation, research, or hard work, and apparently you can buy all sorts of weaponry and target your opponents with incredible precision. This encourages him to set off for the nation’s capital, Kinshasa, to make his fortune, rather than to live a comfortable if boring life in the hinterlands. His narrative brings him into contact with corrupt politicians, do-gooder diplomats, even more corrupt UN peacekeepers, a Chinese merchant who has been abandoned by a corrupt partner, and so much more that it’s often unclear how any of these even connects back to Isookanga, who just wants to make money – like everyone else.

Bofane’s worldbuilding here is by far the best part of the book. He sends up modern Congo with a series of characters who are all drawn ten percent more sharply than is realistic, just enough of an edge to keep it satirical rather than ridiculous; the video game is the only part of Congo, Inc. that seems to defy realism, and that’s an easy thing to forgive. No one is above the corruption, although different people seem to want different things – the researcher who comes to study Congolese people is after something different than the UN envoy in New York who is after something different than the crooked clan leader and so on. There’s a sort of symmetry in the resolution here, and Bofane does manage to tie up most of the loose ends in a satisfying and often comical way, although the whole is less than the sum of the novel’s parts because of how quickly some of those subplots reach their denouements.

Saying too much more would spoil the pleasures of the book, which lie in much of its absurdity; if you can keep the characters and settings straight, there are some genuinely funny scenes within Congo, Inc. that also act in service of the greater commentary. I knew going into the book that Bofane, who lives in exile in Brussels, has a low view of Belgium (whose king “owned” the Congo as a personal territory and committed genocide against its people), the United States (which conspired to assassinate Congo’s President Patrice Lumumba), and the D.R.C.’s current leaders, so I understood the slant of his satire and could grasp the anger seething beneath its text. I’m not sure I would have gotten it to the same degree without that subtext. I’d be curious to read another of his works, preferably one of his two subsequent novels, once they’re translated into English.

Next up: I finished Mice 1961 and am almost through Jim Thompson’s noir novel The Getaway.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,
→ May 17, 2025
→ By

Stick to baseball, 5/17/25.

I had one piece for subscribers to the Athletic this past week, a minor league scouting notebook on some Yankees, Nats, Rays, and Orioles prospects; it’s rained just about every day since then, so I haven’t been to a game since Sunday (despite trying, twice, only to have the games cancelled after I was at or nearly at the park).

I did finally send out a new issue of my free email newsletter this past week, and I’m going to try to get back to doing that weekly now that my spring travel appears to be done. I think I ended up in 15 different states this spring, seeing over 70 guys who are legitimate draft prospects along the way, and of course I’m still annoyed at a few I missed (like Gavin Kilen, who was hurt the weekend I went to Knoxville).

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: The Trump Administration pressured African countries to give more business to Elon Musk, according to this report from ProPublica. All of the other stuff is a distraction – all of the funding cuts, the hate laws, the executive orders are there to suck up the oxygen so we don’t notice that they’re using the power of the federal government to enrich themselves. Like with this Amtrak project that Musk’s Boring Company is probably going to “win.”
  • Meanwhile, Musk’s attempt to take over the Copyright Office flopped because of opposition from conservative media companies and content creators, who, as it turns out, do have some principles when it comes to protecting their own bottom lines.
  • A preprint that appeared last fall that claimed that materials scientists who had access to AI tools were substantially more productive – and that received publicity from credulous reporters at the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere – was almost certainly a complete fabrication. MIT issued a press release this week saying they had “no confidence in the veracity of the research contained in the paper” and that the author, former graduate student Aidan Toner-Rodgers, was no longer affiliated with the school. The link above argues that the paper was full of red flags, including impossible access to corporate data and too-good-to-be-true results.
  • Alex Shephard says in the New Republic that Trump is the most corrupt President the U.S. has ever seen.
  • Political scientists who study the decline of democracies say that the United States is sliding towards autocracy in the way that other previously-free countries like Hungary and Turkey have done in the last twenty years.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,