Culture and entertainment musts from Lora Kelley
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Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is a familiar one: Lora Kelley, an associate editor and writer for The Daily. Aside from her wide-ranging newsletter work, which includes essays on air travel, Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial, and politicians’ obsession with shoes, she has also written about an emoji’s day in court and the digital reimagining of first dates.
Lora is a dedicated museumgoer (she doesn’t even mind the big crowds at the Met), and her must-watch list features Brokeback Mountain, 30 Rock, and Christopher Guest movies, which she credits for introducing her to the excellent Parker Posey.
First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:
The Culture Survey: Lora Kelley
The last museum or gallery show that I loved: I was pleasantly surprised by how much I loved the Judy Chicago show at the New Museum. I admire her projects, such as The Dinner Party, and appreciate her feminist banners. But there was a whole world of her work that I wasn’t familiar with in this show, including her many commissions of other women artists, and her compelling paintings on car hoods.
A couple days after seeing that show, I visited the Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was great, but so packed with people that the show became almost as much about the experience of the crowd as it was about the art. I was actually okay with that; it was an especially vivid reminder of the fact that spending time in a museum means experiencing other patrons, too.
My favorite blockbuster and favorite art movie: I recently watched Brokeback Mountain for the first time (I know) because a local theater was screening it, and I now talk about it all the time. So many things went right with that movie: the acting, the setting, the wonderful Annie Proulx source material, the MUSIC!
I also loved watching Éric Rohmer’s Boyfriends and Girlfriends for the first time last year. The louche attitudes and outfits are a pleasure. And I was tickled to come across the @Rohmerfits Instagram page, which celebrates the costumes in his films.
A cultural product I loved as a teenager and still love: I was obsessed with Christopher Guest movies as a teen—Waiting for Guffman was a favorite—and they still make me laugh. These films introduced me to the amazing Parker Posey, whom I saw again in a fabulous adaptation of The Seagull last year. I also loved watching her in Party Girl, a hilarious 1995 flick in which she plays a downtown bon vivant with librarian dreams, when it was restored and rereleased in theaters last year.
The upcoming arts event I’m most looking forward to: Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s new novel, Long Island Compromise, comes out this summer on my birthday. I plan to inhale it. [Related: Taffy Brodesser-Akner translates her novel to the small screen]
The last thing that made me snort with laughter: I am currently reading Money, by Martin Amis, a book that is both deeply sordid and deeply funny. The protagonist is an abhorrent figure, but the writing crackles. I found myself chortling at some of the strange, chewy names Amis gave to various minor characters: Nub Forkner, Day Farraday, and Herrick Shnexnayder were among my favorites.
Good recommendations I recently received: Related to the above: I’ve been on a Martin Amis kick, and my colleague Gal Beckerman told me about the podcast The Martin Chronicles. On the pod, the critics Parul Sehgal, Jason Zinoman, and Dan Kois discuss Amis’s spiky, peculiar, often tawdry oeuvre.
Also, over the summer, a friend recommended Ties, by Domenico Starnone, which I adored. The author may have intriguing ties to Elena Ferrante, an Italian novelist who uses a pseudonym, and Starnone’s propulsive read has an intriguing structure. [Related: The psychic toll of class mobility]
And another friend told me about The Wall, a feminist parable in which a woman finds herself trapped behind an invisible barrier in the countryside, alone but for various animals. I would recommend both to anyone. [Related: Escaping the patriarchy for good]
The cultural event that made me cry: I was very moved by Hilary Hahn’s violin performance with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center earlier this month. Hahn, who was a teenage violin prodigy, played an encore of Steven Banks’s “Through My Mother's Eyes,” after a riveting rendition of Prokofiev’s “Violin Concerto No. 1” accompanied by the orchestra. Then she won $100,000! Quite a night—and I was glad to see it through, because the last time I saw the Philharmonic play, I left early when the news of Sam Bankman-Fried’s conviction broke.
Something I recently revisited: This is the most basic answer on the planet, but 30 Rock is absolutely sending me. I last rewatched it in 2022 when I had COVID, and I seem to have forgotten all of the premises, which are delighting me anew on my current rewatch. Some of the bits have aged creakily, but the sheer volume of jokes per minute is admirable. [Related: Goodbye, 30 Rock]
Also, I am revisiting Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-part autobiographical novel—this time on audiobook. I read the English translation of the series as it came out over the past decade, and I have quite enjoyed using my mom’s spare Audible credits to purchase installments of the audio version, read zestily by the narrator Edoardo Ballerini.
A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: When I was in high school, I participated in my school’s poetry-recitation contest (crucially, it was a poetry recitation, and not poetry writing, contest, because I shudder to think what sorts of poetry my adolescent brain would have cooked up). I chose to read this lovely May Swenson poem about baseball, which delights me every time I revisit it. The rhythm is very fun—I recommend reading it aloud, perhaps to a kid in your life, or just to yourself.
The Week Ahead
Essay
There Are Too Many Ways to Exercise
By Yasmin Tayag
This year, I’m going to get into shape. It does not matter that I’ve made this same resolution every year for more than a decade, or that I gave up after a month each time. In 2024, I mean it. Unlike years past, my motivation is not aesthetic but utilitarian: I want to get fit so I stop feeling like garbage. As I enter my late 30s, I’m struggling with the health issues that come with the terrain—high blood pressure, lower-back pain, and persistently achy joints. On top of those, I’m a new mom, chronically sleep-deprived and exhausted. My six-month-old son saps all my energy but also steels my resolve to protect it …
We are living in a golden age of fitness: With workouts to accommodate every skill level, interest, time commitment, and social capacity, it should be easier than ever for novices to find one and get started. But it’s not.
Read the full article.
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