A Few Recommendations On A Saturday

A perfume subscription, a vague book club, my hotpants, Celia Paul and I am born

The cult perfumer Marissa Zappas just started a Substack that is weird and great — and seems to be free — but here’s a twist: if you do pay to subscribe, you get “a once-a-month sample of something mysterious” she’s working on in her perfume lab. Every time I visit her in New York, she lets me smell things she’s working on (“this one smells like ballet slippers”) and the experience of being shifted or surprised or moved by a scent always makes me feel like my life is rich and alive, ie: not just digital, not just intellectual. Here is a video of Marissa telling me about one of her heroes:

Next week I go to NY to have a conversation with Elif Batuman at Pioneer Works, hosted by McNally Jackson. This is to celebrate the paperback edition of All Fours and I just checked; it seems like there are a few tickets left? Have you read Elif’s work? Maybe start with The Idiot.

After NY, I go to London for The Women’s Prize and so I’m trying to read some, if not all, of the other nominated books. I’m starting with The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, if anyone wants to read it at the same time as me. We can review it in the chat when we’re done. Also, Michaela, if you’re done making the hotpants you could come by my hotel and we could have an in-person try on. (Remember my hotpants freak out a few months ago? Michaela wrote me (“I was head of costume for the smallest opera house when I was 18 (I told them I was 23, I am 22 now)”) and offered to help so I mailed the hotpants and my new, bigger, measurements to her parents in Surrey (“People steal stuff off our front porch in London”). She set the terms of the exchange and also the schedule. But DON’T STRESS ABOUT THIS MICHAELA, FOCUS ON YOUR BOOK DEADLINE AND POST-GRAD WORK. In fact, you could never make the hotpants and it would have still been a good experience for me, with my hotpants ending up in Surrey.