I have read some challenging books. I’ve done Ulysses, I’ve done Gravity’s Rainbow, I just about managed The Stranger in French. None of their authors pushed me near so hard as popular author RF Kuang.
Kuang wrote Yellowface, and there's no book I saw more people reading last year, so I wanted to cover her next one. But I realised it was coming quite late. So as not to find myself dependent on the Royal Mail, I asked the publisher for not a physical proof but a pdf.
I wasn’t confident. From my childhood, I remember stories of new Harry Potters being ripped from their envelopes at the post office. Last year, on Sally Rooney’s new book, you got a specific login to an undownloadable watermarked document, and your access window was just 24 hours.
As it turned out, the problem wasn’t access. The problem was that the long tall letters were rendered in a very slender typeface. I realised after doing my pdf-convert Kindle-upload procedure that I was reading a book with no Fs, Ls, Is or Ls. And take it from me, RF Kuang uses the words “ba ed” and “a ed” a lot. That’s “baffled” and “flailed”. But don’t worry if you missed that. The hell-campus setting helps with context clues. And I’ve had 530 pages of practice!
It was tricky but rewarding. My review ended up on RealClearBooks, in the Washington Review of Books, and some critics I really admire said they liked it. Also, as I hoped would come of reviewing a popular author, lots of people I didn’t know seemed to happen upon it.
RF Kuang keeps them coming: the 29 year-old has published her sixth novel. But things are different with Katabasis. For one thing, Kuang is now among the most popular authors in the world, after her last book, Yellowface, was one of the most popular releases of the last decade. For another, she has new, graver concerns.
Not long ago, Kuang’s husband was hospitalised for an undiagnosed chronic disease. His illness worsened and he lost a lot of weight. Katabasis is dedicated to him. In one interview, she said the writing was motivated by the question “What kind of suffering would you have had to have gone through for hell to seem like a better alternative?”
Now, I repped Chappell Roan’s merch in the last issue of this. But I like Sabrina Carpenter too. So I was pleased to be chosen to review her new album.
Pleased for about ten seconds. Excitement quickly subsided to alarm as my editor outlined the discipline that goes into reviewing a hot new album. Apparently, speed is everything. But it has to be good to. I asked if I should file at like ten or something and was nearly decapitated by the resulting look. No, I had to get up at five, latest. And my first listen should bring all my ideas. By the end of the second my ideas should have clarified, been into a 750 word review, and filed.
Foolishly, the night before I stayed up til midnight watching Sex and the City. But this did allow me to add another technique, which I commend to future album reviewers. Listen to ten seconds from the middle of each song before bed. The opinions and sense of the album I woke up with were remarkably accurate to my 5am and 5:38am listens, which I duly woke up for.
It felt a little absurd sitting there with the dark outside. Everyone else awake in Britain, the nightshift nurses and long-haul lorry drivers and bread bakers looked at me and said “What the hell are you doing here?” I said “Should the pop girls after Taylor Swift be described as sharks around an old whale, the night stars after a sunset, or as King Lear’s daughters.” Then I said “Sorry folks, I’ll keep it down, please don’t mind me,” and put my headphones in.
Taylor Swift will, one day, not be the most famous woman in the world. Pop music will enter a post-Swift twilight. In the darker sky, three new lights will begin to define themselves. Heartbroken Olivia Rodrigo is more like a moon. Genius Chappell Roan is a distant comet. It is Sabrina Carpenter, whose album Man’s Best Friend arrives today, who seems likely to give us the steadiest, solar warmth.
The best song comes after with “Go Go Juice”, a barnstormer about the “good-old fashioned fun” of getting drunk and texting exes. Carpenter reintroduces her energetic, comic asides; “Fuck, just trying different numbers, didn’t think that you’d pick up!” And at the end brings in a cackling, joyous chorus to shout along with mistyped drunk texts – “Do you me still love?” is the most singable line in the album.
It was all worth it in the end. For a while mine was the second thing to show on Google when you searched “Sabrina Carpenter new album”.
So Friday was a good day. There was a slight rake-in-face moment and aura loss as I subscribed to a new page only to get epically and personally dissed in the very next issue:
But I stayed in cheery spirits and made it through to a finely soundtracked weekend! I hope you are enjoying something like that too. Thanks for the continued support.
GM
Delightfully written 😃. 🙏🔆