Increasingly, I’ve been hesitant to use Facebook, especially after the past year when the company’s (well Mark Zuckerberg’s, really) indifference to the platform’s ill social effects, especially in countries like India or the Philippines, came to light. But what I do miss from being more active there are the conversations and the space for me to process my thoughts with others. This is why I’ve set up this Substack, to try and replicate that environment again (and also because I was inspired by Fabian, a good friend of mine).
I’ve experimented with newsletters before and have been very undisciplined in maintaining them, so I’m not sure how successful I’ll be in keeping this one. But who knows, I’ll give it a shot and see how far I go. Mostly, I’ll write a mix of personal stuff and a variety of my interests, including economics, pop culture, quizzing, books, tennis, etc. I’ll try to write at least once a week, but I don’t want to put a schedule on myself because that’s just another putting another deadline on myself.
I recently finished Tana French’s The Searcher. I was surprised that I ended up really liking it. I picked up an earlier book of hers, Wytch Elm, two years ago and stopped a few pages in because the writing felt detached and dry to me then — I even picked it up twice and stopped at roughly the same spot. But I decided to give her another shot with this book after reading a positive review.
The Searcher tells the story of Cal, an ex-cop from Chicago who moves to the Irish countryside as a kind of self-imposed exile after going through a divorce. He buys a rickety house and repairs it as a form of therapy, as he literally “rebuilds” his life. It doesn’t take long until some kind of trouble, the kind that he’s used to from his old job, reaches his doorstep. A child named Trey whose brother has recently gone missing shows up and asks for his help to find him. He ends up uncovering a far deeper and murkier secret than what he was expecting from the sleepy town and the yokels that populate it.
Despite it being crime fiction, there is very little plot involved. The mystery, once solved, is quite banal, and in fact it only gets moving around a hundred pages in. The real pleasure I had here is reading the menacing insularity of the community. French does an impressive job in describing and portraying the small town mentality and the diffuse power that permeates throughout the neighborhood. What makes it hard for Cal to disentangle the central mystery is the opacity of the intentions of the different residents of the village, who see him as an outsider unnecessarily shaking the bushes, waiting for the rabbits to come out. It is much more convenient for them to fall in line and let time do all the forgetting, but here is Cal with the Yank attitude forcing them to confront, or at the very least acknowledge, the troubles that underlie their community.
Parts of this novel also reminded me of another Irish work of crime fiction that I recently read, Snow by John Banville. That book was about a protestant detective solving a murder of a priest in a largely Catholic town, and is also about an outsider trying to find inroads to gain people’s trust in order to get to the bottom of things.
Prejudice, and the subversion of stereotypes and expectations, is a common theme between the two books. What is it about the Irish psyche that makes them good observers of social dynamics of inclusion and exclusion? Of course there is the trauma of The Troubles and families being separated or turning on each other (for this I recommend Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing). The weather and nature also provide a fertile source of metaphors: the “snow” in Snow and the peaty bogs in The Searcher as metaphors for covering things up slowly, layer by layer, as time goes by. The repression of Catholicism, the complicated question of identity especially in relation with the British. . . a confluence of many different things. I want to read more of this genre, starting perhaps with French’s earlier works on the Dublin Murder Squad, and will share the good ones I find. Please share any recommendations.
On a personal note, Fran and I have been going on regular Saturday night dinner dates again. We started three weeks ago, at Blackbird, followed by Raging Bull. Tonight we are trying Metronome. We try to eat in restaurants that are quiet and don’t have a lot of people. Meaning they’re expensive, haha. But it’s something I’ve been looking forward to because it feels normal.
But actually, the entire experience feels normal-adjacent. The theater of eating out has changed rapidly over the past two years with all the safety protocols imposed. I wonder what practices will stick? On the surface level, things like contactless menus on QR codes and sanitizers and alcohol on every table seem like low-cost habits that can survive past the pandemic. And because people have depended so much on food deliveries, even for higher quality food, i.e. not just McDo, it feels like eating out has to feel more of an experience. So maybe more time-bound/seasonal menus ala Toyo?
I am talking about the high-end restaurants, but what about the areas and neighborhoods that have been gutted by the pandemic, like Poblacion? What will that look like? Will it even be resurrected or will another area take its place? And what about cloud kitchens, have they actually picked up here?
This is just a snapshot, but there is so much uncertainty in the future. People are talking about wanting to “go back to normal” but is there a normal to go back to?
Do you have a regular time to read and watch films or is it all the spare time you find :)