Who Are We, Really?
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
If someone had no relationships—no colleagues to appease, no parents to make proud, no lovers to impress—how might they behave? With those interactions removed, would you be able to glimpse, as Jordan Kisner wrote in our May issue, an 'authentic, independent self'? The author Katie Kitamura, whose new novel, Audition, is the subject of Kisner's essay, isn't sure. As she said in a recent interview, 'When you take away all of the role-playing, all of the performance, what is left?' It could be someone free and real, or it could be 'a profoundly raw, destabilized, possibly non-functioning self.' Audition, as Kisner notes, is part of a recent subgenre of literature that explores this very question. The book is the last installment of a loose, thematically connected trilogy from Kitamura; it follows a nameless actor who reveals very little of herself, instead conveying the words, identities, and stories of the characters she plays.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic 's Books section:
The comic-book artist who mastered space and time
The new king of tech
A love-hate letter to technology
Though we don't know much about the main character, her gender is crucial to the story: Women, Kisner argues, are frequently defined by their roles, as mothers, say, or wives, before being appreciated as individuals. Kisner identifies a number of books that imagine a woman who is 'extracted from her core relational ties.' Protagonists in, for example, Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy, Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation, and Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation seem somewhat vacant and alienated from the people around them. In many instances, readers don't know their names or the basics of their backstories. Even the characters themselves, Kisner observes, seem unsure of who they really are.
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Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Paris Can Be Intimidating—But It Has Great Butter
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain's account of his international adventures, made him famous—and cemented the stereotype of the Ugly American. One hundred and fifty-eight years later, Caity Weaver followed him to Paris. Caity and I chatted about her hilarious recounting of her trip in The Atlantic, why Paris can feel so intimidating, and the only food she ate there that she actually liked. Isabel Fattal: If you could go back in time and travel to Paris with Mark Twain, would you? Caity Weaver: Could I be assured of a safe return? Isabel: Yes, for imagination's sake. Caity: Absolutely. I would go anywhere with him. One of the things I was struck by when I reread this book before my trip was how unbelievably funny it is. Of course I knew that Mark Twain was 'a humorist,' but there were sections where I was laughing out loud. I think a lot of times when people think of old books, they get an idea in their head of a book that's really stuffy or boring. But this was cracklingly interesting. As a reader, it's rewarding to come across prose like that. As a writer, it's extremely irritating and intimidating. This man was funnier than I'll ever be, and he did it in 1869. Isabel: Do you have a favorite line or passage from the book? Caity: There was a section where he wrote about what he calls 'the Old Travelers'—well-traveled know-it-alls you sometimes encounter abroad: 'They will not let you know anything. They sneer at your most inoffensive suggestions; they laugh unfeelingly at your treasured dreams of foreign lands; they brand the statements of your traveled aunts and uncles as the stupidest absurdities.' Isabel: If you could ask Twain one question about his trip, what would it be? Caity: I would say: 'Sam, Mr. Clemens, did you go to the Louvre? Did you set foot inside the Louvre, really?' I can't prove that he didn't, but I strongly suspect that he didn't. And I feel like he would tell me. Can't kid a kidder. Isabel: You write in your story about the possibility that Twain was ashamed about not understanding the art at the Louvre. Does visiting Paris make a person feel like they need to have a certain level of cultural knowledge? Did you feel intimidated at any point? Caity: I feel like a completely idiotic, disorganized, disheveled crumb bum anywhere, but especially in Paris. It's like walking into a very fancy hotel lobby. Some people are going to be really comfortable there, and some people are going to think, Am I gonna be arrested for walking into this hotel lobby? Paris is so just-so. I find it to be an intimidating place. The combination of not really speaking the language and the city being so beautiful … I felt a little bit on