Hi, Toasties. How was your week? Was it GREAT or just okay? Do you need Camille Paglia to inspire you? (I think you do.)
“I saw myself in Ophelia, and my passion to explain her was equally a passion to understand my place in the world as woman, a writer, and a person with mental illness”: B.N. Harrison and her Unified Theory of Ophelia
You should definitely read Mallory’s chilling yet lovely retelling of Beauty and the Beast; I’ve read it three times now and can’t get these lines out of my head: The merchant was loath to part with any of his daughters to this monster, but he loved his own life, and fathers have given their daughters to monsters before. His decision caused him great grief, but never so great that he would have amended it.
Why did Emily Dickinson stop going to restaurants?
Kerry Folan wrote about her subletter, her book collection, and intellectual vanity, and it was delightful: “Timo probably appreciates my neatly cataloged collection of Vogue magazines, arranged in chronological order, white spines lined up evenly and satisfyingly along the office bookcase. He may have nodded with approval if he noticed the few slim volumes I’d managed to read in French. Perhaps he was impressed at the breadth of my art books, which range from Sally Mann’s creepy photos of her dead dog to a gorgeous, clothbound catalogue of ancient textiles I bought at the Met one time.”
At Harrods, you are torn between buying the gloves and slipping into an abyss of regret. Do you suspect you might be in a Virginia Woolf novel?
Mara Wilson on her love for The B.Y. Times books she read as a kid:
I had thought these books were written exclusively for Orthodox Jewish girls, but maybe the net was cast a little wider than that. Maybe Targum Press wanted to show those of us who weren’t so religious that we could still have fun while frum. That despite the more advantages and opportunities given to secular women, it felt good to be chosen and belong.
“The times that I have been read right, from the very first moment, I have been with my mother.” I loved everything about this essay Dahlia Grossman-Heinze wrote for The Butter about her mother, and her childhood, and being read as white.
EMMA: Harriet I don’t know how to tell you this, but Frank and Jane have been making jam together THIS WHOLE TIME.
Ari Laurel on why she donated her eggs but wouldn’t do it again.
So great when Mallory talks to babies:
ME: what does this plate symbolize, baby
BABY: [picks up a single Cheerio]
ME: that’s right
HEGEMONY
what do we think of hegemony
BABY: [smashes chubby baby fist against Cheerios]
ME: thats right
WE SMASH IT
Mo Moulton’s final Watching Downton Abbey with an Historian column of Season 5! WEEP. You can read all the others here.
“…my brilliant, beautiful aunt didn’t know she had it in her all along, that her life should have been in her own hands”: Jean Kim on visiting her aunt in Inchon and what she learned from her.
My kids had yet another snow day today and this is the view from our back window right now. Clap if you believe in Spring. Please, please believe.
