The Bluestocking 333: Theo Von Blindside
a cartoon image he doesn’t recognize.
Happy Friday!
My time on planes last week gave me time to read rather than doomscroll, and so I bring you two book recommendations: first is Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde. It’s the sequel to Shades of Grey, a comic fantasy novel he wrote before 50 Shades of Grey kinda ruined the title, and both books are set in a world with a colour-based caste system.
Essentially, most people are “Greys” who can’t see any natural colour, and then the hierarchy runs through yellows (prefects), greens (gardeners) and up to purples (overlords). The second book massively expands all the lore, and ends in a way that—a huge surprise to me—made me feel quite differently about a current political issue. (If you’ve also read this book, please comment as I would love to discuss it!) Jasper Fforde is probably the closest thing we have to someone working in the Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett space, and although there are perhaps three too many deus ex machina moments in this book, I loved it.
My other recommendation unfortunately counts as log-rolling, because Adam Macqueen is my podcastmate on Page 94. Adam and I often talk on the podcast about the sheer insanity that was 1970s British politics, because I wrote a screenplay about Barbara Castle and Maureen Colquhoun, both of whom make glancing appearances in his novel Beneath The Streets. It’s a thriller—an alternate history where Norman Scott got bumped off instead of Rinka. The protagonist is ex-rent boy Tommy Wildeblood (when I texted Adam to say how much I liked it, I did suggest that any TV adaptation would probably have to feature 10 percent fewer blowjobs) and it’s set in the grubby Soho of 1976. You think you know how mental the 1970s was? This book will remind you that it was even more insane than that: a time when the prime minister’s personal doctor seriously offered to poison one of his aides.
Until next time,
Helen
PS. There will be no Bluestocking next week, as I have a big deadline looming. See you in September!
Trump And The Cocaine Owl (The Atlantic, gift link)
Sometimes, I like to imagine what would happen if historical figures from American politics were transposed to the current day. How, do you think, would Dwight Eisenhower react to a man telling him that cocaine “will turn you into a damn owl, homie, you know what I’m saying? You’ll be out on your own porch. You’ll be your own streetlamp.”
Well, I can tell you how Donald Trump reacted: with intense curiosity. His discussion of drug and alcohol addiction on Theo Von’s This Past Weekend podcast demonstrated perhaps the most interest Trump has ever shown in another human being. Before watching the video of the episode, I hadn’t realized the former president was capable of sentences that end with a question mark.
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I watched Donald Trump on Theo Von’s podcast and came away with a surprising amount of insight into Trump’s election strategy and how his family life might have made him who he is.
Chaser: Max Read groups Theo Von together with a group of young male internet celebrities to whom Trump is giving interviews this election cycle, including Logan Paul. He calls them “dipshit streamers,” although there’s some crossover with the Zynternet.
How To Find Stories (Substack)
I try especially to avoid interviewing experts. As I mentioned in a post last week, it’s not because I’m personally anti-them. I like them! What I’m anti is the way including experts can screw up the tone of your story. There are a whole bunch of shows out there about the culture wars that heavily feature experts. But if you institute a ‘no expert’ policy, it means you HAVE to only interview people with some first-person connection to the story – people whose lives spiraled and became origin stories for world-shattering culture wars.
This turned out to be a fantastic rule for Things Fell Apart. It defined the show. Human stories offer so much light and clarity, especially when you find them in the midst of deafening wars.
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Jon Ronson’s new Substack is about writing—from finding ideas to polishing your material. I liked this post about researching Things Fall Apart, his radio series on the deep origins of the culture wars, and particularly this section about the problem of relying on experts. He’s right that media-savvy talking heads can become a crutch; you know they’ll answer your calls, say something on-topic, and it will all be zero hassle. Quick turnaround journalism depends on them as a result. But there’s something about the texture of people’s real lives that is more compelling—a classic case of “show, don’t tell.”
