Discover more from a fête worse than death
Sorry for the proliferation of Substacks—I promise, this is the last for a while, although please keep an eye out for a bigger piece out next week in the Washington Post that I’ve been working on, at least if you subscribe to this because you like my writing and not out of hate and fascination—but there is big and important news today: the beauty issue of The Point is here! Please, please read it! CLICK: https://thepointmag.com/issue/issue-30/.
It features an editors-only symposium on beauty and opens with a wonderfully thought-provoking letter from Anastasia Berg (I don’t think I actually agree with much in the letter, beyond the necessity of thinking through what the “aesthetic turn” should look like, but I enjoyed reading it and thinking about it immensely): https://thepointmag.com/criticism/on-the-aesthetic-turn/
Here are the essays I was lucky enough to edit:
-Amazing novelist and all-around brilliant writer Jessi Jezewska Stevens (who also, insanely, understands math and finance) on literary and economic fictions, and on the need to for us (the literati) to take fiction back from financiers: https://thepointmag.com/criticism/double-reality/
-Amazing film critic and all-around brilliant philosopher Nicholas Whittaker on David Cronenberg’s return to body horror and sensuality in film: https://thepointmag.com/criticism/crimes-of-the-future/
And here is the piece I wrote, a contribution to the beauty symposium about personal beauty, which contains some of the arguments I would’ve made, and maybe will make, in my dissertation if I ever get around to writing it. Very much hope you’ll read it, since it’s the fruit of years (!) of thinking about this topic: https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/unnatural-gifts/
There’s also a dialogue with philosopher Alexander Nehamas, one of my favorites, https://thepointmag.com/dialogue/beyond-comprehension/.
And of course the rest of the beauty symposium, all of which is worth reading!!!!!!! GO READ IT GO READ IT GO READ IT