Substack Reads: The crypto crash; the most influential art exhibition on earth; plus: in praise of the humble patio
This week we bring you a true melting pot of great reads to help you kick back and relax in the summer heat. Author Alison Roman gets inspired by her new patio—and has recipes you’ll use from July through to September—while Matt Taibbi digs deeper into the crypto crash. Writer Gary Shteyngart contemplates life at 50—and wonders how the hell he ever got there.
While we have you, two exceptional reads this week came from reader recommendations left in last week’s thread. Feel free to tell us what you’re reading by linking to writers and their work in the comments. We’d love to know, and the writers you recommend would love the support.
Have a good weekend!
FOOD
How I became a patio person
Food writer and best-selling author Alison Roman explains why a patio isn’t just a place but a state of mind
The Patio encouraged me to buy oysters to shuck and scallops to sear, things I typically never buy for my home ($$$!). I made my boyfriend shuck the oysters while I did the scallops, seared them well, browned butter and crisped capers in their fond, then used some salty white wine to scrape up the bits. I cooked pasta in the business and finished it with parsley from my garden—just kidding, my parsley has only birthed precisely nine leaves since I planted it in April; it was parsley I bought at the store.
Beyond this moment I had with expensive seafood, most of my meals have consisted of a simple salt-and-pepper grilled fish or steak (not together; I don’t believe in surf and turf as a concept) and basic arrangements of mostly uncooked vegetables (in some circles known as “salads”). Slicing tomatoes and dressing them casually with torn bits of anchovy, flaky sea salt, raw onion, (more) capers, and parsley from not the garden; covering cooked lentils with mountains of shaved radish, lots of lemon juice, and raw garlic; scattering fresh peas and halved boiled potatoes onto a plate and showering them with zest, so much olive oil, and lots of flaky salt and coarse pepper. What might otherwise feel like an incomplete trip to the salad bar feels like a long lunch in Ischia when you’re on The Patio*.
*[For those sans patio, know that The Patio is a state of mind, a proxy for any space that is outside the walls of your apartment. The park on a blanket you haven’t ever washed, stained with last year’s fruit (at least you think that’s last year’s fruit). The fire escape with a pillow underneath to protect your thighs from the grates. A table next to a parking lot on the beach that’s too windy or hot to be eating at. The kitchen counter instead of the table. The couch instead of the kitchen counter. The Patio is simply a change of scenery and headspace, freeing yourself from the usual table you occupy. They also, it goes without saying, are still great eaten in whatever regular way you happen to take your meals or snacks.]
CRYPTOFINANCE
The financial bubble era comes full circle
Matt Taibbi releases a two-part investigative report on the crypto crash
—Matt Taibbi in TK News
The firm insisted “your funds are safe with Coinbase,” but as noted in another story coming out today, the damage was done, and the news triggered market mayhem. Coinbase isn’t the same kind of company as Circle, but the issue of bankruptcy remoteness is relevant to both. It’s at the core of the whole dilemma of the cryptocurrency markets. Certainly the question of who actually owns and controls reserve assets exists, or seems to exist. Here Circle is unlike some competitors, whose user agreements specifically spell out that reserves are, say, “fully backed by US dollars held by Paxos Trust Company, LLC” or “custodied pursuant to the Custody Agreement entered into by and between you and Gemini Trust Company, LLC.” Those describe trust agreements, which are truly bankruptcy remote.
Circle’s BlackRock fund suggested a different arrangement. Also, the new fund would be “permitted to invest up to one-third of its total assets in reverse repurchase agreements.” Would Circle be making use of that provision?
ART
How graffiti challenges our ideas about beauty
Arts writer Jessica Rabin on why she loves illegible tags covering surfaces everywhere
—Jennifer Rabin in OUT OF THE BOX, recommended by RossLee
When I say graffiti, I’m not talking about officially sanctioned murals or what has come to be known as street art (though I sometimes love those things). I’m talking about a gleaming train car so completely transformed by a crew of bombers on the overnight shift that in the morning none of the original surface of the train is visible. I’m talking about the colorful throw-ups exploding new life onto forgotten walls that are otherwise crumbling into nothing. But most of all—oh, most of all!—I love the shitty illegible tags that litter the grimy underpasses of every city.
[...]