I’m in the middle of writing something with two opposing sides, and one of the points of contention is a glancing reference to towels. Of course, it’s not really about the towels. They are a synecdoche: something small that stands in for the whole. That’s why, in my newsletter on writing, one of my rules is: details are everything.
Quick Links
I read Sam Freedman’s very good blog on the fiscal black hole and I have to say… I don’t see higher/additional rate pension tax relief surviving, when the government desperately needs money and they could take £15bn a year off rich(er) people by scrapping it. What I would add, though, is this: the 40p starts much lower (in real terms) than it used to, so changing this wouldn’t just target “city fatcats,” but mid-career teachers and doctors. Also, there’s an equity issue: anyone who bought a house in 1997 has essentially received a tax-free lump sum that they can use for their retirement and/or care costs, thanks to house price rises. My generation and below will go into retirement with less asset wealth, so you’d ideally want them to put a load of cash into their pensions.
The billionaire Telegram CEO Pavel Durov got arrested in Paris, and Elon Musk/Marjorie Taylor Greene/the Russian army are very upset about it. Why? Here’s the final episode of Helen Lewis Has Left The Chat from the spring, which looks at how the Ukraine invasion became the “Telegram war.” (BBC)
“I visited Oher twice during the spring, first in Nashville, where he lives with his wife, Tiffany, and their five children, and then in Memphis. These were the first times he had talked publicly since filing suit against the Tuohys. He was, at all times, resolute. He believes he was wronged both by the couple who took him in and by a movie that made him into a cartoon image he doesn’t recognize.” The young black footballer, taken in by a white family, whose story was the basis for The Blind Side, is now suing the family , claiming that they took advantage of him (New York Times, £).
“As a “pro-white” organization, of course, the group required recruits to be Caucasian themselves. After a teen-age applicant admitted that he was a quarter Filipino, others in the Seattle crew recommended rejecting him. (“His phenotypes are wack as fuck,” one complained.) But the recruit responded that Hitler’s Nuremberg race laws would have allowed him to have sex with an Aryan woman. What could they say? He’d out-Nazi-ed the neo-Nazis. The teen was let in.” I mean… well done that aspirational fascist, I guess? You got them good. From this New Yorker piece on far-right infiltrators.
The Guardian’s Sirin Kale on a freelance TV producer who killed himself after working on true-crime documentaries. Very interesting on the ethics of these shows (I think they are largely grotesque and exploitative, and as one of my friends never stops pointing out, true-crime podcasts—that bother grieving relatives and encourage amateur internet detectives—are often made by some of the most unbearably pious people in the industry). Also this line gave me pause, I wonder if the evidence backs it up: “We know that, in journalists, PTSD seems to be correlated with ethical regrets.”
Chaser: Recoil from this account of CrimeCon, the true life crime convention where this year’s headliner was the father of JonBenet Ramsay (Slate). Contains this horrifying sentence: “It’s almost like you have to market your missing child.”
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I interviewed Jasper Fforde a million years ago: he’s a lovely guy, like a much younger Bill Nighy (perhaps older now I guess, though not older than Bill Nighy, nobody can be). His earlier Thursday Next series (about a detective called Thursday Next) are amazing works of wildness, including a world where George Formby is still alive and is the British president. Recommended.
Thanks again for this Helen - just downloaded the Jasper Fforde. I was wondering if you’d ever considered making a ‘Younger Readers’ edition of Difficult Women? I’d love to share it with my kids who are on cusp of teenagery and to use it in the school I work at. Might sound silly but there have been great ‘Young Readers’ editions of recent books by David Olusoga, Adam Rutherford, Tim Harford, Trevor Noah and even Alastair Campbell is at it now and they are really great for getting kids engaged with more complex ideas. I was listening to you on the Common Reader podcast talking about the sort of Rebel Girls/ 50 feminist role models books which are fun but do avoid the moral complexity of many of these figures. Finally, I love the way you pop up on every podcast I listen to (Private Eye, Past Present Future, Blocked and Reported) - would love to hear you on Ezra Klein’s show discussing Terry Pratchett with him!