Whatever you think of Ryan Murphy’s writing, he should at least be commended for giving roles to older actresses. Do I wish that Angela Bassett, Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, etc. had more people knocking down their doors? Absolutely. But sometimes, when I want to see some of my fave actresses in something new, the only person providing is Murphy. Ironically, this is one of the reasons Murphy was absolutely the wrong person to adapt The Shards. He cares about women too much.

Bret Easton Ellis does not care about women.

This isn’t an accusation of misogyny. Well, not really. Ellis’ books are highly misogynistic, but I won’t use that as an indictment of him as a person. Let’s talk about the text. Ellis’ books have toxic attitudes toward women because his books usually depict the POVs of extremely toxic men or the toxic environments they live in. The Shards is narrated by a closeted Bret who uses his girlfriend Debbie as a beard while moralizing about her hyperactive sex drive. This is juxtaposed with his obsessions with the men in his life, the brutal murders of his high school classmates, and Robert Mallory as the pinnacle of male hotness while also being a headcase. Men on the verge of a nervous breakdown are the point of The Shards.

By contrast, Murphy’s version of The Shards is focused on moving characters around like Barbie dolls. The women, strongly written female characters as some would tell you, are concerned about cocaine, graduation, winning dance competitions, and because the penultimate two-part episode is titled “Homecoming,” they now care about becoming Homecoming Queen! As I said in a previous review of this adaptation, when you have the time to finish the entire product before it airs, some cohesion in the series would be nice. And yet, this once again feels like a random episode of Glee where everyone suddenly cares about Homecoming! Which isn’t to say that Homecoming isn’t important — I was on Homecoming court myself sophomore year of high school — but you don’t start campaigning for the crown the fucking day before voting!

By adding scenes where Debbie and Susan help Rhonda campaign for Homecoming Queen, the show continues hammering nails in the coffin of any relation to the novel. Do any of these girls care that a serial killer is murdering their classmates? Do they care that Rhonda was kidnapped and held hostage by the Trawler? Introducing Rhonda into the series was one thing, but then refusing to do anything with her as a character is a higher crime. Ivy Wolk is actually quite good as Rhonda, but she’s given very little to work with. There’s no attempt to tie Homecoming to Bret’s neuroses and the overall arc of the season. Involving the closeted narrator in this storyline would’ve made sense. One of the boys he’s been fucking (Ryan) is on the Homecoming court, along with the boy he’s obsessed with (Robert), and the best friend he’s maybe in love with (Thom). But Murphy (a gay man btw!!) has abandoned all of the queerness of Ellis’ novel. You’d never even know Bret was supposed to be gay without actor Igby Rigney swishing his hips in every scene like he’s doing the Jailhouse Rock.

Instead, the series is focused on the women and not the men. Which is great for an ensemble show, but makes no fucking sense for Bret’s narrative. Ellis has always infused his characters with a dash of misogyny and a quagmire of queer identity. Back in 1990, he came under the ire of Gloria Steinem and the National Organization of Women for American Psycho1. Tammy Bruce, a coordinator of the Los Angeles chapter of NOW, created a hotline (how ‘90s!) so people could listen to an excerpt of American Psycho and see how misogynistic the book was. Bruce called the novel “the most misogynistic communication we have ever come across. The book is…in effect, a how-to novel on the torture and dismemberment of women.”

At the time, many people with only a passing knowledge of Ellis assumed he was straight. And they hadn’t read the book, so they didn’t know that it was a satire and that Patrick Bateman is a faggot! As I said, I won’t hypothesize about Ellis as a person, but you can point to American Psycho and The Shards, where spoiler alert: Bret is most likely the Trawler, and conclude that he thinks being closeted and conforming to society can turn you into a serial killer.

Which is to say, the gay shit in The Shards is the fucking point of the novel. Without it, you’re not watching an adaptation of Ellis’ novel. You’re just watching… well, Ryan Murphy’s The Shards.

I’ve never been accused of performative reading. Okay, there was the time my friend joked about me bringing The Brothers Karamazov to a club, but it was in my tote bag, and I’d been reading it in the park. And yes, I do leave the dust jackets on hardcovers when I read in public, but that’s because I love checking out what other people are reading (especially on the subway), and it’s easier when you can see the cover. While reading Life of M on the subway recently, I saw several other people reading either the same or a different Rachel Cusk novel. (Is it Cusktember?) But I’ve never found the argument of “performative reading” to be serious. Maybe the dudes who read Infinite Jest or Gravity’s Rainbow in public are being performative. But we live in an era where people are severely lacking in independent thought and love being told what to do. It’s why the most popular newsletters on Substack are often just link round-ups. People don’t merely want to know what’s cool; they want to be told what to do. And if a man sees another man reading a book in public with a cool cover, chances are, they’ll buy the book as well. That’s not being performative; that’s marketing.

The need to be part of a cultural conversation will always trump the fear of being performative. It’s why some people feel that they have to finish a book if they’ve started it. Or, they’ll take to social media midway through a book and ask people to convince them to finish it. Is it worth it? Does it get better? How about you just… don’t keep reading it? Enter DNF.

DNF is shorthand for “did not finish” and has primarily been a BookTok term until Goodreads added a shelf to its app where users could add books they didn’t finish. Already an option on other book tracking apps, in theory this should make people less ashamed to abandon a book. I’m often asked how I read so many books (thirteen this past month; the list will be at the end of this post). On a recent episode of Feedback, I responded to Vulture’s “How 20 Well-Read People Make Time for Books,” with my own methods.

Generally, I wake up around sunrise each morning to read with my morning coffee before I write. I also live in Brooklyn, where my commute to and from Manhattan is on average an hour each direction. That’s where the bulk of my reading gets done. I’ve also recently begun alternating reading a chapter and listening to the audiobook if I’m a fan of the narrator or the book is dialogue-heavy (Cusk novels, for instance). Another thing I do? I abandon books I’m not reading very quickly.

My friend John Paul Brammer’s recent advice for reading more addresses how you should feed your curiosity at all times when reading: “It’s difficult to pursue anything you don’t have a genuine appetite for. Absent appetite, some other incentive (a salary, necessity) has to compensate. The benefits of literature are abstract enough that reading is almost exclusively a leisure activity. “Make reading fun” sounds too simple, because it is an oversimplification. Some of the most worthwhile books are not, strictly speaking, fun, and those are exactly the books we have in mind when we imagine a more serious reading life. But fun is a wonderful starting point because fun and play lend themselves to curiosity. Curiosity is an attention multiplier.”

Finishing a book for book club might be an incentive, but that’s the reason my previous book clubs often failed: people struggled to finish books they wanted to quit. (I now prefer impromptu book clubs, where I find out which friends have read the same novel as me, and we get together to talk about it.) A book is a lot harder than sitting down to watch a film or television show. It takes effort. But this is perhaps why many people have turned DNF into a performance.

In the absence of performative reading, many people on social media are now performatively not reading. Traditionally, the way I’ve kept track of the books I didn’t finish is by sticking them back on my shelf or leaving them in a pile with other books I’ve abandoned. The idea isn’t that they’ve been abandoned forever, but that they don’t currently hold my interest and I’d rather move on to something I’ll actually enjoy reading. But it is the very fact that reading does take effort that people still want credit for a book they haven’t actually read.

Yesteryear is the biggest book of the year. At over 1.4 million copies sold, Caro Claire Burke’s novel isn’t just being bought by habitual readers; it’s being bought by casual readers or people who haven’t picked up a book in years. It’s the book to talk about this summer. People love to hate the protagonist, but they love to hate Burke as well. I know plenty of writers who’ve also grabbed the book to see what the fuss is about or just so that they can feel justified dragging it after they’ve read it. I love it. I love reading a book so I can join in on dinner party conversations or argue online about it. But if I haven’t read the book, I’d shut up about it.

Similarly, if you haven’t seen The Drama or Obsession, why would you join a debate about the films? It’s more common than you think. Increasingly, I’ve argued about a film with someone only to discover that they haven’t even watched the fucking film. They just want to be part of the conversation. The same thing has begun to happen with books. Except you look silly trying to join a conversation about a book you’ve never read. You can’t just watch the trailer and form an opinion. You have to actually open up the book and look at the words! Well, what if you’ve opened up the book and read the first forty pages?

If performative reading is virtue signaling that you’re a cultured individual, then what does performative not reading signal? It accomplishes the same thing, but you don’t actually have to do any of the work. The fact that you haven’t finished a book is rarely pertinent unless someone directly asks, “Have you read [insert book]?” But how will someone know that you did attempt to read a book, but your superior tastes prevented you from finishing it? You can make a public post about your DNF shelf. You can make TikToks about your DNF shelf. You can drive up engagement on Threads by asking, “What books did you DNF recently?”

Michelle Goldberg’s essay “We Should All Know Less About Each Other” is often used as a meme when someone overshares online. It’s because the constant need to share every aspect of our lives has led to social media addiction. But sharing something you actually accomplished is at least understandable. Sharing something you did not do… who is that for, if not to collect accolades you haven’t actually earned? What’s next, a list of travel destinations you haven’t gone to?

It’s not uncommon when someone is canceled online for people to ring a chorus of “Well, I never liked them in the first place.” As if we should congratulate your soothsaying abilities. It’s a new form of narcissism that only social media could create. Imagine Narcissus at a party, informing his friends that he gazed upon his reflection in a pool of water, but didn’t drown by attempting to kiss his reflection. So, you didn’t die. Congrats. Now, what else is going on?

Earnestly, all of this is understandable as a human need for connection. As social media rhetoric becomes increasingly hostile, it’s harder to build genuine connections with other humans in the way the internet was first sold to us. People are prone to misinterpretation, aggression, or just straight-up misanthropic discourse. People want to discuss Yesteryear with others because it feels good to share commonalities with other people. But are you owed a connection with another human without doing the work? A participation trophy for not reading something isn’t dissimilar from wanting credit for something you didn’t write. Something you asked ChatGPT or Claude to finish for you. Reading takes work. Making friends takes work. When salons were first formed in 16th-century Italy, it began the Age of Conversation. A conversation is defined as “an informal talk or back-and-forth exchange of thoughts, ideas, feelings, or information between two or more people.” The thoughts, the ideas, and the feelings are necessary, but the most vital is information. Millennials grew up on the popular Nickelodeon sketch show All That, where Lori Beth Denberg hosted a segment called “Vital Information for Your Everyday Life.” The joke was that the information was often silly and wrong. Increasingly, the joke has become the norm.

