Newsletters!
A weekly digest for Tropical Depression? Pilot edition.
Many years ago I was at a bar in Nashville.1 I was maybe in my mid 20s? This guy I had gone to high school with was at the bar. I probably hadn’t seen him since we graduated. He hadn’t changed much. As ever, he had a bit of a used-car-salesman demeanor. If you were being uncharitable, you might describe him with a word that rhymes with “louche.” But he really was an earnest, very nice guy. This may almost go without saying, but he was an aspiring entrepreneur. He was into mixed martial arts.
He had heard that I was a writer of some kind and was trying, with increasingly urgent queries, to understand what that meant. We were drinking cheap beer. He wore a gaudy class ring. Finally, he said, so the idea is you’re trying to be the next John Grisham? Neither of us were smoking, but seemingly everyone else in the bar was. Mostly that’s all I could smell, but there was something sweet, too, as his face came closer to mine. Presumably his hair gel.
He repeated himself—John Grisham—satisfied that he had finally gotten to the bottom of a vexing puzzle. Close enough, I told him. He learned forward.
“I've got a secret for you,” he said.
I didn’t say anything.
“Can I give you some advice?” he asked, pulling his face closer still.
I didn’t say anything.
But he gave me the advice anyway.
“One word,” he said. “Newsletters.”2
Well. Nearly two decades later, here we are. Tip of the hat to class ring guy. One word: newsletters.
That said, what I really want with this project is more or less a blog. That’s how I plan to approach it in terms of the writing. And in my own consumption of other people’s Substacks, that’s how I tend to read: I typically like to visit the site of a writer I like and scroll though rather than actually read posts directly via email.
Substacks seem to be the most popular flavor of blog at the moment, so newsletters it is. The one thing that makes me squeamish is that I hope to write a lot—at least two to three times a week (though I was down for the count this week). Does it get annoying to get that many emails from the Tropical Depression experience? I don’t know.
Here’s a workaround others have used that I think makes sense here: a digest post that comes out every week or two weeks. If they like, people can opt to skip getting an email for each individual post and just get the digest instead.
The idea is that every week or so, I’ll do a kind of summary that links to all of the posts from the previous period. I’ll also include recommendations, small commentaries, miscellany and tidbits that don’t quite deserve a full post, etc., so it will hopefully be fun to peruse even if you’ve already been reading along with posts as they come out.
I should be able to set it up so that you can choose what comes in your inbox: only the occasional digest post or each post as it comes out, for those who like getting emails. Or you could get just the posts but not the digest, though as I said I’ll try to include a bit of new material in the weekly/bi-weekly roundup. If you go with the digest-only option, you’ll only hear from me periodically and can catch up with previous writing then if you like (or just peruse the site whenever you feel like it as a blog). I’m learning as I go, but I like the idea of giving people the option. More soon.
I think I must have the flu, but hopefully on the mend here and will return to normal posting schedule next week if the flu gods are willing and the creek don’t rise.
Meantime here’s a pilot run of the digest post, which would look something like this…
Last week’s posts
Thursday, Dec. 15
A Bad Substack is Hard to Find.
Inaugural welcome post: Good Substacks have a clear beat. Not this one. Featuring kids saying the darndest things, Jean Rhys, parrots, Fort Myers, and David Allan Coe’s gambling habits.
Saturday, Dec. 17
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!
On Johnny Cash, David Allan Coe, fallen angels, Harlan County, and a pretty darn good song. Enjoyed this one, hope y’all did, too.
Sunday, Dec. 18
On my favorite lines in the Gospel of Mark.
Thursday, Dec. 22
Honky-Tonk Tuesday #1: Jean Shepard, “Two Whoops and a Holler”
First edition of a weekly column (normally on Tuesdays!). Every week, I will listen to and share a country music song and write whatever comes to mind. This one is on a 1954 proto-feminist honky-tonk banger. Comrades, behold the development of honky-tonk angel consciousness: whereas Kitty Wells lamented “good girl[s]” who “go wrong,” Shepard announces that “the women ought to rule the world.”
