2022 Appreciation Post
Joshua and my friend Andrew posted what they liked most this year, and I decided to, too.
My attention was unusually scattered; I had too many part-time jobs and was otherwise transient; I read essays and short stories and short novels and listened to a lot of ambient stuff—passively then more actively—and began, slowly, to reenter a slower sense of time. I noticed that I gravitated toward books and songs and performances having something explicitly to do with “the body”; books and essays associated with “the new weird” (probably because in April I visited my friend Zoe in Palm Springs; we drove to Joshua Tree and I was awed and spooked and reminded of Karen Russell’s near-perfect comic-horror tale of plant possession, “The Bad Graft”); and, as always, love stories. <3
These were the essays, novels, albums, and other things I appreciated most in 2022:
—A Death in the Family by James Agee
—Trust by Domenico Starnone (i.e. Elena Ferrante, sorry, it’s obvious!)
—Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso
—The Captain Lands in Paradise by Sarah Manguso
—The Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso
—“Resonant Bodies” by Suso Saiz
—Awilda Sterling-Duprey’s “…blindfolded” at the Whitney Biennial
—Migraine by Oliver Sacks (ty to everyone not yet alienated by my ramblings about bilious buildup and release!)
—“Carriage Bearance Severence” by Matty Davis and Ben Gould
—Revenge of the Scapegoat by Caren Beilin
—Body Work by Melissa Febos
—Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au
—“Fool for Love” by Sam Shepard (ty for lending me this, Michelle)
—“The Novelist’s Film” by Hong Sang-soo
—Notes on the Cinematograph by Robert Bresson
—“Once Twice Melody” by Beach House
—“Janky Star” by Grace Ives
—“Herbs” by Isabelle Cheung in Joyland Magazine
—Cholla Cactus Garden at Joshua Tree National Park with Zoe
—A Horse at Night by Amina Cain
—The Second Body by Daisy Hildyard
—Death by Landscape by Elvia Wilk
—“For the Birds: The Birdsong Project” at Brooklyn Botanic Garden with Layne
—“Evanston Salts Costs Climbing” by Will Arbery
—“Death to the Living, Long Live Trash” by Duke Riley at Brooklyn Museum
—“Brooklyn Abstraction: Four Artists, Four Walls” at Brooklyn Museum
—“The Right to Not Be Pregnant” by Charlotte Shane
—“A Formal Feeling” by Claire Louise-Bennett
—Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra
—First Love by Gwendoline Riley
—“Big Time” by Angel Olsen
—“2046” by Wong Kar Wai
—The Hundreds by Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart
—“The Gold Thread” by John Cotter in Joyland Magazine
—The latest draft of Jessie’s novel
—Philip Sherburne’s archived Pitchfork reviews
—Margaritas at Gueros with Ariel
—“Le Camion” by Marguerite Duras
—“Foam” by Ulla
—Wu’s Wonton King with Yiyi
—Slavic Soul Party at Barbès
—Sister and h. pruz’s show at somebody’s very high-ceilinged house in Bed-Stuy
—Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s show-within-a-show at the Whitney Biennial
—“Cafe Loup” by Ben Lerner
—Everything published by Beautiful Days Press <3<3<3
—Avalon by Nell Zink
—A Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux
—Love Me Tender by Constance Debré
—Greetings Readings at Unnameable Books with Joshua
—Yi Sang: Selected Works by Yi Sang
—“Languoria” by Sophie Birch
—Pure Colour by Sheila Heti