edge there. Isabel: I have one bone to pick with you. I think you were eating wrong in Paris. You didn't eat anything yummy! Caity: I sure didn't. (Well, I had great ramen.) Isabel: What went wrong? Caity: I didn't eat anything I absolutely loved except the butter. I had a crêpe suzette—delicious, and thrilling to have a small fire caused in a restaurant at your behest. I had some croissants. I really was hoping to be able to write, 'Oh my God, I found the best croissant in the world,' and I just don't think I did. But the butter: unbelievably good. I took so many notes for myself trying to describe the color and the taste of the butter. [Reads through her notes.] I suppose I am an Ugly American, because this is my description of butter: 'creamy; has a scent; smells almost like movie theater butter.' The color was such a rich, deep yellow, almost like how an egg yolk can sometimes tip over into orange. My notes say, 'So fatty and rich.' Next bullet point: 'like if the whole room were made out of pillows.' And then: 'Yes, I realize I am describing a padded cell.' But it was an ultimate richness, softness, like, Just let me roll around in a padded cell. That was how I felt eating this butter. I took dozens of photos in my hotel room trying to capture its exact hue, and failed to. I encountered another group of Americans in my hotel lobby who were trying to figure out a way to transport butter home in their luggage. I involved myself in their conversation, as Americans do: What if the hotel was willing to store it in a freezer, in an insulated lunch bag? We devoted quite a bit of time to solving this problem. Isabel: Did they ultimately give up? Caity: Oh, no, I think they're probably enjoying that butter right now. I wanted to bring a bunch of dried sausage back to the U.S. And then, after I purchased it, I realized that I could get in trouble for flying with it. I ate so much saucisson in my hotel room so fast. I worried such a dense concentration of salt might cause my heart to shut down. I Googled something like: How much dried sausage too much. Isabel: I'm feeling better about your food experience now. Read Caity's article here. Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic: Feudalism is our future. The Super Bowl of internet beefs A PTSD therapy 'seemed too good to be true.' The Week Ahead Homework, a memoir by Geoff Dyer about growing up in postwar England Materialists, a romantic comedy starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal (in theaters Friday) The 78th annual Tony Awards, hosted by Cynthia Erivo (on CBS and Paramount+ at 8 p.m. ET tonight) Essay A High IQ Makes You an Outsider, Not a Genius By Helen Lewis Who has the highest IQ in history? One answer would be: a 10-year-old girl from Missouri. In 1956, according to lore, she took a version of the Stanford-Binet IQ test and recorded a mental age of 22 years and 10 months, equivalent to an IQ north of 220. (The minimum score needed to get into Mensa is 132 or 148, depending on the test, and the average IQ in the general population is 100.) Her result lay unnoticed for decades, until it turned up in The Guinness Book of World Records, which lauded her as having the highest childhood score ever. Her name, appropriately enough, was Marilyn vos Savant. And she was, by the most common yardstick, a genius. I've been thinking about which people attract the genius label for the past few years, because it's so clearly a political judgment. You can tell what a culture values by who it labels a genius—and also what it is prepared to tolerate. The Renaissance had its great artists. The Romantics lionized androgynous, tubercular poets. Today we are in thrall to tech innovators and brilliant jerks in Silicon Valley. Vos Savant hasn't made any scientific breakthroughs or created a masterpiece. She graduated 178th in her high-school class of 613, according to a 1989 profile in New York magazine. She married at 16, had two children by 19, became a stay-at-home mother, and was divorced in her 20s. She tried to study philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, but did not graduate. Read the full article. More in Culture Fast times and mean girls Wes Anderson lets the real world filter in. 'What hula taught me' What happens when people don't understand how AI works Archivists aren't ready for the 'very online' era. Dear James: 'I'm not very punk rock.' Diddy's trial is revealing a conspiracy, but it's not the one people expected. The novelist who learned to write anger—and its aftermath Catch Up on When Pete Hegseth's Pentagon tenure started going sideways The travel ban shows that Americans have grown numb. The Trump administration is spending $2 million to figure out whether DEI causes plane crashes. Photo Album Spend time with our photos of the week, which include images of monsoon flooding in India, Dragon Boat Festival races in China, a huge tomato fight in Colombia, and more. Play our daily crossword. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Fox News