Everything I Read in August

I began this month with The Sealey Challenge, which challenges you to read a book of poetry each day for a month. I failed miserably at that. I’m also reading everything on the Booker Prize 2026 Longlist, so clearly something had to give. Thankfully, the challenge is just about introducing poetry into your everyday life. You can also accomplish it by reading a single poem each day, which is what I switched to after my first week.

The poetry books I read from:

The Book of Alice by Diamond Forde

Love is a Dangerous Word by Essex Hemphill

Party Line by Kyle Carrero Lopez

Scrap Book by Nick Martino

Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt by Brontez Purnell

I’ll document my thoughts on The Booker Prize Longlist at a future date (though I’ve been ranking them on my Instagram feed), but as of now my favorite has been Marlon James’ The Disappearers. It’s been called a masterpiece. I agree. My interview with James will air on my podcast Feedback on 9/24. The others I’ve read:

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

The Renovation by Ken Orhan

All Them Dogs by Djamel White1

The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams

Other books I read this month include:

Back by Lauren Michele Jackson (I’m a huge fan of Jackson’s writing and loved her previous collection, White Negroes)

Beloved by Toni Morrison (my ninth Morrison this year, and yeah, this is THEE American novel)

The Book of Night Women by Marlon James (incredible, a perfect back-to-back read with Beloved or The Disappearers)

Two Rachel Cusk novels, Life of M and Second Place

I love Second Place the most; it’s my favorite Cusk I’ve read so far. It’s so nasty and soapy. Everything I love in a novel! My review of Life of M is forthcoming on next week’s Feedback2, but it’s my least favorite novel of Cusk’s I’ve read so far.

Did you know that The Shards is about a serial killer tormenting the students at Buckley School and writ large, the city of Los Angeles? You might be hard-pressed to remember this while watching “Murder on the Dancefloor,” the fifth episode of Ryan Murphy’s “adaptation” of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel. Adaptation is used extremely loosely here. Actually, no, the pretense of adaptation has been completely abandoned by the series’ midway point because this show no longer has anything to do with the aforementioned book and everything to do with Murphy’s desire to direct a show with dance sequences and people snorting lines of cocaine and being vaguely threatening to one another, not in a red herring-for-murder kind of way, but in an I-want-to-steal-your-girlfriend kind of way, or an I-want-to-fuck-this-high-schooler kind of way.

The reviews of Murphy’s series have gone from morbid curiosity to utter disdain as the weeks progress, which is a stark contrast to Ellis’ novel, which most reviews panned for its length, but still, “as the story proceeds, it also becomes easier to admire Ellis' ability to sustain the mood,” as Kirkus Reviews wrote. Reader sentiment is even higher! It has a 4 on Goodreads. The reviews of the series are more in line with this review of a different Ellis book from 1994. Liza Schwarzbaum, reviewing Ellis’ only collection of short stories, The Informers, for Entertainment Weekly, wrote: “I finally figured out the best way to finish The Informers, the fourth novel by the willfully enervating Bret Easton Ellis: Do 10 pages, take a nap. Do another 10, watch a Mary Tyler Moore rerun. Finish a chapter, celebrate with a Snickers bar. Don’t, for God’s sake, touch any alcohol, not if you want to make it to the end of this soul-dead collection of poorly drawn sketches stitched together as a novel. Do remember that Ellis’ work does not represent the state of hip fiction today.”

Generally, I’m more fond of The Informers than critics in ‘94 were. But I’ll admit, not every story works! And most of them seem like they were written in one coked-out night. But that’s exactly how Murphy’s version of The Shards feels. We’ve abandoned the Trawler storyline for an entire episode about a dance competition show. Inexplicably, the main cast members all attend. Even more inexplicably, adults Terry, Steven, and Liz are either on set or watching at home. It’s Glee logic, where everyone in the cast gives a fuck about McKinley High’s glee club, when realistically, if there’s a club you’re not part of in school, it would never be on your radar.

The novel’s central mystery has been abandoned for us to watch: Bret teach Thom how to dance (doing some really gay wiggling for someone closeted), Thom freak out about not being able to dance while Robert moves in on Susan, Debbie compete against Cha Cha on Dance Off!, Terry attempt to manipulate the votes for Debbie to win, Steven attempt to blackmail Ryan for starring in porn, and Cha Cha plead with Anthony Ramos, guest-starring as the host of Dance Off!, to leave his wife for her. None of this is in the fucking book, but even beyond that, why the fuck would we care about any of this when we’ve been watching a murder mystery up till now?

Famously, Ellis didn’t plan on releasing The Informers. But he was late on finishing Glamorama and had a bunch of leftover material from when he’d written Less Than Zero in high school. According to The New York Times, “[Ellis’] latest novel began instead as a series of sketches — whose only function was to distract him from the book he was supposed to be writing. Begun in 1983, the sketches grew to fill "four or five big notebooks" over the ensuing decade, Mr. Ellis, 30, recalled in a telephone interview from his summer residence in Amagansett, L.I. Last year, when he seemed irretrievably stuck on the book he was under contract for — a novel about supermodels and celebrity1 — he offered the notebooks to his publisher instead. Pared down from 32 chapters, the finished book comprises 13 interconnected tales of dissolute, moneyed Angelenos and their disaffected children.”

Interconnected tales of dissolute, moneyed Angelenos is essentially what Murphy’s television series is. It’s as if adapting The Shards was just a pretense to make a show set in the ‘80s about whatever the fuck he wanted. There was a bad film adaptation of The Informers in 2008 that I’m sure no one remembers. Maybe Murphy should’ve just adapted that. The Informers even has vampires. He would’ve loved that shit! But then again, this is Murphy we’re talking about. Who’s to say vampires won’t just randomly pop up in this TV show just because Murphy thinks they’re cool?

Smart people watch Real Housewives. But does that make Real Housewives smart?

“The Real Housewives franchise is the most important anthropological documentation of modern women that we have,” was a recent take on the internet series Subway Takes. No offense to the guest with this take, but this is far from a hot take. It’s not even a lukewarm one at this point. Real Housewives has been discussed seriously by critics for over two decades. In 2014, academic and critic Camille Paglia compared the franchise to the work of Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder: “Cohen has so altered and redeemed the pop culture landscape—which had been suffering for years from snide snark and pseudo-hip cynicism—that he should be acknowledged as a genuine auteur, like maverick film directors. His tastes, instincts, and sensibility now suffuse a staggering number of highly successful TV projects. Not since the radical gay German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder revived and recast Douglas Sirk’s ‘women’s pictures’ during the 1970s has a single individual so boldly rescued a waning genre and given it such splendid new life.”

In 2024, professor of sociology Laura Grindstaff referred to the series as a bit of accidental anthropology: “The predictability of the format – strong women characters in luxurious settings navigating life events that generate conflict and drama – coexists with the unpredictability of exactly how each character instigates, responds to and manages these conflicts. Viewers enjoy parsing out those moments when authentic or 'real' emotion breaks through, in seeing the blend of 'scriptedness' and spontaneity unfold, in vicariously enjoying glamour and opulence, in following the arc of a favourite character.”

Real Housewives, while unscripted, has too many formulaic beats to be considered a genuine “anthropological documentation of modern women.” At least, the women on television. The real anthropological study related to the housewives lies directly with the audience. The women, gay men, and now a small minority of straight men who watch the series as it has exploded into mainstream relevance1. If future civilizations2 want to study society in 2026, looking at Real Housewives would be useless. But studying the fans of Bravo? Studying how friend groups deal with conflict after years of consuming Bravo? Studying how celebrity culture has changed due to our proximity to Housewives and their overwhelming desire to perform for our favor? Studying how fans describe Real Housewives as an “anthropological documentation” to justify their obsessive interest in being entertained by women like they’re spectators at the Colosseum? That would be a much more compelling case study.

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Last week, I was kind of digging The Shards. It was a bit languid, but it still pretty much felt like the novel. All of that is out the window now, thanks to Bret Easton Ellis’ involvement ending after the second episode.

I’m not sure what Ryan Murphy has adapted for FX, but it’s certainly not The Shards. The critique that has been lobbed at Murphy the most for the latest episodes of The Shards is that it’s quickly turned into Glee. I can see why. The show quickly creates ludicrous plotlines for the supporting cast like Mrs. Schaffer (Evan Rachel Wood) doing porn and fucking one of her daughter’s classmates, Ryan (Daniel Dale), who is also doing porn. Murphy also introduces Really Rhonda, a character not in the novel, played by Ivy Wolk. I think Wolk (who I know personally, full disclosure) is a fab actress, but Really Rhonda has Tourette syndrome and loves roller skating, and we’re supposed to believe the most popular kids in school hang out with her? Yeah, okay.

On the one hand, Murphy’s frequent inclusion of characters with disabilities in his series is admirable. On the other hand, it often gives sideshow instead of a genuine desire to present those characters as three-dimensional humans. Rhonda exists only to ratchet up the terror from The Trawler, whose serial killing in the novel is played more as an ominous dread looming over Los Angeles. In the series, it makes sense for us to see The Trawler, but having him torture his victims by feeding them live animals in cages just comes across like we’re watching an episode of Criminal Minds. At no point in this week’s two episodes, “Help Me! Rhonda” and “Robert’s Party,” does The Trawler come across as scary. And so now, The Shards has sinned by failing to be as terrifying as the novel, deviating wildly from it, and turning into a cartoonish teen drama.

Not to sound like Norma Rae, but I’m a staunch defender of artists’ rights. I don’t necessarily think a reimagining of a piece of work is bad. Christopher Nolan has the right to reimagine a 3,000-year-old poem! Emerald Fennell also has the right to reimagine Wuthering Heights, given it is 180-years-old and there are numerous adaptations that already exist. One of the best adaptations of the past decade was Watchmen, which deviated massively from its source material to tell an incredibly powerful story about the history of racism in America. Reimaginations can be really cool! Claiming ownership of any story you haven’t written is weird, but when it’s old as fuck, maybe it’s time to move on and read something else. And yes, that is a pointed comment about losers who can’t seem to move on from Harry Potter and plan to watch (or work on) the HBO adaptation, knowing that wicked witch J.K. Rowling plans to use all the royalties from it to fund anti-trans legislation.