When I find tags scrawled on train tracks, utility boxes, telephone poles, the backs of stop signs, and the sides of abandoned buildings, I don’t see destruction or vandalism. To me, every mark screams I WAS HERE. I MATTER. I see the person behind the mark. I see their desire to be acknowledged, to be counted among the precious.
Graffiti challenges the notion of what is beautiful. It also shines a light on who gets to be angry in our culture, as well as who and what are considered threats.
The view from here
It’s a writer’s worst nightmare—losing their eyesight. Here, Alison Manley shares her 12-month journey of loss and fear
—Alison Manley in Subject Headings, recommended by Mark Dykeman
I slide into the pool, ready to splash about with my nephew. I watch my partner dive into the deep end, and I wonder, when was the last time I dove in any body of water? I don’t remember. I don’t quite remember either when I stopped being fearless enough to simply wear my glasses to the beach or pool and swim unseeing. I always liked the magnifying quality of water; I would swim underwater as much as my lungs could stand, eyes wide.
It was probably around the time I fractured my tailbone when I was 19. I was down to the shore near our family home in Cape Breton, slipped on a rock, and went down hard. I didn’t notice the rock was slimy till I was sitting next to it.
It was gradual, a closing off as I lost more vision, as I had another surgery, as the contacts got more expensive. I could get well-fitted goggles now, I think. Then I could swim underwater again.
I tried disposable contacts briefly, just for swimming. They don’t come in my prescription, but high enough that it would be just a little blurry, not dangerous.
I hated carrying two sets of contact cases, different solutions, and my glasses, just in case. No, that didn’t work. But would goggles make me feel safe enough with my very expensive lenses?
My nephew begs me to jump in the pool with him. I shake my head; I can’t do it.
HUMOR
This is 50
How did this even happen? asks Gary Shteyngart
—Gary Shteyngart in Gary’s Journey Through Hell
Last week, I turned 50. When I was a 20-something addicted to drink and horse tranquilizer, neither I nor my friends thought I would make it this far. And honestly, I can’t believe I’m still here.
And aside from my schlong problems, I really don’t feel that old. I walk six miles a day and swim a mile, and now that I’m trying to keep my drinking to 14 drinks a week (okay, last week because of the birthday, we hit 25), I feel a teenaged burst of energy, but without the awful hormonal infusions.
I’ve always wanted to write 12 books before dying: 10 novels and two memoir-style books. I’ve done six so far, one a memoir. It took about 25 years, so I guess I have to make it to 75 to complete my mission. And then I shall die. To a person from Eastern Europe, this kind of longevity seems like science fiction. But I’m determined to prove the actuarial tables wrong.
CLASSICS
What happens to the people who survive the end of the world?
Writer Meg Conley looks to The Iliad for answers...
My teachers didn’t talk about God when they taught me to read a timeline, but they did talk about progress. “See? Once we were here, where technology and humanity were worse. And now we are here, where technology and humanity are better.” They spent more time talking about the rights of man than the transatlantic slave trade. Innovation isn’t always progressive. And oppression sometimes produces a quiet that sounds like peace from a distance.
My textbooks taught me that apparent disaster was really often favorable to the general progress of mankind. When I was taught about slavery and genocide in America, both were depicted as a sorrowful requirement of the nation’s progress. The Iraq War was a sorrowful requirement of democracy. Hungry children in America were a sorrowful requirement of capitalism. It took me too long to understand disaster is, in fact, mostly just disastrous.
Was there a timeline on the wall of the fourth-grade classroom in Uvalde? Is there a chart that can justify those 77 minutes until they fit within the progress of mankind? And if there was, what would that really mean? Not all progress sustains. Cancers progress. So do wildfires.
LISTEN
Inside Documenta
A behind-the-scenes look at one of the art world’s most influential 100-day mass exhibitions
—Caroline Busta, Daniel Keller, and Lil Internet in NEW MODELS
CARTOON
—Roman Muradov in bluebed
Substack Reads is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, and audio from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and curated and edited from Substack’s U.K. outpost with writer Hannah Ray and editor Farrah Storr.
Got a Substack post to recommend? Tell us about it in the comments.
I enjoyed reading How I became a patio person.
Thank you always Substack for the recommendations,
I'd like to recommend an amazing Brooklynite mommy living and writing her experiences in Japan right now, Miss ZM Spalter
https://occasionallyimpervious.substack.com/