Show & Tell: Coco Gauff Won, and so Did Sam Pinkleton!!!!
Unstacked Digest for the week of June 2-8
This is Show & Tell where I tell you some things I loved from the week and the one thing I hated, plus round up everything else going on around these parts. The first half of Show & Tell is free to all. The adoration and hateration are for paid subscribers only.
My very dear and amazing friend, Sam Pinkleton won a Tony Award last night for his direction of the smash Broadway hit play, Oh, Mary!. I have more to say, very earnestly, about this later in this newsletter, but I also wanted to start here because Sam is one of my beloveds, and this is a great fucking thing and there are so many not great fucking things going on in the world right now (which I will also write about today). So why not start with a real true heartfelt love.
This Week in The Stacks
I had to give you a quick Audra vs. Patti take. I was wrong about who would win that Tony, but I am okay with that.
SNL Writer, comedian and the co-host of the Petty Crimes podcast, Ceara O’Sullivan came on the podcast to discuss TV writing, pettiness common denominators, and the books she loves most. She’ll be back on June 25th for The Stacks Book Club discussion of The Art Thief.
I read 12 books in May and ranked them all here, from least to most favorite.
Books I Read This Week
Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship by Dana A. Williams
An extensive look at Toni Morrison’s tenure as an editor at Random House in the 1970s and 1980s. I was very torn on this book. On one hand I loved learning about this piece of Morrison’s career, it is often under discussed, so getting a glimpse into felt fresh. It is so well researched and detailed, and you can tell a lot of care went into bringing this book to readers. On the other hand, I felt like Toni at Random was organized in a way that didn’t allow for insights, but instead was more of a recitation of events for multiple books Morrison worked on — who they sent galleys to, who came up with the title, a few moments of tension, and then on to the next book. Williams could’ve benefited from a structure that talked about Morrison’s editorship overall, explaining her impact and influence in the industry, how her books performed, and how that impacted her as a writer, instead of being organized by author/title she worked on. The structure at present felt more like a rinse and repeat style, even academic in ways, instead of a depiction of the totality of Morrison’s years as an editor.
The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel
Our June Book Club Pick, The Art Thief, is about a man and his girlfriend who pull off over 200 art heists across Europe in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. What a wild story! I was pretty much locked in from the start, our main thief, Stéphane Breitwieser is so unlikable, I couldn’t help but root for him1. I had some questions about the way in which Finkel told the story, how much information he gave his reader and when, but overall I enjoyed it a lot. A perfect summer nonfiction read, drama, twists, turns, and some serious WTF moments. Plus, the book brings up some really interesting questions of criminality, punishment, and responsibility. Not to mention the main question of who does art belongs to. A lot of good stuff to discuss on the podcast on June 25th, so please tune in!
Fave of the week!
Housekeeping
Whenever Chelsea Devantez invites me on
to talk about articles I jump at the chance to say yes. This time we talked about a handful of articles including one on baby names. Did you know people were naming their kids military themed names like Remington? We have lost the plot America.Things I Love…
Politics
So in very bad things ICE has been doing raids in Los Angeles. I do not have an adequate grasp on the English language to express the devastation of what is happening in our communities. It is gut wrenching. It is cruelty at its most profound. The torture humans are experiencing in Los Angeles as they are ripped away from their parents/children/siblings/partners. It is just beyond comprehension. Fuck ICE. Fuck anyone who stands with them. It is a sham government agency that didn’t exist until after 9/11. We truly do not need it.
My love this week is the city of Los Angeles.
People can talk all the shit they want about LA, but they would be wrong. When these ICE raids started LA immediately started protesting. Some folks got in the way protecting fellow Angelenos with their bodies2, they pushed back, got arrested, and generally got in the way. Other folks marched downtown in what felt like a spontaneous act of mass dissent. The protests have not stopped. They have been peaceful and powerful and made a difference. Our Mayor, Karen Bass, came out fast and loud against these raids, our chief of police3 said LAPD would not be assistingICE in any way. Basically everyone was like fuck you ICE, fuck you Donald Trump, and fuck you anyone who rides with these assholes.
Los Angeles isn’t perfect, but between this and the response to the fires, I’ll take LA vs. the field.
Pop Culture
The Tony Awards were last night and lots of people won, and that’s great, but none as great as my dear friend Sam Pinkleton. If you don’t know Sam, he directed Oh, Mary! The biggest play on Broadway this season.
I have written about Sam in this newsletter as a person who inspires me (at the end of the pice below).
And, Sam was a very early guest on The Stacks, and we discussed Vulgar Favors for the fourth ever book club pick.
I have known and loved Sam pretty much from the moment we met at NYU, twenty years ago. Do any of you have any friends who remind you how important it is to care about what you put into the world, and make shit with all sincerity, and like, try hard? Because for me, Sam is 1000% that friend. I would be a considerably worse artist (?) and human without his constant reminder and example.
In the last ten or so years trying has become something people sort of shit on. Not to make it political4, but it is very much the whole going from Obama to Trump. As best exemplified in the 2016 election of Clinton vs Trump. People mocked Hilary for caring too much, wanting it too much, and trying too hard to win. They gave Trump points for being chill and just doing things, without knowing the details or having a plan. They rewarded the kid who just gets up in the front of the class and wings it.
This isn’t to say there aren’t people who are inspiring or exciting because they don’t try hard or they are naturals5 or whatever. But that whole ethos has become the one that we’re celebrating culturally right now, and I hate that for us.
I fundamentally rebuke the IDGAF approach to art, creativity, and life. Mainly because Sam has shown me time and again that trying hard is actually the thing that makes it all worth it. That genuinely putting your all into something and wanting it to be the best something is meaningful to audiences and to artists alike. That it is attractive, not in the good looking way6, but in the way that it attracts goodness and generosity and joy and more creativity back to you.
Not caring is a defense mechanism, it is a way to protect ourselves preemptively from feeling the hurt of failure. If you don’t care then it won’t matter if people tell you what you made (or who you are) sucks. It is the thing we do so we don’t have the let down of wanting something so badly and not getting it. I understand that deeply in my bones because I can be so sarcastic and cynical and act like I am above caring. Spoiler, I am not above caring. At my core I am an earnest try-hard who wants to make great things and make people feel good and seen and loved and celebrated7. And I learned so much of that from being friends with, and a fan of, Sam Pinkleton.
And before you read this and think Sam is an outwardly earnest person, let me say he is not. He likely is reading and hating ever word of this, because it is a lot too heart of your sleeve for Sam’s taste. He is a great hang because he is also very snarky and critical. Sam is one of my safest spaces to talk shit about books, and TV, and theatre, and food, and politics, and whatever else. Because part of being earnest, is just caring a lot about things, both loving and hating. We rarely do in between, but is we do look out, because that is the greatest insult at all coming from us. Don’t get me wrong, Sam can talk shit about art like the best of them, and this is of course why we are friends.
But at the end of the day, Sam is a romantic about the world and everything in it8.
So yeah, I don’t know, I can’t make you care, and I can’t prove that the embarrassing cringe way is the right way. Or that it will be worth it. Or that you will win if you try hard9. But, what I can tell you is that watching someone you know and love be recognized by their peers because they dove head first into their work, and unabashedly cared about what they made. It is life affirming.