But when you’re the first adaptation of a novel, it’s understandable that fans might be protective. Sure, adapt things however you’d like, but the reason existing source material gets greenlit is that an audience already exists. If you piss off the audience, then what was the point of adapting it in the first place? Everything about The Shards points to Murphy not really giving a fuck about the source material and using it as a jumping-off point to write a pulpy series about the ‘80s in Los Angeles.

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• The podcast A Lesson Before Writing did a very thorough and positive critique of my debut fiction piece, “Selling Vermont.” It starts at the 40 min mark. “Selling Vermont,” a horror piece, is available in issue 10 of Volume 0 or on the magazine’s Substack.

Frank Reads 📚

Everything I Read in July

I skipped New York Pride and the weekend of the 4th this year because in New York that’s just a two-week bender. I opted instead to take my annual London trip for those two weeks, which turned out to be one of my favorite recent vacations. The initial plans for the trip were to finish my novel. Well, that didn’t happen. I actually ended up doing a lot more editing and cutting from the novel than actual writing. Still, I did manage to get a lot of reading done and visit some fantastic bookstores (and spend way too much money on books, but thankfully they’re cheaper in London!).

The first couple of days of July included finishing Marlon James’ The Disappearers, which I reviewed previously: “In these 617 pages is a gorgeous blend of history, language, pop culture, and magic. To say it’s a masterpiece feels like an understatement. This is his Song of Solomon.” The Disappearers has since been longlisted for The Booker Prize! Marlon has previously won for A Brief History of Seven Killings, which I still have not finished1, but The Disappearers immediately became one of my favorite books I’ve ever read. I’m going to document my reading of all the longlisted Booker Prize books, so look forward to that post sometime next month. I am also interviewing Marlon this week for my podcast Feedback (!), so you can also look forward to that next month too. And subscribe to the YouTube channel so you don’t miss it! If you have any questions for him, drop them in the comments!

Get 25% off Frank for the next week!

Anyway, back to London.

The first book I read was Rachel Cusk’s Outline. My friend Satya recommended I listen to the audiobook on my trip, because Kristin Scott Thomas narrates the recent version. Bet. I am not one of those losers who thinks audiobooks aren’t reading. Still, I also get extremely distracted while listening to them (I attempted to listen to Middlemarch earlier this year and failed miserably), so I opted to alternate between reading a chapter and listening to one. I didn’t completely fall in love with it, but I found the book utterly fascinating and bought two other Cusk books immediately2 just because I love her voice. I wrote a bit about Outline already in my review of Madonna’s Confessions II.

I had to get my hands on Fruit Fly by Josh Silver, the book every gay has been talking about this summer. It was finally released in the U.S. last week, but until then it was only available in the UK. I’ll admit, I was worried it might not be good. The description — a YA author looking for her next hit exploits a gay drug addict to write her next hit — sounded fun, but it felt like it could also be a gay Yesteryear (meaning: not good). Thankfully, my worries were unfounded because the book is pretty fab. It’s hilarious, it’s thrilling, and it kinda felt like A Simple Favor in how the protagonist was so comically dumb yet calculating. A24 recently bought the rights to the book, so hopefully we get a really fun, messy TV version. Also, I hung out with Josh recently and showed him around Bed Stuy, and he’s a ki. Get his book; it’s one of my faves this year.

My year-long goal of reading every Toni Morrison book continued with The Bluest Eye. I thought the book was fantastic, but I do think I did myself a disservice by not reading it first. I was more impressed by Morrison’s construction of the novel and how she discussed her mission statement in the afterward than I was personally moved by the story, especially in comparison to Sula and Song of Solomon. I think the narrative distance from Pecola’s inner thoughts kept me from being devastated at the end, which is what happened to me when I reached the end of Sula and Nel and Milkman’s journeys. I plan to reread it soon, however, and maybe it will hit me differently the second time.

The absolute best book I read in July was The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. The hype is definitely real. I’ve always been a Greek mythology obsessive, so I knew the story of Achilles and Patroclus’ queer romance. But this story was rendered so beautifully that it felt like I was discovering it all over again. This book was recommended to me by François Arnaud on Threads (his only post, because he saw how the Heated Rivarly fans act on there and quickly deleted his account 😭). He suggested the book when I asked for romances, to which many people responded that The Song of Achilles isn’t a romance because it doesn’t have a Happy Ever After. Look, the book is devastating, but the ending is the MOST Happy Ever After, if you ask me. Especially if you know Greek myths and know that these two are dead when you start reading the book. You’re already anticipating the incoming trauma. And the way that Madeline Miller manages to subvert that into one of the most gorgeous endings I’ve read in a book? That is fucking romance, baby.

Other books I enjoyed this month:

The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deeshaw Philyaw. This book isn’t out yet, so I don’t want to spoil anything, but Deeshaw is such an exciting writer whose work I’m happy to have discovered this year. If you haven’t read her debut, the short story collection The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, you must.

The Living Realm by Jordan Tannahill. It’s a story about a man in Berlin who sees the ghosts of his dead lovers at a cruising site. Jordan is a friend of mine and his writing is so gorgeous and moving here. It’s completely different from the insanity of the play Prince Faggot, his recent Off-Broadway hit, but both left me with the warmest feeling in my heart about being alive in this moment. This book also isn’t out yet, but it is next month!

Flesh by David Szalay. Okay, believe the hype! Last year’s Booker Prize winner is absolutely a fantastic read. I really, really enjoyed this book and its fast pacing and sparse sentences (Hemingway is shaking, sis). For people who claim that MEN are being pushed to the side as writers (they mean white men), give them this book. Because it’s By Men For Men. But also, it’s really great.

Transcription by Ben Lerner. Another book by a MAN. Another straight, white man too. This book wasn’t grabbing me at first, because the three chapters are connected, but not necessarily continuous. By the third chapter, I found myself getting kind of lost until I decided to listen to the audiobook instead (the third chapter is a monologue, essentially). That’s when the book really clicked for me. In a way, this is much better as an audio drama than as a novel, but I really love what’s done with the medium here.

On Witness and Respair by Jesmyn Ward. I am late to the Jesmyn train, I’m aware. Her writing is excellent; I can’t wait to dig into her fiction.

Homebodies by Tembe Denton-Hurst. I think Tembe is such a dope writer. I loved her prose and her language and how this story about a Black woman who gets fired from her writing job actually turns into a story about going back home and how to survive in the places we grew up.

Palaver by Bryan Washington. Bryan’s writing is gorgeous, moving, and tender. This story is about a mother who surprises her gay son by showing up in Tokyo to mend their relationship. The outcome is predictable, and there’s not really much conflict, but it was such a pleasurable read! Although when people discuss “MFA writing,” they’re probably talking about books like this, because describing the son and the mother as just “the son” and “the mother” did annoy me at first. I got used to it about 1/3 of the way through the book, however. I’ve only ever read “Arrivals” by Washington, but I’m excited to dig into more of his work soon.

Book I didn’t love:

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash. This just didn’t vibe with me. It has been described as The Simpsons meets The Corrections, but the humor was only half there for me. And I didn’t like The Corrections! Still, a lot of my friends enjoyed this, and I could tell Madeline had a great time writing this, so I’m eager to see what her second novel brings. The final chapter was actually the most exciting to me, when the book is suddenly narrated by a young boy who has been observing the family. His observations are so interesting that I kinda wish the book had been narrated by him in the first place, rather than bouncing around from family member to family member.

My full July reading list:

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash

Outline by Rachel Cusk

Homebodies by Teme Denton-Hurst

Transcription by Ben Lerner

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deeshaw Philyaw

Flesh by David Szalay

The Living Realm by Jordan Tannahill

Fruit Fly by Josh Silver

On Witness and Respair by Jesmyn Ward

Palaver by Bryan Washington

My favorite bookstores in London

Foyles is a huge megastore, but my favorite part of it was the café on the top floor, which I used to write nearly every day of my trip. There was always a seat there if you popped in early or late enough, and I always grabbed the soup of the day and a glass (or three) of wine.

The Common Press Shoreditch is a cute, tiny queer bookshop. The salesperson working the day I visited was lovely; we had a fun chat, and I overheard them giving extremely helpful (and good!) book recs to other customers.

Daunt Books is very popular right now thanks to their cute tote bags, so I didn’t get one and instead bought a tote from London Review of Books. Both stores have a great selection of books, however, and a stellar collection of recs from their employees.

Gay is the Word is a staple. I always visit when I’m in London. Love their new space, too!

My favorite restaurants in London

The chicken liver agnolotti at Vesper was one of my favorite dishes I had on my trip. I also popped into sister restaurant Below Stone Nest, which is a restaurant and a jazz club

I had a lovely lunch at Funky Noodles with Stephanie Wambugu! If you haven’t read her book Lonely Crowds, it was one of my faves of last year.

Impala is one of my new favorite restaurants. Period. Its menu is a blend of North African, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern food. I truly loved everything I ate, but I have to shout out the white crab wrapped in shiso leaf and the birds tongue pasta, slowly braised with spiced oxtail. I’m still thinking about both of those dishes, weeks later.

My favorite parties in London

I attended the first Club Confessions in London, which had a dope lineup of Horsemeat Disco, Jodie Harsh, and Honey Dijon, who played a two-hour closing set. Madonna came out during Stuart Price’s set, and it was insane seeing the crowd sing along and dance to old Madonna songs and the new singles. The New York one felt more intimate because so many of my friends attended, but for my money, the London one was better because the stage was elevated and we could actually see Madonna.

I discussed New York’s Club Confessions night in last week’s episode of Feedback:

Despite trying to avoid Pride in New York, I was there for London Pride. Two of my fave parties to attend whenever I’m in London are Adonis and Howl. Adonis is very sceney and full of hot, shirtless gays with muscles. Howl has that too, but it’s a little more avant-garde and queer. Both are great times!

Links

Speaking of Rachel Cusk, her new novel Life of M is out in two weeks, and allegedly it’s about Natalie Portman and allegedly Natalie is pissed. I can’t wait to read it.

Caro Claire Burke sold 1.4 million copies of Yesteryear. White women are reading, okay?

The New York Times discovered the DNF craze. I have some thoughts on DNF culture that I plan to write about later this month. In short: everyone is being extremely annoying on both sides.

Recession indicator: Obama is becoming a book influencer.

I’ve been thinking about Frank a lot lately. I started this newsletter because I wanted a place to write about the things I’m obsessed with: books, TV, film, and pop culture. Somewhere along the way, life happened last fall, and I got a little less consistent. It was also hard balancing working on a novel with freelance writing and finding a new home.

