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Weekend Butler: Claire Keegan, my favorite writer of 2023. Consumer Warning (“Saltburn”). Consumer Applause: “Air.” Dolly Parton, philanthropist. “Gezellig.” Low-cal Carrot Soup. A Rich Nobel Poet.
Published: Jan 04, 2024
Category:
Weekend
MY FAVORITE NOVEL OF 2023
Claire Keegan (photo, above) wrote the best novel I read last year. “Small Things Like These” ends abruptly… on page 128. Her previous book is even shorter. As she explains: “When I was young, my mother taught me that if I went to the butcher and was choosing a piece of beef to roast, it should be marbled with fat. And I actually see ‘good’ prose in the same way – marbled with what doesn’t seem to be necessary…”
Everything in this novel is necessary — not that the pages fly by. As she writes:
“’Small Things’ is the story of a man with five daughters, in a marriage, who’s running a coal yard and is probably a workaholic, and maybe facing some kind of midlife crisis. It’s a story about a man who was loved in his youth and can’t resist offering the same type of love to somebody else. And it may actually be a self-destructive thing. I think this is a love story. It’s not a romantic love story. But it’s a story about love.”
If the story and the subject are deadly serious… well, that may explain why, in 22 years, she’s published only four books.
“One day we won’t get to the end of that day. And that piece of time between now and then is called our lives. And I think if you’re a fiction writer, you want to say something meaningful about that.”
Keegan has a new book, a collection of stories, none of them recent. It’s called “So Late in the Day: stories of men and women,” and as you may imagine, these romances are not happy. The last page of the final story so terrified me that I wish I hadn’t read it and she hadn’t written it. Which is a backhanded way of saying that it is, like her other writing, immensely powerful and completely original. [To buy it from Amazon, click here.]
CONSUMER WARNING
“Saltburn” is the story of a poor boy at Oxford who is befriended by an upper-class god and invited to the family manse for the summer. It’s superficially about class and privilege; it’s ultimately about revenge. Some critics have declared it a decadent masterpiece. It’s free if you have Amazon Prime, but it’s two hours and eleven minutes long, which is just long enough for you to resent it, even if you walk away and make phone calls and brew coffee while it rolls on and on and on.
A MUCH BETTER FILM THAN YOU IMAGINE
“Air” is the story of Nike signing Michael Jordan. It’s gritty — Nike is a loser of a shoe company, and only one zealot wants to spend the entire signing budget on one untested kid. It’s about real passion and real risk and a mother who knows exactly how good her son can be. It’s on Amazon Prime. Here’s the trailer.
DOLLY PARTON: MEGA-PHILANTHROPIST
She’s given away $500 million worth of kids’ books. Amazing.
“TELL THEM ABOUT THE DREAM, MARTIN!”
from Facebook:
Shortly after meeting at the National Baptist Convention in 1956, Martin Luther King Jr. and the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson became good friends. King confided his hopes and dreams in Jackson, and when he felt down, he would call her and say, “Mahalia, I’m having a rough day. Sing for me.” “Mahalia would sing to him in the phone. He would listen to her voice, and sometimes tears would come down his face…She was not just his favorite gospel singer, she was practically his muse.” On August 28, 1963, before King took the speaker’s podium at the historic March on Washington, he asked his muse to sing to the audience of 250,000. So when King began to give his prepared speech, his muse was behind him, where, at one point, Jackson can be heard shouting, “Tell them about the dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream!” Only because it came from Jackson, Jones writes, “could he instantly understand the value of the suggestion and run with it. In an instant, Martin saw the opportunity in front of him. He saw it through Mahalia’s eyes.” Brought out of him by Jackson and against the advice of his advisors (the night before, an advisor told King, “Don’t use the lines about ‘I have a dream.’ It’s trite, it’s cliche.”), King went off-script and began to improvise some of the most famous lines in history, “I have a dream that one day…”
“GEZELLIG” — USEFUL WORD,GREAT CONCEPT
From Billy Oppenheimer: There’s a Dutch word that describes feeling cozy, usually with friends or loved ones: “gezellig.”
Why it matters: The gezellig Dutch culture can remind us all to be more present with friends and ourselves.
Thought bubble: On a recent — very cold — trip to Amsterdam, I found the town overflowing with warmth. It wasn’t just the hot soup, fondue and ginger tea, but a friendly, intimate atmosphere. As a local explained to me: That’s gezellig, a word that can describe getting beers with friends, the beer itself or the place where you get the beers. Gezellig is “a positive warm emotion or feeling rather than just something physical.”
Between the lines: Much like the rest of their European neighbors, the Dutch have systems in place to help them prioritize downtime. For example: “In the Netherlands, people take long holidays … and it’s not considered a good thing if they see you at work late,” says Olga Mecking, a multilingual author who lives in the Netherlands. Other factors: The parental leave policy and universal health care.
If you’re pursuing the cozy energy of gezellig this winter, you can do as the Dutch do. Invite only people you like, serve shared finger foods, and keep things small and informal, says Mecking. In the Netherlands, “cozy places don’t tend to be very big and splashy,” she says — but they do tend to be old, filled with plants and warmly lit.
MUSIC
For 30 years, I’ve given my doctor a CD of music that is foreign, cutting edge, original. This year I gave him a CD that is about comfort and calm — music that soothes in a time of crisis and conflict. This: Bach Suites for cello.
THE WEEKEND POEM
In 1996, Wislawa Szymborska (l923-2012) won the most money in the history of Nobel awards and the most money ever won by a poet: $1.2 million. You or I might have upgraded our real estate. She stayed in her small apartment — a fifth-floor walk-up. Her output was small, just 350 poems. Why so few? “I have a trash can in my home.”
My nonarrival in the city of N.
took place on the dot.
You’d been alerted
in my unmailed letter.
You were able not to be there
at the agreed-upon time.
The train pulled up at platform 3.
A lot of people got out.
My absence joined the throng
as it made its way toward the exit.
Several women rushed
to take my place
in all that rush.
WEEKEND RECIPE
Pureed Carrot Soup (just in case you gained a pound over the holidays
Serves 6
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 pounds sweet carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
Salt to taste
¼ teaspoon sugar
2 quarts water, chicken stock, or vegetable stock
6 tablespoons rice
Freshly ground pepper to taste
2 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs, such as chervil, mint, chives, or parsley, for garnish
1 cup toasted croutons for garnish (optional)
TO PREPARE:
Heat the butter and olive oil in a large, heavy soup pot over medium-low heat and add the onion. Cook, stirring, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the carrots and ½ teaspoon salt, cover partially and cook for another 10 minutes, stirring often, until the vegetables are tender and fragrant. Add the rice, water or stock, salt (about 1½ teaspoons), and sugar. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer 30 minutes, or until the carrots are tender and the soup is fragrant.
Blend the soup either with a hand blender, in batches in a blender (cover the top with a towel and hold it down to avoid hot splashes), or through a food mill fitted with the fine blade. The rice should no longer be recognizable (it thickens the soup). Return to the pot. Stir and taste. Adjust salt, add a generous amount of freshly ground pepper, and heat through. If the sweetness of the carrots needs a boost, add another pinch of sugar.
Serve, garnishing each bowl with croutons and a sprinkle of herbs.
Variation: Substitute 1 medium Yukon gold potato or ½ russet potato (about 5 ounces), peeled and diced, for the rice. Advance preparation: The soup can be made hours before serving, or a day ahead, and reheated.
