annotations: jia tolentino's dog
Clio Chang's profile of Luna Tolentino; our online-damaged brains; and other things I read
This is annotations, a newsletter in which I annotate a story every two weeks, and also read and write other stuff.
Some personal news: annotations is officially six months old! Thank you so much for sticking with this newsletter! Here are some favorite issues from the past half year, if you’re in the mood to marinate in nostalgia:
Sincere q: What do you like about annotations? As I look to the next six months, which writers/publications/editors do you think I should be paying attention to? Who do you want to see interview-annotated within these virtual pages? What else should I write about for my own gratification and yours lol
Okay meta time OVER, moving on to:
annotated: “Luna Tolentino: The Next Big Dog” by Clio Chang, Jezebel
Jia Tolentino season is in full swing (I am currently one-fourth of the way through Trick Mirror), and the publicity blitz is still going strong. One of the best pieces to emerge from this wave of book promotion, imo, is this profile of Tolentino’s dog, Luna, by Clio Chang for Jezebel.
First off, this piece may be a bit of a parody/joke/etc. (who knows, I can’t speak to Chang’s intentions!), but it is actually written like a semi-serious-albeit-satirical profile, which makes it useful as a more obvious illustration of the structure and conventions of a profile.
Secondly, I believe we should have more pet content in general, particularly in regards to famous people. Within this argument are two sub-arguments: 1) pets are Good, and 2) stories about a person’s pet are also inevitably about the person themself, but with the added bonus of being both more refreshing and more revealing than the twentieth profile of someone eating in a fancy restaurant or riding a ferris wheel. This piece about Patricia Lockwood’s cat Miette is another recent example in this genre.
Third, it’s just fun, and we deserve fun sometimes :)
HERE ARE MY ANNOTATIONS. (As always, comments are open, so feel free to jump in there, too.)
read
Severance by Ling Ma is a very, very, very good novel. Here’s a review of it by Jiayang Fan from last year. [The New Yorker]
A series on how Gamergate indelibly changed the internet, politics, and culture at large, both online and offline. (Notice how the cursors become such a frenzied, anxiety-inducing mass, following you wherever you go.) [NYT Opinion]
Obligatory mention: a very prescient Kyle Wagner in 2014, on Gamergate and the future of the culture wars. [Deadspin]
1619. [NYT Mag]
The backbreaking rigor of the French brigade system and the ritual of staging. [Eater]
The woman who tracks and stops the most dangerous men online before they commit unspeakable mass violence. [Cosmopolitan]
Some of my faves on how the internet broke all of our brains. [Mother Jones]
Doreen St. Félix on Toni Morrison is electric. [The New Yorker]
Elizabeth Warren, teacher. [The Cut]
This story about uniting a pair of identical twins — one raised in China, one raised in the U.S. — was more than eight years in the making! [LA Times]
The matriarchs of Succession (hell yeah I’m Succession hive!!). [The Ringer]
noted
Jia Tolentino in The Creative Independent (hey, I already said it’s Jia season, right?):
“It took me six months or so to really get a feel for what a New Yorker web piece was supposed to be. I’ve basically sorted it into a two-day rhythm. I like to spend probably the equivalent of two days thinking about something, letting it churn in the back of my head for a little bit, and then I take a day to write it, do another pass the next day, and then file.”
“You can work within this idiom of, ‘These are the thoughts that I have right now,’ and you can figure out how to use that sort of weightlessness to your advantage rather than have it undercut the quality of your work.”
“what’s the fucking use of plotting out a trajectory for yourself in a world where our food system’s going to be completely disrupted in 15 years?”
“I think something is successful if I think I got myself anywhere new at all. Which doesn’t mean getting anywhere conclusive. It doesn’t mean getting anywhere definite. I could have just moved something in my mind.”
“The writing is important in and of itself. This industry is such a nightmare; it’s so punishing. If you can work in such a way that the process will be pleasurable enough that even if nothing comes of it, the work is an end in and of itself—then you’ll be ok. It’s not a means to an end, the work is an end.”
Thank you, goodbye!
jgz