IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
1. Harvey Weinstein allegations
Serious sexual assault allegations were made against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein this week. Writing in The Cut, Rebecca Traister details her own experiences with Weinstein, and how such allegations may have been kept quiet.
(The Cut, approx 11 mins reading time)
Weinstein didn’t like my question about O, there was an altercation; though the recording has alas been lost to time, I recall that he called me a cunt and declared that he was glad he was the “fucking sheriff of this fucking lawless piece-of-shit town.” When my colleague Andrew (who was also then my boyfriend) intervened, first calming him down and then trying to extract an apology, Weinstein went nuclear, pushing Andrew down a set of steps inside the Tribeca Grand — knocking him over with such force that his tape recorder hit a woman, who suffered long-term injury — and dragging Andrew, in a headlock, onto Sixth Avenue.
2. Why do we feel guilty all the time?
Guilt is far too easily come by these days. But just why do we feel so guilty?
(The Guardian, approx 19 mins reading time)
Already today I’ve felt guilty about having said the wrong thing to a friend. Then I felt guilty about avoiding that friend because of the wrong thing I’d said. Plus, I haven’t called my mother yet today: guilty. And I really should have organised something special for my husband’s birthday: guilty. I gave the wrong kind of food to my child: guilty. I’ve been cutting corners at work lately: guilty. I skipped breakfast: guilty. I snacked instead: double guilty. I’m taking up all this space in a world with not enough space in it: guilty, guilty, guilty.
Alithea Howes writes about her father’s gender transition, and how a family trip to Disneyland was a catalyst for major change.
(Narratively, approx 13 mins reading time)
I’m disgusted now by the embarrassment and shame I felt. The fear that someone would find out exactly how weird we were. I don’t really know what I was so scared of. Did I think people would point and laugh? Maybe. But that had happened to me at school before. How much worse could it be at Disneyland? Did I think we’d get thrown out? Probably not. We were paying customers, what we wore certainly wasn’t any business of Disney’s.
4. Breitbart, Milo, and white nationalism
This exposé on Buzzfeed looks deep into Milo Yiannopoulos’s relationship with Breitbart and Steve Bannon, uncovering some very disturbing things along the way.
(Buzzfeed, approx 44 mins reading time)
For more than a year, Yiannopoulos led the site in a coy dance around the movement’s nastier edges, writing stories that minimized the role of neo-Nazis and white nationalists while giving its politer voices “a fair hearing.” In March, Breitbart editor Alex Marlow insisted “we’re not a hate site.” Breitbart’s media relations staff repeatedly threatened to sue outlets that described Yiannopoulos as racist.
John Jeremiah Sullivan writes about the Blues, history, and America.
(Swanee Review, approx 35 mins reading time)
As a mental exercise, then, we have to completely let go of this notion, that a particular type of song is a “blues song.” Blues was a mode, and a mood. It ran through a range of forms. This is what the British radio host and scholar of jazz history Humphrey Lyttelton meant in the 1970s when he described those “moments when anyone setting out to discuss the blues must wish devoutly that the term had never been coined.”
6. Essential oils in the age of anxiety
Twenty years ago, essential oils weren’t used by people in the mainstream. Now, they’re the subject of much marketing and hype. But what’s really going on?
(New Yorker, approx 28 mins reading time)
Cohen went into her treatment room and came back with a small vial labelled “Clarity.” She put a few drops in my left palm. “This is good for getting your mind clear,” she said. “Rub it clockwise three times. That activates the electrical properties in the oil, and aligns your DNA.” Following Cohen’s instructions, I cupped my hands around my nose and inhaled deeply. The smell was heavier than that of perfume, so minty that it was almost medicinal. Cohen looked at me expectantly. “I feel perkier,” I ventured.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
The musician Tom Petty sadly died this past week. Here’s a story about him from 1980, detailing the highs and lows of his career up to then.
(Rolling Stone, approx 23 mins reading time)
For Petty, the interviews demand the most. Time after time, he is asked to recount the events of his conflict-ridden year, including a bitter contract dispute with his record companies and some near-stifling wrangles within the Heartbreakers. By last summer, it seemed that the group, which in 1978 had stood on the edge of a radiant future, was tottering on the verge of dissolution, and Petty on the brink of bankruptcy.
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