3 hours ago
- Fox News
'Little House on the Prairie' star Melissa Gilbert says being 'raggedy and dirty' landed her iconic role
Melissa Gilbert ditched the Hollywood glam to star in "Little House on the Prairie." The actress, who starred as Laura Ingalls, recently appeared on the "Hey Dude… The 90s Called!" podcast and opened up about what it was like auditioning for her role in the film, which paved the way for the series. "Little House on the Prairie" aired from 1974 to 1983. "I would change into my audition uniform, which was just overalls and a flannel shirt and tennis shoes," the 61-year-old recalled, according to People magazine. "And whatever dirt was on my face at the time or food or whatever, it was just left there. My mom would throw my hair into pigtails, and then I'd just go in and sit on the floor and do my homework until they called me in. "That's what happened with the 'Little House audition,'" Gilbert told the outlet. "The first audition, it was like a room full of girls with their mom primping and making barrel curls on their fingers, you know, and straightening their pinafores. And I came in all raggedy and dirty and messy. "It worked." The star described how the audition process was competitive, but ditching the Hollywood glam proved to be key. Gilbert later found out she got the role from Michael Landon's daughter, Leslie. "I was at school one day, and I was in the lunch area. And this girl in an upper grade walked over to me, and she said, 'Are you Melissa?' And I said, 'Yeah, I am.' And she said, 'I'm Leslie Landon. And my dad says you're gonna be Half Pint.'" According to the outlet, Leslie heard the news at a family dinner the previous night. It was there where the patriarch declared, "We found our Laura." "There were no cellphones, obviously, back then," said Gilbert. "So, I run screaming to the office and tell them I have to call my mom immediately. My agents didn't know yet. My mom didn't know yet. Leslie got in so much trouble. We've been really close friends ever since that day. … That was just the beginning of a friendship that was filled with a lot of misadventures too, for, now, 50 years or more." WATCH: 'LITTLE HOUSE' STAR MICHAEL LANDON WAS STUBBORN ABOUT HIS HEALTH: DAUGHTER It was a lucky break for Gilbert, who was previously rejected for a role in a remake of "A Miracle on 34th Street," a part she really wanted. "I was really sad, and I remember my dad. … I was sitting in the garage," she said. "My dad used to build furniture when he wasn't on the road when he wasn't working. So, I was in his tool shop, and he said to me, 'Listen, just because you didn't get this, it's OK. It just means something better is gonna come along.' "I remember crying and saying, 'There's nothing better! What's better?' And two weeks later, 'Little House on the Prairie.'" In 2024, Gilbert told Fox News Digital she had to leave Los Angeles to age gracefully. "I looked at myself in the mirror several years back," Gilbert recalled. "I was living in Los Angeles, and I did not recognize who I was. I had overfilled my face and my lips. My forehead didn't move. I was still dyeing my hair red. I was driving a Mustang convertible. I was a size two in an unhealthy way. I looked like a frozen version of my younger self, and that's not who I was. "I was stuck," Gilbert admitted. "I could feel myself fighting it. And I said to myself, 'It's time to age.' I had to leave Los Angeles to do that — not Hollywood — Los Angeles specifically." Gilbert said she and her husband, actor Timothy Busfield, moved to his home state of Michigan after their wedding in 2013. They lived there for five years. She felt free to finally age. "I stop coloring my hair," she explained. "I had [my] breast implants removed. I decided to just be the best, healthiest version of myself without this pressure to look a certain way, and it paid off in a huge way. "I finally found my feet as a woman, fully, 100% strong in my own knowledge, in my own accomplishments. Everything got easier. And a bonus? I have a lot more free time not staring in a mirror, sitting in a dermatologist's chair or sitting in a hair chair." In 2019, Gilbert and Busfield bought a rustic cottage on 14 acres in the Catskill Mountains. Life today is "incredibly fulfilling," she said. "It's remarkable," Gilbert gushed. "I love being this age. There are things about it that are not a lot of fun. I don't like it when my ankles ache in the morning or my skin's drier. Aging is not for sissies, but it is certainly better than the alternative. And I've never felt better in my skin."
