Well! The candidate I devoted so many volunteer hours to did not win the democratic primary for mayor. But neither did Andrew Cuomo! And that’s a victory we can all feel good about.

I’m now retired from volunteering for political candidates until some point in the future when a candidate with exciting ideas and realistic plans for implementing those ideas runs for office, which is to say that I hope to fill my time moving forward with anything other than reading the internet, including but not limited to: getting another foster cat (??), watching Wimbledon, some kind of TBD community-related activity, and, I hope (for the sake of my mind and of this Report), reading books.

What I read in June:

Claire Luchette, Agatha of Little Neon (2021)¹ —It feels like it’s been 84 years since we got a New Pope™, but really it’s only been 53 days. I nominated this book for Book Club because the conclave (and my love for the movie Conclave [2024]) + this AI-infested, end-stage of capitalism hellscape we’re living through had me returning to one of my favorite escapist fantasies, namely: what if I could live among nuns without having to do the whole “bride of Christ” thing? Since I obviously cannot pursue the contemplative life without any of those unfortunate Catholic rules, the next best option was to read a novel about nuns.

Agatha of Little Neon, Luchette’s first novel, was an altogether not unenjoyable read. Though I had never read a novel with this kind of subject, I found myself with unexpectedly strong opinions about the second half of the narrative. Not necessarily like, “I think it should have focused on x,y,z instead of a,b,c,” but more like, “huh! I don’t know that I saw that coming! And I’m curious what the book would have been like if it had gone the way I had been thinking it would!” Overall, in a novel exploring themes of devotion, faith, and being in the world, I found much to admire among observations re: finding meaning in the repetitions of daily life as well as in being part of community. It’s also a little funny! So you know I liked that aspect of the book.

I suspect that Agatha is a bit of a stealth “goodbye to all that” novel about academia. Without projecting too much, I’d say that descriptions of why Agatha joined the sisterhood, how she felt about the church after nearly a decade as a sister, and what she did once she really started reflecting on these topics could easily be the thoughts and actions of a person who went to graduate school right out of undergrad and who, ten years later, looked up from their books and grading and started wondering whether this really was their “calling” in life.

Terry Eagleton once said that we might attribute the growth of English studies in the second half of nineteenth century to the “failure of religion.” As that “traditionally reliable, immensely powerful ideological form . . . [was] . . . no longer winning the hearts and minds of the masses,” something else would need to “carry th[e] ideological burden . . . of provid[ing] the affective values and basic mythologies by which a socially turbulent class-society can be welded together” (20-21).² In other words, it’s only too easy to turn from organized religion to the formal study of literature—ask anyone “raised Catholic” who renounced the church and then spent the better part of their 20s studying and teaching English 🤡

There were also elements to Agatha that would have been more plausible had they been about grad students than about the characters actually depicted in this novel—working-class people recovering from substance use disorders in the house run by Agatha and her fellow sisters. It’s not NOT likely that someone like that would be obsessed with the poetry of Anne Sexton to the point of quoting lines like scripture, but it’s much MORE likely to encounter such a person in the halls of academe. But maybe the lady (me) projects too much!

At any rate, the pleasure for me in reading this book was that of immersing myself in an unfamiliar narrative and having my attention held to the page, which has been a rare enough experience for me so far this year!

Jamaica Kincaid, Talk Stories (2001)—Shout out to Friend of the Report, Carla, for taking me out of my apartment for spontaneous neighborhood walks. On one such walk last month, I picked up this collection of Kincaid’s “Talk of the Town” essays from the New Yorker in the 1970s and early 80s. These essays, each rarely longer than 4 pages, entertained me all month long on my subway rides into the city for kickball or (successfully!!!)³ fighting a parking ticket or watching the debates.

Jamaica Kincaid—WHAT A MIND. WHAT A WRITER. There’s simply no one like her. Reading her accounts of the people and places in NYC felt like time traveling with the smartest and funniest guide one could hope to find. What she finds interesting, I find interesting, even the things that I don’t normally find interesting. Her power!!

Buckle up for me to do the thing I do when I really love something—drop a bunch of quotations because I lack the skill to explain why the thing is so appealing.

I’ll start with the essay titled “Interests,” which amounts essentially to a list of things that were commanding Kincaid’s attention at the time, largely things she bought at the Macy’s across the street from my office (she’s just like me fr):

An essay that made me feel like there is so much I do not yet understand about time is her “Notes and Comments” about the Amtrak train from Cleveland to NYC. What a true miracle and mystery it is that absolutely nothing changed between when Kincaid wrote about the route in 1977 and when I last rode that route on January 1, 2020. She makes the act of “throw[ing her] coat” on the vacant seat beside her “so that it will look as if the occupant just went for a stroll into another car” and of “put[ting] on a tremendous frown, hoping to look so unpleasant [that] no one will say to [her], ‘Is anybody sitting here?’” so that “if [she feels] like it later on, [she] can curl up and sleep comfortably” sound like the savviest and most sensible thing in the world. Also, I never knew until I read this essay that someone had written so poetically about the views I used to see on that 12-to-16–hour ride.

One thing that was clear in reading these essays all collected in one place is that Kincaid loves music. So many of her stories were about musicians, shows, discos, or other music enthusiasts. Inspired by Friend of the Report, Sarah, as I read I compiled a playlist of the songs and artists mentioned in Talk Stories. It turned out to be a pretty good summer playlist imo! I know this in part because one night when I was driving home late from I don’t remember where, and it was warm outside but chilly due to the fog, I heard on some obscure station songs by several of the same artists on this playlist. Jamaica Kincaid—I’m telling you she was living in the future. That’s how visionary her mind was/is.

Mostly, as I read Talk Stories while moving around in the city, I loved learning about the people and the places that captivated Kincaid. I could tell when she had a real entertaining subject because she’d quote them at length, and those quotes capture a way of speaking that doesn’t really exist too much anymore. Not to be like “the internet was a mistake,” but these essays, along with my past couple months of yapping 4x/week with fellow voters, really reminded me how rich and rewarding it can be to interact with people. I’m not a sociopath. It’s just that people can get used to almost anything, and without even realizing it, I’d become accustomed to my screen-mediated life. It felt good to mix it up for once.

What I’m looking forward to reading in July:

Francisco Delgado, On Remembering My Friends, My First Job, and My Second-Favorite Weezer CD⁴

Helen Lewis, The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea (2025)⁵

?????? I’m headed to London at the end of the month, then on to Croatia. This is my request for recommendations for novels (by women!!) taking place anywhere on the Adriatic coast.

1  Book Club selection for June.

2  Eagleton, T. Literary Theory: An Introduction. 2nd ed. University of Minnesota Press; 1983.

3  Some personal news: I’m a lawyer now.

4  It’s finally here!!!! The first novel by Friend of the Report, Francisco!

5  Book Club selection for July.