Convenience Big Store: America’s “Radical Chick”

18 September, 2021

Hello,

William Boyd, chatting to me about books a few years ago, said he thought the novel "does the human condition better than any other art form". If you want to understand people, don't read a work of philosophy or history or biography, read a novel, he said. Craig Brown's brilliant piece in the TLS last week (see below) only confirms Boyd's view. Biographies may brim over with facts, many interesting, many not, but they are essentially works of fiction. What else can they be? As Brown says, most of the information is window-dressing: "the shop itself is shut, visible only through the front window, its private offices firmly under lock and key". What you get in biographies is external stuff. For truth, for what goes on inside people's heads, you have to turn to a novel.

All good wishes,

Jon Connell

Editor-in-chief

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Met Gala

America's "Radical Chick"

I adore Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, says Van Badham in The Guardian. On Monday she turned heads at the annual Met Gala in a "slyly bridal" white Aurora James dress adorned with the words "Tax the rich". And the backlash was "instant and glorious". Of course, the socialist Democrat congresswoman wasn't the only person at the $35,000-a-head New York fashion bash to "take a political statement as her date": soccer megastar Megan Rapinoe carried a clutch emblazoned with the words "In Gay We Trust" and Cara Delevingne wore a top that read "Peg the Patriarchy". But arriving in "the blood-spattered garments of fighting class war" is a surefire way to get noticed.

The "Bolshevik Barbie" is in a class of her own at "getting people to look at her", says Kyle Smith in the New York Post. In a room full of "dimwit divas", our favourite "Radical Chick" stole the crown. "You've been out-preened, Rihanna!" The paps don't care that the richest 10% already pay 71% of America's taxes, and the bottom 60% pay zero federal income tax. Or that Boston University international relations and economics grad AOC once thought John Maynard Keynes's first name was Milton. She has a genius for grabbing attention, but that doesn't make her a sharp politician. "Barbra Streisand is a genius singer, but you wouldn't want her analysing your X-rays."

I'm not convinced her message really works, says Julia Craven on Slate. The dress was designed by a woman "reportedly dating the son of billionaire Edgar Bronfman Jr". And apart from becoming a "regurgitated Twitter talking point", what has AOC achieved? She's a national figure who is supposed to be beholden to her constituency, says culture writer Shamira Ibrahim on Twitter. Yet while New York is fighting for federal funds to recover from a hurricane "she's at a wealthy tax write-off talking about her dress".

If the Republicans had any sense, they'd hail Ocasio-Cortez as one of their own – and not just "for shedding her Covid mask and fearlessly partying on", says Dominic Green in The Daily Telegraph. She's using "a younger, left-wing version of Donald Trump's playbook": cut the establishment out of the joke. AOC isn't stupid. Any inherent contradiction is "the kind of woke trolling" that the young left love, "especially because it enrages the old right". Ocasio-Cortez knows her audience, too: 12.7m Twitter followers, and 8.7m on Instagram. That's a lot more than 110,000, which is the number of voters who first elected her in New York's 14th district. She was born in 1989. The Cold War, and real-world socialism, are "ancient history" to her "millennial cohort". And Generation Z, who adore her, is also just starting to vote. "Tomorrow belongs to her."

Long reads shortened

The truth is harder than fiction

Biography is "the least like life" of any of the arts, says Craig Brown in The TLS. A comprehensive one would "last as long as its subject's life". John Richardson published his first Pablo Picasso biography in 1991; by the end of volume three he was 83 and Picasso only 50. Richardson died aged 95, with "Picasso still going strong". But such heavy detail can blot out the subject. Beatles biographer Mark Lewisohn banged on about trivialities like George Harrison's first car – a "second-hand, two-door blue Ford Anglia 105E Deluxe, bought by George from Brian Epstein's friend Terry Doran" – over 1,698 pages. Just say "a Ford Anglia".

Biographers have bigger challenges. In most cases, their subject's head is "a closed book". Robert Lacey's biography of the Queen describes her state of mind after Princess Diana's death. Was he "crouching in her brain, like one of the Numskull cartoon characters"? First-hand accounts are hardly more reliable, thanks to the slippery nature of both memory and biographers. As Peter Ackroyd once said, "Fiction requires truth-telling, whereas in a biography one can make things up."

To be entirely fresh, each new biography must create a template of its own. To break into Oscar Wilde's inner world, biographer Thomas Wright set about reading all 2,000 books in Wilde's library. A number were torn, testament to Wilde's eccentric habit of "tearing off the top corner of a page as he read it, rolling the paper into a ball and then popping it into his mouth". Another was jam stained, and Wright laughed to imagine Wilde clutching his toast. That's more like it. The tidily chronological cradle-to-grave biography, however dutifully rendered, is just "a sort of magnified CV".

Read the full article here (paywall).

Property

THE TOWNHOUSE This Georgian house, in the New Town neighbourhood of Edinburgh, beautifully combines modern interiors with period features. Over its three floors there's a grand hallway with pillars, a spacious kitchen, separate dining room, a formal drawing room, five bedrooms and huge windows with views to the Firth of Forth. Fashionable Princes and George streets are within walking distance and buzzy Stockbridge is not much further. £1.75m.

Life

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I'd be happy to play Bond

When Lashana Lynch joined the James Bond cast, there were rumours she would pinch the title role for herself, says Tim Lewis in The Observer. Lynch plays Nomi, not a Bond girl but an agent. I'm perfectly happy as Nomi, she says, but anyone could play Bond next: man or woman, black or white, young or old. "At the end of the day, even if a two-year-old was playing Bond, everyone would flock to the cinema to see what this two-year-old's gonna do."

Still, if a woman were to play 007, Lynch is the obvious choice. The 33-year-old – "tall, probably 5ft 9in, and lithe" – looks like she was born for action films. She's fearless, too. The perk of the job was the stunts, she says. "I asked the stunt team if they could make me into a ninja and they said yes." It worked. Unlike Craig, who has lost teeth, broken his leg and had the tip of a finger sliced off doing Bond, Lynch emerged unscathed. "The stunt team were like, 'Who are you? An alien?'"

She certainly has otherworldly confidence. It's because of my family, says Lynch, who was born in 1980s Shepherd's Bush – a child of Jamaican Windrush parents. She was the youngest and the only girl, but that didn't matter. "There's an attitude and a swagger that comes with just being born into a Jamaican family. You know how to stand up for yourself. Pretty instantly, like out of the womb, you're already taking charge." The perfect preparation for Bond.

Eating in

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The aubergine is a "decidedly modest" ingredient, despite its "slick, glossy sheen and generously abundant curves", says Tom Parker Bowles in Country Life. The fruit has a "gentle, subtle appeal", offering "luscious succour to flavours more strident than its own". It's popular in cuisines around the world, appearing in Italy's melanzane alla parmigiana and Japan's nasu dengaku, and when cooked it transforms "from raw and stolid to soft and silken".

What's more, they're not all deep purple – some are long and yellow, while others are small white ovals, hence the alternative name eggplant. Originally bitter and from India, they came to Spain and Sicily via the Moors and these days most are "as mild as a Dorking accountant". My own love affair with the aubergine is "relatively recent", since I was previously "traumatised by prep-school moussaka". However, my passion is only growing stronger. As the French chef Roger Vergé said: "the aubergine is a vegetable you'd want to caress with your eyes and fingers". I quite agree.