But I want to change that! Starting this month, Frank is getting a reset. I’m going back to publishing twice a week. Tuesday’s post will be free. Friday’s will be for paid subscribers.

Here’s what I have planned for the rest of August:

📚 Frank Reads

I’m kicking things off this Tuesday with everything I’ve read in July — the books I loved, hated, or just can’t stop thinking about. I’ll also be doing a deeper dive into one book each month.

📺 Frank Watches

My reality TV reviews are back for paid subscribers. I will also cover other shows and films I’ve enjoyed recently.

As always, there’ll be essays about whatever’s happening in pop culture that I can’t stop thinking about. There’ll also be some surprises along the way, like interviews with some of my fave people, new fiction from me, and more.

If you’ve been around since the beginning, thank you! There’s been a lot of twists and turns in this damn newsletter, chile. If you haven’t opened Frank in a while, consider this your invitation to come back to the ki.

To celebrate Frank’s return, I’m giving former and free subscribers 25% off an annual subscription through Sunday.

Let's Get Frank Again Discount

Laissez les bons temps rouler,

Ira

I launched my new podcast, Feedback, a couple of months ago. So far, I’ve discussed: The current state of comedy with Jay Jurden. Pop culture podcasting with Hunter Harris and Peyton Dix. The art of the interview with Audie Cornish. The state of New York theatre with Juan A. Ramírez and Soraya McDonald. Writing magazine profiles with Anna Peele. How constructing crossword puzzles is like writing fiction Natan Last. How to survive in the current fashion industry with Chrissy Rutherford and John Villa. Fifty years of Days of Our Lives with Deidre Hall. The queer history of New York nightlife with Connie Fleming and Lina Bradford.

I would love you forever if you could follow the podcast’s YouTube page, subscribe, like, and comment!

This Thursday’s episode features my friend, Gibson Johns (host of Gabbing with Gib), as we discuss how reporting on Bravo turned into his full-time job, the current state of the Real Housewives franchise, and more!

Due to overwhelming demand, I have launched new dates for my Writing for Pop Culture course. You can sign up at iramadison.com/classes.

The Shards has finally arrived on FX.

I can credit Bret East Ellis’ 2023 novel with jumpstarting reading for pleasure again. I’d barely read a book since 2020, opting instead to binge old television shows and classic films on Criterion. But the summer of 2023 was one of the first times that I recalled multiple friends reading the same book. So, I pushed through the 608-page novel and discovered that my once-favorite author (Less Than Zero has been my fave book since college) still had another banger in him. After the rather disappointing Imperial Bedrooms, I was shocked that The Shards was so fucking good. It was my fave book of 2023, and I was stoked for the announced Luca Guadagnino HBO adaptation before that fell apart (will his American Psycho reimagining have the same fate?). I was still somewhat excited for the Kristoffer Borgli version, but that too fell apart. Now, we have Ryan Murphy version. God, help us. Might this possibly be good? Is Murphy still capable of gagging us?

The good news is that so far, Murphy’s TV series is a pretty faithful adaptation of Ellis’ novel. The bad news is that for the first time, I found a Ryan Murphy series… boring? Addictive. Messy. Godawful. Offensive. These are all adjectives I’d use to describe most of Murphy’s television series. But I’ve never been bored. But midway through the two-part premiere of The Shards, I found myself wondering, who cares?

The Shards Special

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Is it still controversial to call Bret Easton Ellis one of your favorite authors? The lovable misanthrope’s Less Than Zero has been my fave novel since college, and I’ve read every other book of his (well, not White, girl).

After the rather disappointing Imperial Bedrooms, I was shocked that The Shards was so fucking good. It was my fave book of 2023, and I was stoked for the announced Luca Guadagnino HBO adaptation before that fell apart (will his American Psycho reimagining have the same fate?). I was still somewhat excited for the Kristoffer Borgli version, but that too fell apart. Now, we’re about to get the Ryan Murphy version. God, help us. Might this possibly be good? Is Murphy still capable of gagging us?

We’ll find out when The Shards debuts on FX on August 5.

Each week, I’ll be recapping the series for paid Frank subscribers, doing a deep dive into the differences between the series and the novel.

For the next week, I’m offering 50% off all new paid subscriptions!

The Shards 50% Discount!

Also, join me on 8/5 at 9 PM EST for a live chat of the premiere!

You spend the weekend in a chilly movie theater, in a chair that reclines juuussst enough to legally be referred to as a “reclining” seat, and you take in a new release. You, presumably a cinephile of some intelligence (you’re reading Frank, after all), feel as if you understood the movie 100%. Then you log online, only to discover someone has bested you in a match of wits you didn’t even know you were playing. You see a post on social media that begins with, “The REAL villain in this film is…” Horrified that you might secretly be a moron, you continue reading… only to discover that the post has described the most surface-level, obvious read of the film you’ve just watched. The person named as the “real villain” by this anonymous social media user is the film’s antagonist, which usually means yes, they are the villain! In 1950, Alan Turing posed the question, “Can machines think?” In 2026, many of us scroll the tiny machines in our hands and pose the daily question, “Can HUMANS think?”

Most recently, I fell to my knees and shouted this question to the heavens after witnessing an extreme amount of posts online sharing the never-before-heard theory that Bear, the lead in Curry Barker’s 2026 smash horror hit Obsession, is the film’s real villain. Yeah, no shit. Granted, it’s not a new phenomenon. The BuzzFeed Era of media churned out daily “The REAL villain in The Devil Wears Prada…” takes. But it’s become an increasingly more common way for someone to mint themselves an “authority” on a piece of media. At this point, on social media, there are too many takes. A generation that grew up on VH1’s I Love the… series now has access to smartphones where they can drop TikToks, Reels, or even just viral Threads sharing information about a film that they’ve either just Googled five seconds ago or made up. The internet’s attention economy rewards takes, but when there are so many takes, people look to someone with credibility on the subject.

This isn’t to say people check credentials before they engage with content online; it just means that those making the content now use phrases that indicate they know what they’re talking about. For instance, one of my favorite Survivor Australia winners, Feras Basal, launched a podcast with his mate Yaz Haddad. Rather than use his platform to, I don’t know, talk about Survivor, I recently came across a half-baked critique of Obsession on Instagram Reels. “Almost every single big scene from Obsession was copied from another horror film,” Haddad says, before sharing a clip of scenes where director Curry Barker paid homage to some of his favorite films. The YouTube-ification of film commentary – which popularized videos like “900 PLOT HOLES IN AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY” or what the fuck ever — has far too many people convinced that a) they know what they’re talking about, or b) taking something that is not a new thing in film at all and pretending they’re the first to discover it. It’s media illiteracy that banks on media illiteracy from their audience.

Does any of this contribute to a real discussion of art? No, it just contributes to everyone wanting to be “right” about a film. It doesn’t matter what you thought of the acting, or the directing, or the writing; you have to find one specific aspect of a film to critique so that you can stake a claim in the broader online conversation. No film had done this more recently than Obsession, when I first started writing this draft. Then Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey debuted.

At lunch the other day, a friend told me they hadn’t seen The Odyssey yet because of “all the backlash.” I had to pause for a minute to think about which backlash they meant. IMAX being elitist? Classicist Emily Wilson eviscerating Nolan for not being faithful to her translation? Nolan’s treatment of female characters? The Odyssey has reached peak discourse.

I was more interested in the critique of The Odyssey that centered around Nolan’s lack of a co-writer for this script. Nolan’s longtime collaborator, his brother Jonathan Nolan, co-wrote each film from Batman Begins to Interstellar. Memento is adapted from “Memento Mori,” a short story written by Jonathan. Insomnia is a remake of a Norwegian film with a script from Hillary Seitz. These films are part of what Nolan fans generally refer to as his golden years. Everything since Dunkirk has been a solo writing-and-directing effort by Nolan.

Some fans genuinely believe he should’ve enlisted Jonathan to work on The Odyssey to make it “better.” It introduces a zero sum to art where the main directive is to get things “right,” rather than any genuine artistic expression. This isn’t a Marvel movie! I loved Spider-Man: Brand New Day, but it’s easier to critique the construction of these films because they are quite literally constructed to create the best possible outcome. Given that the film had the second highest box-office opening in history, it clearly worked.

Nolan’s art form is blockbusters. He works to make films that appeal to a mass audience (“I wanted to make a very accessible movie,” he told The New York Times) while also tackling the psyches of the men in the stories he tells. Nolan has been critiqued for making films about men with scant women in them. This is true. But Nolan as a director is also speaking to men in a more subtle way than getting online and sounding an alarm about the “male loneliness crisis.” Tenet, his best film1, is essentially about male friendship. In interviews, Nolan has acknowledged the similarity between The Odyssey and his previous films. He told The Los Angeles Times, I’ve been telling this story in all my films for years. It’s a family story, a love story, a revenge story, a war story, a coming-of-age story. It’s a very strong foundational text for me.”

I personally love watching an artist progress over the course of their career. It’s something that I’ve enjoyed watching in myself as an artist. I’ve been reading all of Toni Morrison’s work this year, and it’s been fascinating to go from The Bluest Eye to Sula to Love in a matter of months, to see the themes that Morrison revisits and how she chooses to tell stories differently decades later. I love prolific creators. When I discover them, it’s great to have a large body of work to dig into. I can’t wait to read more Percival Everett! I’m glad he doesn’t write one book every ten years. We might’ve never gotten The Trees.

In order for an artist to progress, they should be allowed to follow their own instincts. That means, if they’ve been itching to tell the story in The Odyssey for their entire career, they should do it themselves without needing their brother for an assist. You don’t have to like it! Art is subjective, after all. But it’s not legitimate to critique what doesn’t exist. I had a similar response to critiques of The Drama. Many people lobbied the complaint that Zendaya playing an attempted school shooter wasn’t realistic. Because Black women don’t do that. Yeah, that’s the fucking point of the film. Also, it’s fiction. Whether or not Kristoffer Borgli created a world where Zendaya’s motivations are believable is up for debate, but the very existence of those motivations can’t be outright rejected because it doesn’t match statistics in the real world. I’m beginning to think people don’t actually want art; they just want things to argue about based on pieces of their identity. Arguing “Zendaya wouldn’t shoot up a school because she’s Black” says nothing about the film, but it says everything about what you want to virtue signal to your followers about how “Black” you are. As if being Black were an astrological sign and not an incredibly diverse identity. It’s always "Black people aren’t a monolith,” until you need to prove a point in an argument.

