Novellas in your inbox; Ghibli slop in the White House; squishy stuff in my knee
Recently published writing.
Hi all,
writing to share some recent proof that I’m still at it, including:
My New Yorker piece about (among other things) a straight-to-Substack novella that was my favorite new piece of fiction I read last year.
My New York Times Magazine piece about the Studio Ghibli-style AI image trend, the Trump regime’s communications strategy, and what one has to do with the other.
My recent short piece for my Tracks on Tracks project—on an unplanned hiatus of late, but creaking back to life—about my knee tumor, waiting for test results, and Jeff Tweedy’s “Summer Noon.”
Toward the end of last year, the writer
gave readers of her newsletter advance notice that she planned to send them a 15,000-word novella she’d written. I didn’t plan to read it: I don’t really like reading fiction on screens, and I knew I wouldn’t get around to printing it out.Then the novella, “Money Matters,” showed up and I instantly devoured it. After I read it a couple of times, I had that distinct feeling of wanting to learn more about it—and, specifically, to think about it in the way I only end up thinking about things when I write about them. I also wanted to honor the story by spreading the word however I could.
Usually, when I have feelings like this about some new writing I come across, I fire off a pitch to an editor. But these circumstances weren’t usual: for various reasons (some understandable, some indefensible), the publications I write for are in the business of reviewing (almost exclusively) new books from a certain coterie of publishers, not novellas people have posted online for free. So I had to do a bit of convincing—but in the end not as much as I anticipated. It helped that, in my pitch, I was able to point to the growing number of authors and readers who are flocking to Substack for various reasons; after an opening consideration of Kanakia’s novella, the piece turns to that broader context. It also spends some time with a new, conventionally published novel that began its public life as a serialized work on Substack.
Here’s the piece. I admit it feels kinda cool to write something like this—a literary “report from a new frontier,” really going to bat for something from “outside” the normal boundaries of the prestige review system. That was a new experience for me. I have many thoughts about everything the piece brushes up against—the business of publishing, literary culture on Substack and beyond, etc.—that didn’t make it in. Maybe I’ll take them up again in a future story. Or maybe I’ll just yammer them out on a podcast someday…
Oh, also: As I was typing this up, the latest installment of Kanakia’s newsletter landed in my inbox. In it, she gives her perspective on the review, plus elaborates on her bullish view (more bullish than mine, I think) on Substack and literary culture. A great complement to my story.
Thanks to the new ChatGPT, everyone started turning normal photographs into cartoons aping the style of the Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli. Then the Trump administration started doing the same thing. Why? I pondered this question in a short piece for the New York Times Magazine. (That’s a gift link that bypasses the paywall.)
Tracks on Tracks, the newsletter/magazine of short, stylish essays where people (sometimes me, sometimes guests) reflect on their relationship to individual songs over time, has been on a bit of a hiatus lately. In short: I got too busy. I’ve put a pause on billing for paid subscriptions, but I’m not shutting it down yet. there’s more I want to do there! Yesterday, I posted a short piece about of my own about my mysterious knee tumor, the medical waiting game, and a great Jeff Tweedy song that kept me company throughout.
That’s it for now. Be in touch. —Peter