Vibrations from behind the Iron Curtain
This is a 1975 recording from a band called Аиси (which would maybe transliterate to Aisi?) from the then-Soviet republic of Georgia. That’s pretty much all I know. I have no idea what’s going on here, but for some reason I can’t stop listening to this today. If you hate it, bail, but if you’re even vaguely intrigued, keep going all the way through, there are some twists and turns. Enjoy.
IMHO
Hands on a Hardbody! I want to shout this one from the rooftops: For ages, it seemed like you could only get it on janky VHS, but the incomparable 1997 documentary Hands on a Hardbody is now available to stream, and there’s a DVD out with extra interview footage.3 Not certain, but pretty sure I first saw this in the theatre at the Nashville film festival when I was maybe a senior in high school. Numerous moments have stuck with me and tickled me ever since. It’s about one of those contests where people try to win a truck by outlasting other competitors and never removing their hands from the vehicle. That’s subject matter that could easily be hokey or ham-fisted. But what they got is a masterpiece: funny, wise, and humane. There’s no special recipe, just patient attention, and a pitch-perfect cast of characters. It should at least be on the long list for discussions of Great American Movie.
The Multiverse! This wasn’t quite as good as I was hoping it would be, but worth checking out if you dig4 Everything, Everywhere All at Once: an interview with the film’s directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, conducted by Sean Carroll, the theoretical physicist who among other things has been one of the most vocal public intellectuals trying to popularize the multiple worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (his recent book on the subject was pretty good, I thought; I don’t understand the equations well enough to say I truly understand, but it gave me an okay handle on the contours of the argument and the stakes). The film’s multiverse is a wild thought experiment not based on anything in quantum physics, but I was hoping they’d get a little more rabbit holey in the conversation with Carroll. The scientist and the artists share an instinct that outlandish answers might be the only answers we have to work with.
Read Charles Portis! When I lived in Little Rock around 2002, Charles Portis was still a regular at a bar and restaurant called the Faded Rose. He seemed very much like he did not want to talk to anyone, so I never spoke to him, though I was young and drinking a lot and talking to everyone. Honestly the Faded Rose wasn’t very good, though it wasn’t all that bad. The name was aspirational. It was just a place. Years later—this was after Portis passed away—I was again living in Little Rock, and I had the chance to peruse through some old work of his in the Arkansas Times. These little gems out of nowhere: “The girl behind the bar knew nothing, which was all right. You don’t expect young people to know river lore.” His birthday was this week. He is the sort of writer that gets attention around birthdays, because of the dearly devoted nature of his fans, me among them. He would not have liked that, presumably. He had a fussy disdain for fussiness. Let me add to the chorus in case it’s missed you: Read Charles Portis. I don’t have any deep cuts today for the Portis completists. My recommendation is for those poor souls who have never read him! He wrote lots of good stuff but this is one of those situations where the two most famous works really are the best: True Grit and The Dog of the South. Pick up one, or both, of them. Wish I could read them for the first time, though I’ve enjoyed re-reading both. La Cucaracha, the cantina in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico that’s mentioned in The Dog of the South, is still around, though it’s moved from its original location. I’ve spent maybe a dozen wee-hours nights there. It’s an establishment under no misapprehensions about itself. The mezcal and cervezas are very cheap. The crowd is in trouble. The Faded Rose, if I’m remembering correctly, had passable po boys if paired with cold beer. La Cucaracha didn’t serve any food, in my recollection. If they had served food, I would not have eaten it.
And one request
If you know someone who you think might enjoy the blog/newsletter/whatever…let them know about it! I would be obliged.
The Villager Tavern, or we all just called it the Villager. Still there!
This may already be implied, but he said this in the exact intonation of the guy who says “plastics” in The Graduate.
After it gained a cult following, it eventually got turned into a musical, which I gather was a hit. For me, it’s one of those pieces that’s so perfect that I almost can’t stomach a remake in any form. Though a tantalizing what-if is that the late Robert Altman apparently was in the process of developing a fiction film version at the time of his death.
As with many sui generis works, the film is deeper and stranger than the filmmakers’ commentary on it—as I think they’d admit—so if you’re the sort who likes your impressions to remain pristine, might be better off skipping this one.
Love reading your newsletters. Hope you are feeling better