Arguing the work on its own merits also applies to the Emily Wilson critique, by the way. Absolutely, Wilson is allowed to critique the film on how it translates Homer’s epic poem. She is a classicist, after all. But her general disdain for the medium (blockbusters) and Nolan’s interpretation (Homer’s story was written from the perspective of a rising civilization, whereas Nolan made a moral story for a civilization in decline) should’ve been left out of it. Arguing identity is something fellow academics have done in defense of Wilson, or the argument that crediting Nolan with her recent fame is misogynistic. Nolan isn’t responsible for her career. For her recent fame? Absolutely. Renewed interest in her translation (already a bestseller, yes) is for sure because of Nolan’s film. In 2026, notably, domestic sales of Wilson’s translation across all formats surpassed 1,000,000 copies. Let’s not be obtuse. That’s the entire reason authors love their work being adapted: to gain interest from a new audience. Well, not every writer.

I’ve gotten more than a few e-mails lately about writing courses. Teaching is something I’ve been interested in since I attended New York University for my MFA. I took two courses in the past year that I’ve really enjoyed — Writing Art with Katie Kitamura (Grub Street) and Everyday Hauntings: Writing Contemporary Gothic with JD Scott (Center for Fiction) — and they helped me finally construct a writing course that feels authentic to what I do: pop culture writing and personal essays.

For six weeks we’ll focus on developing a voice, writing criticism that feels alive, and finding the intersection of memoir, pop culture, and reporting. Along with weekly writing exercises, you’ll leave with a polished essay to pitch to a publication or include in a book proposal.

The course will also include a copy of my book Pure Innocent Fun and my proposal that sold at auction for six figures.

Writing Pop Culture with Ira Madison III

Weekly, Tuesdays

August 4 - September 8

7-9 PM EST

Cost: $795

Capacity: 10

E-mail ira@iramadison.com with the headline “Writing Pop Culture.”

Charli XCX spoke to Nicky Reardon on his podcast, Nicky at Night, about constructing an album: “When I’m making music, it really informs the direction that the music takes. It provides this sort of, like, set of boundaries in which I create. And that can really help the direction of the music itself. When you’re creating in this set of rules, you can get really potent. When I was making Brat, it became really clear early on what was Brat, versus what wasn’t.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about my intentions when it comes to my first novel. I have a wide body of work already: my former podcast Keep It, a decade of cultural criticism, a television writing career, and my essay collection Pure Innocent Fun. How do I want the next chapter (pun not intended) of my life to look creatively? I've become extremely interested in fiction as of late. And not just fiction, but literary fiction. I want that to be reflected in my work.

I traveled to London for two weeks recently for a writing retreat. I expected to get a good chunk of my book done, but instead, I read my existing pages in both projects and decided that it was time to put the first project away for a bit. It initially existed as an idea for a screenplay when I was working on Uncoupled. My manager at the time really loved this idea, but I couldn’t find a way to make it work as a screenplay. My manager and I parted ways last year. And then, as some of you may know, I lost my apartment and a very close friend later that year. I realized in London that this first project was me still attempting to hold onto things that I need to let go of (at least for now).

Conversely, my second project came to me in a Gothic fiction writing workshop I took in New Orleans. Yes, it’s gothic horror. But also a romance? And in part, an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1881 play Ghosts. It’s messy in a good way. I attempt to make sense of everything that’s happened to me in the past year, and it’s full of anger and sadness and grief. But it’s also my writing that feels the most connected to literary fiction. One thing I’ve always appreciated about my past creative projects is how quick the turnaround is from inception to presentation. Novels are a different beast, but I do think there’s something to getting all of those ideas out as soon as you can without allowing them to simmer for too long. I want to process the last year, and then I want to be able to put it on a shelf and let it be, much like I did when I published Pure Innocent Fun. The three-year time period during which I wrote it was a chaotic time in my life, and it felt therapeutic to leave it all inside a book that I don’t have to reopen again until I choose to.

This is all to say that I’m working towards my goal of finishing this draft this summer, on or around my upcoming 40th (!) birthday. More to come.

What I read in June

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deeshaw Philyaw

Lives of Saints by Nancy Lemann

White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Flyboy in the Buttermilk Greg Tate

The Disappearers by Marlon James

Love by Toni Morrison

I am shocked that for the sixth month in a row, a work by Toni Morrison is not my favorite book I’ve read! That honor goes to the forthcoming masterpiece (yeah, that’s right) from Marlon James, The Disappearers. I’ve met Marlon socially a few times through one of our mutual close friends. At that friend’s wedding, he described the plot of his latest novel to me, and I knew this was absolutely gonna be my kinda shit. A queer Jamaican revenge epic that’s also kind of a romance and also set in the late ‘80s and 90s? I was hooked from the moment Less Than Zero and Prince were referenced.

There’s so much more I want to say about this novel, but it’s not out until September, so I will hold off for now. Just know that I took this book to Fire Island and then to London and finished it within a week. When I wasn’t reading it, I was either thinking about it or I was talking to friends about it.

Yes, it’s a Marlon James book, so it’s long as hell. But in these 617 pages is a gorgeous blend of history, language, pop culture, and magic. To say it’s a masterpiece feels like an understatement. This is his Song of Solomon.

I did absolutely adore Love, though. I didn’t know what to expect from this one, given there’s not a lot of writing on Morrison’s later works (this New York Review piece by Raven Leilani is fantastic tho). It’s a slight read compared to her classics, but it still packs a punch. And it feels like a master is taking all the themes she’s explored in her prior work and drawing new conclusions. This book is in conversation with Sula for sure, but it’s also very much a continuation of Recitatif. Christine and Heed carry on Twyla and Roberta’s venomous feud, only to greater, melodramatic heights. I need to know if Morrison watched The Young and the Restless because the climactic skirmish absolutely gives Jill and Katherine’s iconic 1988 attic brawl. Katherine finds Jill snooping through her ex-husband’s mementos, just as Heed finds Christine doing the same.

Sula ends with the realization that friendship is what Nel missed in her life, not her husband. The sentiment in Love is, “All this time, we could’ve been friends?”

There was an article about the “gay lit boom” in the NYT recently, but a quieter boom in queer literature has been coming from well-known Black women writers. I expected I’d enjoy Philyaw’s story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, but I didn’t expect it to have so many delicious queer stories. The same goes for Kin, whose queer romance has gone largely unmentioned on social media and in reviews. There’s also Lonely Crowds from Stephanie Wambugu, which features an unrequited (until it’s not) queer romance. I’ve also heard that Kennedy Ryan’s Score (which I have yet to read but plan to!) features a bisexual lead. It’s not shocking to me that these Black women are telling such bold, exciting sapphic stories.

But it is shocking, I think, that they’re not being discussed more widely as queer lit. Is that the future of queer literature? Is it something that only one demographic is allowed to explore without expressly being labeled as queer lit? Or is it the fact that Black women are writing these stories the reason why the men writing about the current “gay lit boom” haven’t noticed?

As for the other books I read this month, I read Dostoevsky’s short story White Nights because I’ve been working my way through The Brothers Karamazov this year, and I just wanted to finish a Dostoevsky story. I didn’t particularly love it. Lives of Saints has such gorgeous, vivid prose, and it made me feel like I was back in New Orleans again. Flyboy in the Buttermilk is an excellent collection of criticism with a must-read introduction from my MTV News colleague Hanif Abdurraqib. It also includes one of my favorite pieces of music criticism ever, “I’m White!: What’s Wrong with Michael Jackson.” People aren’t writing fire like that anymore!

Another fun thing I did in June? I traveled to Fire Island to guest host Marc MacNamara’s Hot Tub Games, where he pairs a housewife with a porn star for a series of games. This month, his porn star was Rhyheim Shabazz. And the housewife? Nene fucking Leakes. Yes, the inspiration behind the title of my essay collection Pure Innocent Fun. THAT Nene Leakes.

During the game, we played a few rounds of Never Have I Ever at The Tryst Pool. A highlight of the game was when I said, Never have I ever had a lesbian moment like most of my Real Housewives of Atlanta castmates. And would you believe that Nene admitted she HAS had a lesbian moment before? The entire audience screamed in gleeful shock. She wouldn’t divulge any other debates, but that was enough for me.

The best moment of the experience, however, was gifting Nene with a copy of my book and signing it for her. Hilariously, she didn’t recall the quote that inspired the title (it’s not one of the more famous ones!) and thought I was asking her to sign my book. It gave very much, “whatever that means…” And I died. When I first wrote this book, I asked Random House if there was any way to secure a moment with Nene on my book tour. It wasn’t in the cards.

But I’m a firm believer in the universe delivering things to you when it’s time. And one year after the publication of my book, that moment came. One of Nene’s most famous quotes is, “bling bling bling, bitches is mad!” But damn, actually? Bitches is glad!

“Bitches love a summer. Bitches love summer.” This mantra was recently introduced to the pop culture lexicon by The Real Housewives of Rhode Island’s Alicia Carmody. And you know what? I’m bitches. And so is Madonna. It’s a Madonna summer.

I’ve gone on the record declaring this a Madonna summer as early as Coachella weekend 2, when the Queen of Pop made a surprise appearance during Sabrina Carpenter’s set. Witnessing that in person sent me down a Madonna wormhole, and I haven’t stopped playing her music since. In anticipation of her latest album, Confessions II, released last Friday, I’m sure many fans began listening to the original 2005 masterpiece, Confessions on a Dance Floor. Not me. According to my Apple Music Replay, Madonna has been my top artist for the past three months. In April, my top album was Hard Candy. In May, Bedtime Stories knocked Hard Candy to second place.

I have always been a Hard Candy defender. Upon its release, it was slammed by multiple critics and fans. Madonna, usually a pioneer in pop music, was accused of chasing trends and radio-friendly hits by teaming up with The Neptunes, Timbaland, and Kanye West. For Pitchfork, Tom Ewing rated the album a 5.3 and wrote: “Her strengths have always been her authority, and her smart sense of who to work with and when. So even if it’s a summary of where pop’s at rather than where it’s going, Hard Candy should still be excellent. After all, if you’re not going to do your best work for Madonna, who are you going to do it for? But after listening, the question’s still open-- nobody involved in Hard Candy is anywhere near their creative peak.” He also calls my favorite track on the album, “Heartbeat,” the worst of the bunch and a retread of “Into the Groove.” But here’s the thing about pop music. The real arbiter of taste is the dance floor, and Madonna’s link-up with the hottest club music producers of the time has endured. It’s not uncommon to hear a Hard Candy track on a New York dance floor, at a party in Fire Island, or at some gay’s afters in Brooklyn.

