The Bee Sting
Wake up you sleepy head Put on some clothes, shake up your bed
I am not sure to say about mid-December 2023, it is much warmer here in Seattle than usual and it is as dark as always. I am excited to say that the Unreliable Newsletter is up to 60 subscribers! I think that is pretty good considering how horribly bad I am at self promotion.
I started Zadie Smith’s new novel, The Fraud and so far, it is as good as expected. She is one of those people where you just want to crawl inside her brain. I have been a Zadie Smith fan since White Teeth in the early 2000s. I remember when On Beauty came out when I was living in the UK and the floral of the inside cover kept drawing me to it every time, I entered a bookstore. Her short book of essays, Intimations was the perfect reprieve during the height of the pandemic.
I have been enjoying the third season of Slow Horses - Gary Oldman is so amazing at playing a dirty old man that you can smell him through the screen and the rest of the cast is just so good. I heard the books by Mick Herron are good, but they don’t have Kirsten Scott Thomas and Gary Oldman.
I finally finished The Bee Sting; I think I may have mentioned it in my last post. Hilary Mantel always makes me think of the ghosts of history existing around us and within us – it is a theme of her Cromwell Trilogy that I have never been able to shake and a view of the world that is always with me. Paul Murray wrote a ghost story. The ghosts in Murray’s newest book are ones that I think we are all familiar with, especially once you get to your mid to late 30s and you have collected enough observation of your peers and life experience to recognize those who sleepwalk among us. Are sleepwalkers ghosts? I think they can be considered a type of ghost.
The Bee Sting has four narrators, all a member of the same nuclear family. There is the 18-year-old daughter, Cass, the 12-year-old son, PJ, and their parents - the glamorous Imelda and the very average Dickie. From my literary guesstimate the parents are in their mid to late 30s. The book begins from the perspective of the children and the reader forms strong opinions of both the parents. But- obviously, as the cliché goes – nothing is ever what it seems. The writing style deftly changes depending on the perspective yet is unchangingly accessible. Murray is a master storyteller and a brilliant writer; I think in many ways this is difficult to achieve. Most writers these days are one or the other. The Bee String is a tragedy, but like the greatest tragedies Murray is also able to capture the small glints of joy and beauty people experience throughout their lives and hold on to keep going.
In an interview I listened to with Murray he discusses how the primary theme of The Bee Sting is how people’s experiences in their adolescents greatly influence how people are later in life – he accomplishes this. He manages to seamlessly weave in themes around climate change, the rise of authoritarianism, the “pornification of reality” and how experiences shape our perspectives. Please do not be intimidated by the length of this book, it is around 650 pages, you will most likely read it faster than books a third of its length. The book lives up to all the hype and deserves all the recognition it is receiving. I did not read Prophet Song – but I do think The Bee Sting should have won the Booker.
The Weiner Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) was started by Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffman and Fritz Waerndorfer in 1903. It came out of the Vienna Secession (the same one Klimt was involved in) and catered to the upper middle class and wealthy members of Viennese society. It reminds me of one of my all-time favorites, Liberty of London, which started about 25 years before – with the same sort of products – furniture, wallpaper, textiles, bookbinding, leatherwork, jewelry, postcards ceramics, clothing, and millinery fashion. The style is also similar to The Omega Workshop, again, same period. The workshop employed a surprising number of women. The Weiner Werkstätte went through their fair share of troubles and closed in 1932. I came across the most amazing online archival collection from MAK – Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna – they also have all kinds of other applied arts, design, architecture, and contemporary arts. Below are a few of my favorite…
You sure know how to uncover those hidden treasures for the rest of us to enjoy! Thanks for sharing the visuals of the post cards. They're stunning.
Ditto, I love the art you feature in each edition. Some pieces in particular really move me, I look forward to reading what you love and just want to encourage you to keep going! Happy New Year!