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 Boris Kachka, a senior editor who has written about why copyright-expiration dates are an occasion worth celebrating, what the internet age is taking away from writers, and the emergence of an unbearably honest kind of writing.
Boris is a new fan of The Amazing Race and a longtime reader of Thomas Pynchon. He enjoys watching Severance as it grows “ever stranger” and recently attended his second Pulp reunion concert, where he “wore a Pulp T-shirt … without a trace of shame.”
First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:
The Culture Survey: Boris Kachka
The television show I’m most enjoying right now: It might be basic to name Severance, but the show does push some specific buttons for me. I’ve been annoyed to see it compared to Lost, a series that eventually betrayed its viewers’ trust. The Lost showrunner Damon Lindelof’s next series, The Leftovers, is a better comparison: a show built on a wild premise that accrued layers and changed registers as it developed, though it always stayed tightly focused on a cast you came to care deeply about. Severance has grown ever stranger, but I have the feeling that, like The Leftovers, it will eventually stick a landing that makes some sense of its fallen world, even as it lets some mysteries be. [Related: What are the puzzles of Severance about?]
An author I will read anything by: It sounds pretentious to pick Thomas Pynchon, but hear me out. V. was the first adult novel I ever read, after I plucked it at random at age 14 from the shelf of a dinky branch library deep in Brooklyn. I didn’t have to understand every symbol and conspiracy theory to fall into its rhythms, which set the template for the beautiful and messy books I consider to be personal favorites. These include, of course, Gravity’s Rainbow and Inherent Vice (how’s that for range?). Shaggy and dead serious and hilarious, capacious and erudite and juvenile, countercultural without being dippy or hokey: What more could you ask for in a book? You can keep your tight structures and perfect endings.
The best novel I’ve recently read: Okay, sometimes I love a tight structure and a perfect ending. One book I read in the past year impressed me for precisely those qualities. Jo Hamya’s The Hypocrite takes place during the viewing of a play and displays many of the unities of drama, as well as cutting dialogue and a devastating, punchy coda.
Something delightful introduced to me by a kid in my life: My son is 11, and we’ve been guiding him (or letting him guide us) toward popular entertainment for adults. This means scouring websites for “clean Seinfeld episodes” and, for me, finally catching up with The Amazing Race. Travel, tension, strategy, situations that are grown-up but not “mature”—all of this makes the ur–reality show perfect family entertainment. (We also binged Only Murders in the Building; I forgot how prodigious and inventive the cursing was, but my son needs to learn this too.)
It’s hardly original to say that what makes the race so amazing, between split-second shots of UNESCO sites, is what it reveals about relationships in extremis. Yes, reality shows are edited to amplify conflict and impose simplistic narratives. But the time constraints of The Amazing Race force all tension to the surface, revealing human impulses at their best and worst. It’s hard to imagine a situation that would compel couples to talk to each other that way in front of a camera. I’m not sure I would survive it, physically or emotionally. [Related: Eight perfect episodes of TV]
The last thing that made me snort with laughter: The hype over Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary was out of control, but it did unearth some gems that missed me the first time. The one that made me snort: Fred Armisen getting his punk band back together to play his daughter’s wedding. [Related: Saturday Night Live played the wrong greatest-hits reel.]
The last thing that made me cry: I imagine that most of us walk around with shadows of our better selves. Mine, I think, goes to concerts once a week instead of three or four times a year. In September, my wife and I saw Pulp’s reunion show at Kings Theatre. It was our first time at the Brooklyn venue, the first show we saw after moving back to New York from L.A., and our second Pulp reunion show (since Radio City in 2012, the year we got married). I wore a Pulp T-shirt to the concert without a trace of shame. Although Jarvis Cocker, the slithery, 61-year-old front man, no longer climbs the rafters, his arm-and-shoulder choreography is almost as dynamic as his dancing once was. Pulp’s sui generis blend of disco, darkness, tenderness, and painfully clever lyricism is often lumped in with Britpop, but Oasis is imitative child’s play by comparison. Jarvis will live forever.
The event I’m most looking forward to: Keeping to our thrice-annual concert schedule, we’re seeing the Magnetic Fields in April, at the Tarrytown Music Hall. We won’t even have to leave the suburbs. We are living the Gen X dream.
A quiet song that I love, and a loud song that I love: There are many of these, and quite a few that fit both categories (I am very much a loud-quiet-loud guy; LCD Soundsystem was invented for me). Among the quiet standouts is Yo La Tengo’s lovely “You Can Have It All,” a live performance of which blew me away last year. The loud song my family listens to all the time right now is the first thing Alexa plays when we request Afrobeat: Fela Kuti’s “Water No Get Enemy.” Sometimes the algorithm is alright.
The Week Ahead
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Last Breath, a thriller film based on a real story about deep-sea divers’ treacherous mission to rescue a crewmate (in theaters Friday)
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The Talent, a novel by Daniel D’Addario about about a group of actresses who face a reckoning during awards season (out Tuesday)
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Vicious, a horror film starring Dakota Fanning (in theaters Friday)
Essay
Want to Change Your Personality? Have a Baby.
By Olga Khazan
I had read some scientific research suggesting that you can change your personality by behaving like the kind of person you wish you were. Several studies show that people who want to be, say, less isolated or less anxious can make a habit of socializing, meditating, or journaling. Eventually these habits will come naturally, knitting together to form new traits.
I knew that becoming a parent had the potential to change me in even more profound ways. But I had no idea how.
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