At the time, what came across as a retread in a flooded sea of pop music also produced by The Neptunes, Timbaland, and Kanye West has endured. Because she’s fucking Madonna. And who even remembers the other songs she was accused of trying to compete with? At least one critic at the time got it exactly right. For Rolling Stone, Caryn Ganz wrote: “Hard Candy celebrates dance as salvation, but even the euphorically groovy ‘Heartbeat’ and ‘Dance2night’ strike wistful notes.”

Maybe that’s why I’ve always responded to Hard Candy. I’ve always found salvation on the dance floor, along with community. Last year, for Harper’s Bazaar, I wrote about my introduction to rave culture and how it gave me the confidence to love my own body: “MDMA warms up your body. If I didn’t want to die of heat exhaustion, I’d have to do the same. I lifted my own vintage Janet Jackson tour shirt over my head, exposing my body on the dance floor. And the record didn’t scratch. The party didn’t stop. I wasn’t kicked out for not possessing a body that looked like the sea of muscled gay men surrounding me. It would be so much easier to disassociate from the world rather than make the conscious decision to live in your body, embrace every part of it, and connect with your friends and strangers. But the best part about dancing: It’s fun as hell.” When Madonna sings, “Don’t you know? Can’t you see? When I dance, I feel free” on “Heartbeat”? That’s so fucking real.

Madonna hasn’t only looked for salvation in dance: she’s also a bit of a hopeless romantic! My favorite Madonna album is Bedtime Stories, her mid-’90s foray into slinky electronic, trip hop, and R&B. The album also features my favorite Madonna song: “Love Tried to Welcome Me.” When she sings “loneliness has never been a stranger to me,” all of the unrequited loves of my life flash before my eyes. And “ love tried to welcome me, but my soul drew back” speaks exactly to moments when I’ve been unable to accept love into life, instead listening to an inner saboteur. But goddamn it if she’s not gonna love herself despite it all. I’ve never found any Madonna as inspiring as “Survival,” where she sings “I’ll never be an angel. I’ll never be a saint; it’s true. I’m too busy surviving. Whether it’s heaven or hell. I’m gonna be living to tell.”

Madonna has always been revered for her culture-defining singles. When she first dropped “I Feel So Free,” followed by “Bring Love” and “Love Sensation” from Confessions II, a common refrain online was “Where are the singles?” An odd expectation for an artist in this modern era where streaming is shit. I recall the same complaint lobbied at Beyoncé when she released “Break My Soul,” which many fans had to warm up to. Once they heard all of Renaissance, her mission statement was clear. Beyoncé created an album that paid homage to the Black and queer roots of dance music. Upon hearing the completed Confessions II, Madonna’s mission statement became clear, too. She created an album that paid homage to the dance floor, yes, but she was paying homage to the dance floors that played her music. From the career-high track “Danceteria” which cements the lore of Madonna’s New York origins (the Fab Five Freddy mention during a rap breakdown maybe makes this her “Rapture”?), to the sensational “School,” where she sings, “School is in session.” The lesson? She ain’t new to this shit.

Her singles are fun, yes, but it’s the deep cuts where Madonna has always provided her most confessional songwriting. In a recent interview with Mel Ottenberg, Madonna described writing the album with former collaborator Stuart Price: “I hadn’t worked with Stuart for a long time. We’d just done the Celebration Tour together, but besides that, I didn’t really see or speak to him for probably 15 years. I was living in New York, and I reached out to him, thinking, What if we tried to make Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II and reenter the world of inspirational dance music? I had a lot of stuff going on in my life personally. My brother was very, very, very ill, and my stepmother, with whom I’d had a very traumatic relationship throughout my entire childhood, had just died. It’s hard for me to write a song about nothing. I have to tell a story. So I wrote about a lot of family trauma, and then we started making dance music.”

To hear Madonna speak so openly about her process and her grief is refreshing in an age where pop stars rarely tell us shit. Charli XCX recently told Rolling Stone why she’s reticent to do interviews: “This isn’t me being a bitch.… I’m just not really that interested in talking about the meaning behind my songs. You never know how it’s going to turn out in text. Honestly, I wasn’t saying that for it to be a big deal. It’s just how I feel. People already think I’m a bitch, so … I’m very much at peace with it. It’s cool, and it’s not drama or anything like that. It’s just me trying to do what’s good for me, because it got to a place where my anxiety was physically affecting me, and I can’t actually proceed in life like that.”

Yet only a few months later, after partying with pop star Madonna in Paris (they’re both Leos, btw, no wonder I love them), XCX seems to have turned a corner on discussing her music. In a BBC Radio Music interview with Nick Grimshaw, she described meeting Madonna: “She’s just so cool and so interested in really talking about the music that she makes, and how and why. I found it very inspiring to hang out with her. There’s a real taste level with her, it’s high. When I become a bit more interested in how music is art.”

In London recently, I started reading Rachel Cusk’s Outline. On the suggestion of a friend, I alternated reading chapters and listening to Kate Lock’s narration while I rode the tube and sat in parks during the city’s heatwave. In the novel, Cusk’s unnamed narrator has conversations with friends and strangers as she travels to Greece to teach a writing class. In The New York Times‘ review of the novel, Heidi Julavits wrote: “The narrator of Cusk’s lethally intelligent novel is a cipher who inspires other people to confess. In her presence, they divulge stories about their wives and husbands and mistresses, their parents and children and careers. The narrator’s bio, meanwhile, remains faintly sketched.”

To me, the narrator didn’t seem like a cipher. The narrator makes a deliberate decision to let the people around her speak, listening to their confessions and taking their insults (”you’re a lousy teacher,” a student tells her at one point) or describing them as menacing, like when she describes the neighbor on her plane to Greece, who later holds a knife near her on a yacht. Cusk’s writing has a lyrical quality to it. And who else shares lyrics of dubious narrative identity, hoping for you to identify with them, but pop stars? Is this song you’re listening to actually about them? Have they invented the scenario out of thin air? How you respond to it, through your own confessions, will ultimately determine what a song means. Cusk’s work has always been referred to as autofiction, but in 2023 she said to The New Yorker: “I don’t think that I write autofiction, though I admire the people who do, and essentially wish that I did. I think it’s an evolution beyond what I’m doing. I’m perhaps stuck in the past, trying to work out the past. I don’t think I’m in any way as free as the writer of autofiction.” If autofiction is defined as working through the vessel of their own self in the present, then what else is Confessions II but autofiction? Madonna has things to say about her past, yes, but her intention is for you to dance. Right now. And feel free.

On the dance floor

I feel so free

Madonna, “I Feel So Free”

What was it that Harvey Dent said in The Dark Knight? “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” That applies to reality television stars, too. Death in this situation means you’ve left the show that made you famous, which is often the only way to keep public opinion of you intact. Ariana Madix discovered this when she became the doyenne of Vanderpump Rules in the wake of Scandoval, then became the show’s villain when producers, her castmates, and the audience were angry she wouldn’t play ball and film with her loser ex, Tom Sandoval. And given his recent antics, thank god for that.

Enter Ciara Miller. The recent breakout star of Summer House, thanks to a cheating scandal of her own. Her ex, West Wilson, had an affair with Amanda Batula, Miller’s friend and fellow castmate Kyle Cooke’s wife. In the aftermath, Miller became pop culture’s heroine, and Summer House finally became a household name. Miller gained an influx of new fans, pushing her to over 1 million followers on Instagram, landing her a slew of brand deals and a hosting gig on Love Island: Aftersun (alongside Tefi Pessoa).

And that’s where the trouble began.

In the recent week of Love Island, the Casa Amor twist ended, and cast member Aniya Harvey found herself dumped by KC Chandler, who returned from Casa with a new partner, Tierra “Titi” Davis. Aniya’s friend, Trinity Tatum, launched a searing read of KC, and Titi ended up being hit by verbal shrapnel in the process. As a result, the internet — particularly Threads, which has grown exponentially as a place to live-post about reality television — exploded into heated debates about the interactions.

A problem has arisen for Love Island that’s not dissimilar to the conversation centered around Summer House. At some point, the reality television show has ceased to be entertainment and instead become a forum for viewers to compare their morality to the cast members and to debate race, gender, and sexuality. Reality television is often derided as cheap entertainment, so discussing how these shows reflect real-life politics is always welcome, but at what point do these shows stop being fun to watch? When the chief reason for watching Love Island has become an opportunity to engage in heated debates, what’s the point of the show? Do the cast members only exist as avatars now and not as three-dimensional human beings?

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Reality television has come a long way since I first tuned into reruns of MTV’s The Real World. Back then, daytime soap operas still had high budgets, and primetime soaps ruled the airwaves. Now, they’ve been replaced by reality television dramas — television just as addictive as Marlena Evans being possessed by the devil on Days of Our Lives — but much cheaper to make. When soap operas practically vanished from the airwaves, Bravo became the new home for fans of high drama, camp, and, of course, sleaze.

Renowned soap fan and cultural critic Camille Paglia wrote about her love of Bravo and The Real Housewives in 2014: “The Real Housewives franchise isn’t entertainment to me—it’s a lifestyle. I watch virtually nothing else on TV now, except for occasional documentaries and Turner Classic Movies. I can see the same Real Housewives episode multiple times with equal enjoyment. I love the frank display of emotion, the intricate interrelationships, and the sharp-elbows jockeying for power and visibility. Not since the radical gay German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder revived and recast Douglas Sirk’s ‘women’s pictures’ during the 1970s has a single individual so boldly rescued a waning genre and given it such splendid new life.

To compare reality television to Sirk might seem like an exaggeration, but it’s not. What are storylines like faking cancer, FBI arrests, and affairs besides high melodrama? Soaps were once lauded as “sex and suffering in the afternoon” by TIME magazine in 1976. Is that not what we watch Bravo for? Sure, the wish-fulfillment aspect is part of it; soap operas also gave us a peek into glamorous lives that weren’t our own. But increasingly, Bravo fans have demanded a frictionless viewing experience that is devoid of drama. In the wake of the Summer House scandal, I’ve seen a myriad of suggestions for a show where Ciara Miller and other Black women merely hang out and live fabulous, drama-free lives. Baby, that’s called Instagram stories.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some news:

My new podcast, Feedback with Ira Madison III is out now. It’s a weekly pop culture digest unpacking the stories, internet obsessions, and debates lighting up your group chats. Joined by friends and cultural tastemakers, I’ll dive into entertainment, books, politics, media, and the increasingly online world that’s reshaping how we think, argue, and stay relevant. New episodes every Thursday.