Atlantic
4 hours ago
- Atlantic
Paris Can Be Intimidating—But It Has Great Butter
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain's account of his international adventures, made him famous—and cemented the stereotype of the Ugly American. One hundred and fifty-eight years later, Caity Weaver followed him to Paris. Caity and I chatted about her hilarious recounting of her trip in The Atlantic, why Paris can feel so intimidating, and the only food she ate there that she actually liked. Isabel Fattal: If you could go back in time and travel to Paris with Mark Twain, would you? Caity Weaver: Could I be assured of a safe return? Isabel: Yes, for imagination's sake. Caity: Absolutely. I would go anywhere with him. One of the things I was struck by when I reread this book before my trip was how unbelievably funny it is. Of course I knew that Mark Twain was 'a humorist,' but there were sections where I was laughing out loud. I think a lot of times when people think of old books, they get an idea in their head of a book that's really stuffy or boring. But this was cracklingly interesting. As a reader, it's rewarding to come across prose like that. As a writer, it's extremely irritating and intimidating. This man was funnier than I'll ever be, and he did it in 1869. Isabel: Do you have a favorite line or passage from the book? Caity: There was a section where he wrote about what he calls 'the Old Travelers'—well-traveled know-it-alls you sometimes encounter abroad: 'They will not let you know anything. They sneer at your most inoffensive suggestions; they laugh unfeelingly at your treasured dreams of foreign lands; they brand the statements of your traveled aunts and uncles as the stupidest absurdities.' Isabel: If you could ask Twain one question about his trip, what would it be? Caity: I would say: 'Sam, Mr. Clemens, did you go to the Louvre? Did you set foot inside the Louvre, really?' I can't prove that he didn't, but I strongly suspect that he didn't. And I feel like he would tell me. Can't kid a kidder. Isabel: You write in your story about the possibility that Twain was ashamed about not understanding the art at the Louvre. Does visiting Paris make a person feel like they need to have a certain level of cultural knowledge? Did you feel intimidated at any point? Caity: I feel like a completely idiotic, disorganized, disheveled crumb bum anywhere, but especially in Paris. It's like walking into a very fancy hotel lobby. Some people are going to be really comfortable there, and some people are going to think, Am I gonna be arrested for walking into this hotel lobby? Paris is so just-so. I find it to be an intimidating place. The combination of not really speaking the language and the city being so beautiful … I felt a little bit on edge there. Isabel: I have one bone to pick with you. I think you were eating wrong in Paris. You didn't eat anything yummy! Caity: I sure didn't. (Well, I had great ramen.) Isabel: What went wrong? Caity: I didn't eat anything I absolutely loved except the butter. I had a crêpe suzette—delicious, and thrilling to have a small fire caused in a restaurant at your behest. I had some croissants. I really was hoping to be able to write, 'Oh my God, I found the best croissant in the world,' and I just don't think I did. But the butter: unbelievably good. I took so many notes for myself trying to describe the color and the taste of the butter. [ Reads through her notes.] I suppose I am an Ugly American, because this is my description of butter: 'creamy; has a scent; smells almost like movie theater butter.' The color was such a rich, deep yellow, almost like how an egg yolk can sometimes tip over into orange. My notes say, 'So fatty and rich.' Next bullet point: 'like if the whole room were made out of pillows.' And then: 'Yes, I realize I am describing a padded cell.' But it was an ultimate richness, softness, like, Just let me roll around in a padded cell. That was how I felt eating this butter. I took dozens of photos in my hotel room trying to capture its exact hue, and failed to. I encountered another group of Americans in my hotel lobby who were trying to figure out a way to transport butter home in their luggage. I involved myself in their conversation, as Americans do: What if the hotel was willing to store it in a freezer, in an insulated lunch bag? We devoted quite a bit of time to solving this problem. Caity: Oh, no, I think they're probably enjoying that butter right now. I wanted to bring a bunch of dried sausage back to the U.S. And then, after I purchased it, I realized that I could get in trouble for flying with it. I ate so much saucisson in my hotel room so fast. I worried such a dense concentration of salt might cause my heart to shut down. I Googled something like: How much dried sausage too much. Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic: The Week Ahead Essay A High IQ Makes You an Outsider, Not a Genius By Helen Lewis Who has the highest IQ in history? One answer would be: a 10-year-old girl from Missouri. In 1956, according to lore, she took a version of the Stanford-Binet IQ test and recorded a mental age of 22 years and 10 months, equivalent to an IQ north of 220. (The minimum score needed to get into Mensa is 132 or 148, depending on the test, and the average IQ in the general population is 100.) Her result lay unnoticed for decades, until it turned up in The Guinness Book of World Records, which lauded her as having the highest childhood score ever. Her name, appropriately enough, was Marilyn vos Savant. And she was, by the most common yardstick, a genius. I've been thinking about which people attract the genius label for the past few years, because it's so clearly a political judgment. You can tell what a culture values by who it labels a genius—and also what it is prepared to tolerate. The Renaissance had its great artists. The Romantics lionized androgynous, tubercular poets. Today we are in thrall to tech innovators and brilliant jerks in Silicon Valley. Vos Savant hasn't made any scientific breakthroughs or created a masterpiece. She graduated 178th in her high-school class of 613, according to a 1989 profile in New York magazine. She married at 16, had two children by 19, became a stay-at-home mother, and was divorced in her 20s. She tried to study philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, but did not graduate. More in Culture Catch Up on The Atlantic When Pete Hegseth's Pentagon tenure started going sideways The travel ban shows that Americans have grown numb. The Trump administration is spending $2 million to figure out whether DEI causes plane crashes. Photo Album Spend time with our photos of the week, which include images of monsoon flooding in India, Dragon Boat Festival races in China, a huge tomato fight in Colombia, and more.
