The Day I Watched My Brother Drown |
It's still very hard for me to picture certain parts of that day. But one thing I'll always remember is the look on their faces. Panic. It was horrifying. They were so close to me, and there was nothing I could do to help them. It would have been horrible losing just one of them, but all four—I just can't comprehend it sometimes. I always tried to be protective of Dave. As a kid, I let him bunk with me because he was scared of the dark. When he got his driver's license and would be out after curfew, I would tell him, "Just be careful. Just drive the speed limit so you don't get pulled over." And at camp when he went out, I'd nag him about having a designated driver. He was always like, "I've got it under control, Ben." |
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Back in the mid-nineties, my friends and I spent a lot of time in nightclubs dancing to A Tribe Called Quest and Nas. The de facto uniform was baggy Maurice Malone jeans, stout Champion sweats, and anorak pullovers from preppy brands such as Tommy Hilfiger and Nautica. But the most stylish among us wore Polo Ralph Lauren. Color-blocked sportswear met Polo Bear knits, all-over-print shirts, and choice items from the Stadium and P-Wing collections. Decades later, fashion writers described this aesthetic as a way for nonwhite youths to appropriate the status symbols of blue-blooded Wasps. That's partly true. Ralph Lauren's Polo logo is woven into the American image of financial success, and many of us simply wanted to stunt. But there's another story here about the thread that laces through this country's clothing history and the complicated, sometimes contradictory essence of the American spirit. Despite its aspirational nature, American style is, at its core, a celebration of the everyday person. |
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The Only Sofa I'd Recommend |
Sofas are arguably the most complex piece of furniture you have to buy. Shopping goes beyond just getting one that looks the part. First, you must consider the size. How large do you want the cushions to be? How big is your front doorway or apartment hallway (stairs, elevators, etc.)? Imagine finding the perfect sofa and it doesn't even fit in your house. Then there's the shape, the color, the price, and how long will it take to arrive. In many cases your dream couch could end up taking 30 weeks to be delivered or cost you a fortune. The journey isn't always cut and dry. I've spent a decade testing and researching couches, ranging from space saving sectionals, to sleeper sofas for guests, and even some purely luxurious ones too. While I can recommend many based on your wants and needs, I can confidently say I've hated a lot of them for my own personal reasons. But now, I own one I won't be replacing anytime soon, thanks to West Elm. |
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It's Time to Start Taking the 14th Amendment Very Seriously |
In 2010, historian Timothy Snyder wrote a book called Bloodlands, which was an exhaustive examination of the human carnage wreaked in Eastern Europe not only by the Holocaust, but also by the incomprehensible brutality of the combat between Germany and the Soviet Union. It was Snyder's view that the one of the crucial factors in the savagery was the collision of two authoritarian states, one led by Adolf Hitler and the other by Joseph Stalin, two merciless tyrants. I remember reading the book about 20 minutes at a time, at which point I would have to put it down and walk around my house, and occasionally outside, trying to digest the horrors that Snyder so ably brought to life. Outside of reading The Exorcist out in the woods in a raging thunderstorm, it was the most unsettling reading experience of my life. |
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Jeremy Allen White Is Starting the Year Strong |
Jeremy Allen White is the new face (and arms, and abs, etc.) of Calvin Klein, and he can't quite believe it. "I grew up in the city walking down Houston seeing the famous Calvin billboard," the actor tells me over the phone from Manhattan. "I've always found the campaigns really timeless and elegant, but I didn't ever see myself in one." His CK campaign dropped this week, and, as expected, it sees White wearing little more than the brand's spring '24 underwear offerings. Styles fashioned to flatter the body and ego, christened with names like "Intense Power." (As it goes, intense power is precisely what our current underwear rotation is low on.) |
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It's Time to Rewrite the Rules of Historical Fiction |
When you write a historical novel, one of the most common questions you get asked is, how did you research your book? How, readers and writers alike ask, did you learn about the time you were writing about? Did you visit the places you wrote about? Did you conduct mountains of interviews with sobbing survivors? Did you pore through grainy archival footage to find little factoids no one had written about while locked in the bowels of library basements? There is a curious, almost voyeuristic desire to peer into an author's process. Historical fiction is lived experience, often traumatic, made legible and digestible by the novelist, and people want to know what kind of instruments the author used to excavate said experiences. They want to see the way the pudding is made; they want to understand the ways you stitched the broken shards of history together. |
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