Fran Magazine, Sunday Dispatch, May 12-18

The new Conner O'Malley special, After Hours, Animal Well

This is the Fran Magazine Sunday Dispatch, a weekly culture diary for paid subscribers only. The Sunday Dispatch details what I’ve been watching, reading, playing, and listening to over the past week. Paid subscriptions help stabilize my career in culture writing full-time, but all readers — paid & not — are appreciated. You can also follow me on Instagram or Letterboxd (for free!). Thanks for reading!

GOOD SALE ALERT

This past week was the great

BDM

’s birthday, and she ran a sale on annual subscriptions that I meant to share and then did share but it was too late. Thankfully, there is now a Fran Magazine exclusive notebook sale link that Fran Magazine readers can find HERE! I love reading notebook, I love considering Taylor Swift, and I love BDM’s capsule reviews. I highly recommend — why not take advantage? That’s what Taurus season is for, as they say.

rare self portrait

Passing period

School ended Tuesday. Grades submitted Wednesday. That night and the following night I went to my students’ end of year exhibitions, feeling emotional and moved by all of their weird and baffling and objectively cool work and otherwise a bit adrift wondering if I’ll teach again in the fall. I keep saying that I’ll be fine taking a semester or two off — and I would be, I’m plenty busy with writing — but there has always been a really grounding nature to teaching. To quote the poet Traci Brimhall: teaching “nails me to the world.” You can only be so insane, so tired, so angry, so bored, so distracted, and so on when there are thirteen to thirty students who need to hear back from you on something.

It was a hectic week otherwise — a lot of reporting, a lot of talking, a lot of writing, a lot of thinking. I wrote a considered appraisal of the Portal getting shut down for Curbed, as well as a #maestromoment for Vulture. I also got to work with the great Mani Lazic on an essay for Bright Wall/Dark Room on François Ozon’s Dans La Maison. The most immersive reading experience I had all week was this long-form research piece in the NYT about the history of the Extremist Settler movement in Israel. I have to admit myself fairly naive and otherwise unaware of the settler movement until only a few years ago. I don’t think there’s any question whatsoever that what’s happening in Palestine, beyond the violence, is just straight-forward, genocidal colonialism, and this piece makes a strong case that the government had completely fallen in line behind its most violent citizens long before this iteration of this particular conflict began. It’s horrifying and illuminating.

Beyond that, I am behind on my #MervynMay reading but I promise that I will catch up by Monday.

If you like reading Fran Magazine — the regular issues, the #MervynMay stuff, the intros to the Sunday Dispatch before I paywall it — please consider a paid subscription. It’s hugely appreciated and provides a considerable safety net in an otherwise unstable industry. Thank you!