You can subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever else you get your podcasts.

I. The Yesteryear Itch

Includes spoilers for Yesteryear.

“What a bitch, huh?”

It took me a beat, but I realized the woman speaking to me on the subway platform was referring to the protagonist of Yesteryear, author Caro Claire Burke’s instant #1 NYT best seller, which was propped in my hands as I waited for a 3 train back to Brooklyn. Outside of the Bravo fandom, I was rarely invited to join in the camaraderie of calling another woman a bitch, but this was a fictional woman. And well, she is a bitch.

Yesteryear was on my radar long before its publication, due to a Deadline article in 2024 about Anne Hathaway and Elizabeth Banks bidding for its film rights pre-publication. In a since-deleted Substack note, the very much-in-the-comments Burke clapped back against accusations that Hathaway (who ultimately won the bidding war) “ghost wrote” the book. I’m sure Hathaway offered some ideas on the draft she read, but producers don’t ghostwrite the books they adapt. They just rewrite whatever they don’t like.

But back to the bitch. That would be Natalie Mills, a tradwife influencer who wakes up one morning to find herself trapped in 1855. Or, so she thinks. The draw of this book is its buzzy sci-fi-esque twist. The reality of this book is that there’s nothing sci-fi about it all; she’s not trapped in 1855. The disappointment of this book is that the premise is its worst part.

Though, to take it from the internet, the book is the WORST THING some people have read. When people dragged the previous year’s buzzy white girl books, Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs (which I haven’t read yet) or Anika Jade Levy’s Flat Earth (which I really enjoyed), there was an air of professional jealousy. The internet wanted to know why Cash got so much press for her debut. Answer: a publicist, which you can also hire for your own books! The internet wanted to know why the launch of the Volume 0 issue with my debut short story got shunted into a launch party for Levy’s book, with nary a mention of my story and one good photo of me at the event! Okay, no one but me was wondering that, but the check more than made up for it. But the questions surrounding the quality of Yesteryear have been good old, “Is this book everyone is talking about really that fucking good?”

It’s become discourse akin to a new Taylor Swift album. Does its #1 status denote its quality? If you don’t think so, then it makes you very eager to talk shit about it with like-minded people. My friend and host of the podcast The Stacks, Traci Thomas, famously likes to say, “talking shit is good for books.” Which is perhaps why she immediately told me to text her my thoughts as I dove into Yesteryear.

Much to my surprise, given Burke’s excellent critical mind that I recall from episodes of her podcast Diabolical Lies, the book hardly feels like a novel. It’s no wonder that Yesteryear was quickly snatched up as a movie, because reading it felt like watching a summer blockbuster that lures you in with a shocking premise, and then collapses under its own weight (yes, I’ve been in the backrooms…). What I mean by this is that Yesteryear is less a story about a tradwife influencer who wakes up in 1855, but more so about making the audience believe this tradwife influencer is in 1855. And from the jump, mind you. The book flashes forward to its twist very quickly. Like, chapter one quickly. And then it jumps back and forth from Natalie’s college years, her courtship with rich idiot Caleb, and the formation of her influencer empire. Along the way, Natalie is downright evil to Caleb, her sister, her college roommate, her employees, and her fans. This is why the woman on the subway was so gleeful about Natalie being a bitch who “got what she deserved.”

I believe that Yesteryear has aspirations of exploring religious delusion, gender roles, and how social media turns us into the worst versions of ourselves. But the process of reading this book goes from whiplash at the time jumps, to tediousness once you realize the twist isn’t a sci-fi twist, to anger when you realize that the twist itself is spaced out in flash forwards because there’s not enough material to sustain it for an entire book. The film might be more successful, frankly, because it won’t be told in a first-person POV like Yesteryear, which feels a bit like scamming the reader by the end of the book. The book’s final twist is that Natalie placed herself into Yesteryear, but can’t remember any of it because of the drugs she’s taking. It’s a really exploitative way to tell such a fun premise, not to mention kind of lazy.

It’s a shame, because otherwise, I found Burke’s depiction of a people-pleaser turned diabolical monster turned red-pilled nujob to be pretty damn funny. One particular passage (which I’ve been told loses some of its fun in the audiobook) cracked me up:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.

I leaned across the table and pressed my hand over His. Sorry, I mean his. Caleb’s.

I think most people imagined someone like Nara Smith when they first heard this premise. But Natalie has no interest in becoming a model and walking in a Miu Miu show. She genuinely believes she has a higher calling than most. And she honestly believes most of the shit she preaches online, which is perhaps why her attempts to circumvent the patriarchal fantasy she’s peddling ultimately end in her downfall. I would’ve loved to see more of her assistant’s revenge plot and her Dallas-esque political struggle with her father-in-law. But alas, there’s THE TWIST. Without the twist, this could’ve been an incredibly fun and demented character study, something more akin to Raven Leilani’s Luster. But then again, literary fiction doesn’t create Hollywood bidding wars, does it?

II. Pride Month Reading List

@irathethirdGet into this pride month reading list!!! #booktok #pride #readinglist #fyp #books

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I released my Pride Month reading list on Monday. You can watch the above video for my commentary on each selection, but here’s the full list: Black Deutschland by Darryl Pinckney. Floodlines by Saleem Haddad. The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. I Think They Love You by Julian Winters. I’m a Fool to Want You by Camila Sosa Villada. Love is a Dangerous Word by Essex Hemphill. No God But Us by Bobuq Sayed. Pure Innocent Fun by Ira Madison III (duh!). Rock My Soul by bell hooks. There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood by Rasheed Newson. The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy.

What I Read in May

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Love in the Afternoon, and Evening: Essays and Conversations on Soap Operas by Charlotte Druckman and Mayukh Sen

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Famesick by Lena Dunham

Phases: A Memoir by Brandy & Gerrick Kennedy

Enter the Villa: The (Unauthorized) Reality Behind Love Island by Anna Peele

Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle by Natan Last

Once again, the best book I’ve read this month is from Toni Morrison. This probably isn’t fair to the other books I’m reading, but I’m almost done with my year-long goal of reading every Morrison book, so everything else will stand a fighting chance soon enough. I didn’t think anything could top my love of Sula, which came into my life after the death of a best friend. But many people have claimed Song of Solomon as their favorite Morrison book, with a particular affinity for its final line. That’s a lot to live up to. And I’ll be damned if it didn’t.

I’ve written on here about the long process of decolonizing my mind and my personal literary canon after years of attending predominantly white institutions. I wasn’t expecting Morrison to see me as much as she did in Solomon. What Sula taught me about myself and friendship, Milkman’s journey in Solomon really taught me about myself. It feels like a culmination of everything I’ve been reading and writing since I’ve had to rebuild my life after losing my apartment in a fire last fall1. As Joyce Hope Scott wrote in The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison, Milkman must be “spiritually reborn” by losing all of his possessions and notions of his identity. Reading Morrison this year hasn’t just given me new literature to love, it has given me a new sense of personal direction in my life and my writing. I’m grateful for this book. And the final line is everything I was promised: “For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”

(Don’t judge me when I get a print of this Amy Sherald painting in the near future, and possibly a new tattoo.)

I also loved Famesick! And to bring things back to my new podcast, I asked Lena Dunham a question for her newsletter, Good Thing Going. She responded by suggesting that the phrase “keep it” was my “voice of a generation” moment. It’s nice to look back fondly on the origins of Keep It, and to know that someone whose writing has meant so much to me as a millennial was even aware of it.

III. Nightmare Baby Press

I attended the PEN America Gala at the National History Museum, which was pretty fun thanks to my friend, FSG editor Jackson Howard, being there. Everyone else I’d asked to be my +1 was either out of town or sick. I spent most of my time hunting for Dua Lipa, but I bailed on the party as soon as co-host Matt Star (of Dream Baby Press) loudly began to read one of his awful poems. About getting fingered at the museum. Chile…

I attended my friend Isaac Fitzgerald’s book launch at Books Are Magic, where he was in conversation with Roxane Gay about his new memoir, American Rambler. I learned that Isaac and I both write our first drafts by hand.

I met Percival Everett during intermission at Ragtime. I have never met an author I love so much since the first time I met Chuck Klosterman in college, so I rambled a congratulations to him for winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel, James, except I did not specify what I was congratulating him for and just said “congratulations” a few times, then thanked him for what The Trees meant to me.

I hosted a panel discussion for Love in the Afternoon, and Evening at PT Knitwear, which is an amazing little bookstore in the LES that I’d never visited before. About 14 people showed up, which is more than I assumed would come to a discussion for a book about soap operas on a Thursday night.

Last night, I attended the premiere of The Vampire Lestat. To no one’s surprise, it’s a fucking great premiere. I got to meet star Jacob Anderson IRL after interviewing him in 2024, where he told me he was a Keep It fan. He subscribed to Feedback during our convo, which made him the first person to subscribe to my new podcast! I’ll be buzzing about that for the rest of the month.

Hudson Williams was already my opp for his 1/2 star Letterboxd review of Salt… but now that he’s shared his list of favorite books on Instagram, I feel much better. Stoner (the only book every straight man you know has read this year), two Joan Didion books, two Eve Babitz books, Didion & Babitz for good measure, and Martyr. It’s giving BookTok algorithm down and says very little about his actual personality. Unless it does…

See you next Third,

Ira

FOR A GOOD TIME CALL

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When you call this number, you’ll hear:

“Hey, it’s Ira Madison. The internet has completely rewired our brains, our taste, and honestly, our grip on reality — so I made a podcast about it. It’s called FEEDBACK and every week, I’ll break down the chaos going viral online, rant with my friends about whatever’s taking over the group chat, and talk with guests about their relationship to the art, culture, and the internet. Tune in wherever you watch or listen to podcasts on June 18 for brand new episodes, dropping every Thursday!”

FEEDBACK drops 6/18 from Acast.

It’s good to be back.

It’s the middle of August and I’m already sweating through my Banana Republic linen shirt as I arrive at the Chelsea art gallery. Everyone smells like Blue de Chanel and Chloe by Chloe. The DJ plays mid-2000s electronic trip-hop like Aural Float, with no bassline, and people nod like they get it. I’m wearing secondhand Saint Laurent sunglasses and pretending not to be hungover. I’m here because my boyfriend Fallon’s art is on display. I’d rather be in bed than forcibly social with his nepo baby and crypto tech bro friends. I’d rather my own art be on display, but I’m a college dropout with no art world connections, no Annina Nosei to offer me a basement studio under her SoHo gallery on Prince Street. I instead have a white boyfriend who is also broke, but thanks to a Parsons scholarship, knows all the right people to land him in this gallery for his first showing, and now I’m playing the role of supportive boyfriend. I weave through the crowd of Todd Snyder black jeans, Doc Martens, Aritzia dresses, and brosexuals in Issey Miyake, to find the gallery’s pièce de résistance, my boyfriend’s abstract painting that looks like a police blood splatter analysis. Or formally, abstract impressionism.

It was an art gallery where we first met. Well, an art gallery of sorts. It was at Frevo on West 8th, a clandestine restaurant tucked behind an unassuming storefront art gallery, where three previously unseen Richard Corman portraits of Basquiat from ’84 were on display. You enter the gallery, whisper a password to a bouncer, and you’re whisked into a speakeasy restaurant. I was there on one of the rare writing assignments I’m usually tossed when a staff writer has a conflict. I was mid-interview with Chef Franco when one of his regulars interrupted us. At first, I was annoyed at this rude white boy starting a convo as if I wasn’t even there! Until I saw those bright blue eyes. Piercingly bright blue. “Aquamarine,” he likes to tell people with a grin to assert dominance in a conversation. I was taken by his sharp jaw. His shampoo commercial blonde hair. His surprisingly deep voice when he flashed me a dopey smile and finally said, “Sorry for interrupting.” He offered to buy me a drink and go on the record in my article about the fight Justin and Hailey Bieber had there a couple of weeks prior. “My mom spends too much money here for him to ban me for gossiping about the clientele,” Fallon said, resting his hand on my back as he led me to the bar. We talked for hours. He was unemployed, pursuing a career as a painter, and living in a Lower East Side restaurant with three roommates, nineteen roommates if you counted the number of roaches I’d spotted since we started dating. I’d managed to find the one white, gay artist in New York whose life wasn’t being bankrolled by parents. And my fucking storyline went out the window like that. I wasn’t going to become the most famous person in New York by being the Olivia Pope to his Fitzgerald Grant. We were just a couple of broke, starving artists. Except he had a gallery showing, and I spent my evenings getting stoned, rereading critiques from my classmates during the one semester I attended the Art Institute of Chicago. One referred to my work as an attempt to bring back the abstract painting trend disdainfully referred to as zombie formalism by Times critic Roberta Smith in 2014. At least we were in love. I think. A gay couple fucking monogamously for three years must be love.

An attractive man, dressed oddly in a turtleneck for a hot summer night and wide-rimmed glasses, looking a bit like Michael B. Jordan if he read books, approaches me as I stand in front of my boyfriend’s artwork. “People actually like this Pollock knock-off, shit?” He asks. I like the painting, but I don’t mind the ego boost of someone trashing my boyfriend’s work. I ask this Black Jerry Saltz who his favorite artists are, if not the one on display before us. He responds with Salmon Toor (so I knew he was a faggot), Philemona Williamson, Amy Sherald, and, surprisingly, Edward Hopper, which feels kind of MAGA. He asks for mine, and I say, Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley, Lichtenstein (a white king), and sorry if it makes me basic, but Basquiat. He jokes that he’s going to have to swipe left on me now, because he hates Basquiat. I find that being Black and hating Basquiat is contrarian to the point of attention-seeking, but I press him further. He claims Basquiat is overrated, and he’d be nothing more than an influencer if he were around now, selling art in partnership with Doritos or some shit. That people only like his art because he was Warhol’s pet project. I respond curtly that they were actually friends, which he ignores to continue his diatribe that while Warhol was vapid, he at least had a real POV that Basquiat did not possess, and that his art was mostly simplistic, primitive, scribblings. He insists Basquiat did not engage with pop culture or Black culture in any real, meaningful way, and we should be more interested in real Black artists like Faith Ringgold and Mavis Pusey, who got overshadowed by Warhol elevating his black bestie for clout so people would no longer see the Warhol Factory as barely a bunch of bored, uninteresting white people doing drugs and trying to be famous. I’m quickly bored with his ranting, but I can tell he wants to fuck me, and everyone else at the gallery is paying attention to my boyfriend and not me, so why let this attention go to waste?

I tell him he’s wrong, and he challenges me to offer any instance of Basquiat caring about moving the needle on Black art, so I mention the ’82 Slave Auction and the ’86 Jim Crow paintings. He rolls his eyes and sardonically says, “A black stick figure with the word Jim Crow written above it. Incredibly deep. Subtle too.” I say art isn’t supposed to be subtle. He says it should say SOMETHING. I tell him that there’s no such thing as moral or immoral art, it’s either bad or it’s good, and he scoffs at me, quoting “a dead white man,” which is a rather rude way to describe Oscar Wilde, but I guess it is accurate. I tell him he doesn’t need to conjure a thesis on Basquiat being bad for Black art when all he needs to do is say that he doesn’t like his work. Not everything is a crisis of virtue. He begrudgingly agrees, then says, fine, I don’t like his work. And then he asks me out.

My boyfriend appears at that moment, wrapping his arms around me and kissing my neck. He asks if we could get a photo together in front of his painting after he takes a quick photo with the gay actor from Euphoria. He rushes off as quickly as he appeared. And so, I am left alone with the man who just asked me out after an extended foreplay of art criticism. But now he knows I have a boyfriend. I reflexively begin to apologize, but he cuts me off. He is incensed, but not for the reason I presume. He scoffs, “You’re dating Fallon?” I ask how he knows my boyfriend. The man responds that he and Fallon went to Parsons together, where Fallon pumped out one shitty painting after another and was still the first in their graduating class to land a gallery showing, because his mother owns this gallery.

“You must have the wrong person. My boyfriend went to Parsons on scholarship.”

“Fallon’s dad is the Executive Dean. He wasn’t there on scholarship. And his mom owns this gallery,” he says. He can see the shock on my face. “He lied to you, huh? Don’t worry, he’s been cosplaying as a poor struggling artist for years for the street cred.”

I should be pissed off that I’ve been lied to. But instead, I’m smirking. I don’t have a broke white boyfriend. I have a rich white boyfriend. And a picture to pose for.

I had the opportunity to participate in Quad Cinema’s March Melodrama series, which included the films A Place in the Sun, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Written on the Wind, and All About My Mother.

I gave an introduction to A Place in the Sun, my first time doing this for a film, and I was truly rushing to get through it. I felt like people just wanted to watch the damn movie and not hear me talk, because despite a career of public speaking, it still gives me anxiety. Afterward, in the restroom, a patron told me, “We wanted to hear you talk more!”

I was asked to do another introduction, so this time I wrote out a mini-essay on my favorite Pedro Almodóvar film, All About My Mother. This time went much better, except I still have not perfected the art of not sweating profusely under bright lights. Maybe I need some damn forehead botox.

For those not in attendance at the sold-out screening, here is the introduction:

(The speech has been edited and expanded to include full quotes.)

This is a film I am always reranking in my mind. Each of Almodóvar’s films has a piece of my heart. Still, I’m always swapping out the Almodóvar in my Letterboxd top four with the hilarious Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown or the toxically romantic Law of Desire. But I always come back to All About My Mother because it feels so perfectly realised.

The story’s construction, its vibrant colors, its emotional resonance that’s carried all the way to its closing dedication (“To Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Romy Schneider... To all actresses who have played actresses, to all women who act, to all men who act and become women, to all the people who want to be mothers. To my mother.”). When I first saw this film, it felt more “adult’ than his previous screwball films of the ‘90s or his ‘80s punk films. But the more I’ve watched, I find that this, in a way, works as a memory play.

It was around this time that Almodóvar said he had to stop his lifestyle of drugs and late nights. In a 2024 interview with The Guardian, he said: “I’d love to go back to those insane nights of the 80s, but I’d need a week to recover,” he says. “I don’t want to sound like it’s all about integrity or some priestly act – I did it because I wanted to. It was for the pleasure of writing and the enormous pleasure of making films.” He even evokes this personal resolution in one of his short stories, “The Mirror Ceremony,” from his collection The Last Dream, where a vampire abandons his nighttime revelry for life in a monastery1. Though are monasteries bastions of sobriety? Nunneries aren’t in his films, as we saw in Dark Habits! Notably, Nina is “hooked on junk,” and Huma is “hooked on Nina.” The film wrestles with addictions.

But Almodóvar doesn’t look back on his younger days with regret. If anything, it has inspired so much of the emotional resonance in his work. In a 1999 interview with Filmmaker, he describes why so much of the film’s action takes place backstage, in Huma’s dressing room: “The dressing room for me is like a center of the female universe. I very much like to see the actresses when they are making up or getting dressed. It’s very intimate. They talk. It seems to me that women can’t lie in a dressing room or in the toilet or in the kitchen. These are spaces in which you can only say the truth. I don’t know why. Like at a party, where women are usually in the kitchen talking about their husbands because they are more drunk than usual and are a little more sincere. And also in the bathroom in many situations, you are more sincere, talking about desires, like ‘I want to do that if possible,’ or ‘I want to sniff that if you invite me,’ or just talk in the bathroom about very important and serious matters. These are places that invite you to talk.”

I think that many of us know what people “sniff” in bathrooms or in kitchens at parties. If not from personal experience, then from witnessing it in an Almodóvar film! It’s how you form, in the words of Quadd Webb, “love, bonding, trust — real friendship.”

This film is about mothers, but it’s also about friendships forged among women and the ones that forged Almodóvar’s gifts as an artist. All About My Mother teaches you how to trust, how to love.

Recent updates:

I interviewed Charles Melton for L’Officiel Homme.

I wrote about the “singular” connection between Joni Mitchell and Princess Peach for Them.

Peyton Dix interviewed me for Them’s new web series, Privacy Please.

@them.usAre “the girls” talking too much? This week, @PEYTON DIX, is joined by @Ira Madison III and the spirit of #ToniMorrison in the Cubbyhole bathroom for a new episode of Privacy Please. #queertiktok #heatedrivalry #substackwriter #buzzfeed

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