Substack Reads: Writing tips from Margaret Atwood, and welcoming the Lohanaissance
Substack Reads: Writing tips from Margaret Atwood, and welcoming the Lohanaissance
Substack Reads: Writing tips from Margaret Atwood, and welcoming the Lohanaissance
This week, a feast of writing and podcasts from across Substack: from new-to-Substack greats such as
, who joined this week to share invaluable tips for budding novelists, to new discoveries such as Twitter engineer-turned-Substacker , who knows exactly what keeps it running. Plus, podcasters and are welcoming back the cult of Lindsay Lohan in the form of the latest holiday flick.Here at Substack Reads, we love to serve up a menu of writers you may know along with some unexpected picks from writers and podcasts you likely haven’t seen before. There’s something for everyone. Let’s dig in…
WRITING
Writing tips from one of the greats
In the week she joined Substack, the prophet of dystopia Margaret Atwood offers her “basic basics” home truths for budding writers. Given her more than 60 books and two Booker Prizes, aspiring novelists will want to take note
in
WHAT IS A NOVEL?
A) A political tract.
B) A bunch of stuff that interested the author and that the author glurbed up undigested onto the page.
C) A sermon. Buddhist or otherwise.
D) Unresolved problems from the author’s childhood that the author is trying to fix now via
Delayed Mastery.
E) A message from the spirit world.
F) A work of art.
The correct answer is F), though a novel may CONTAIN any and all of these other things. But it is primarily a work of art (successful or not).
HISTORY
The woman who changed sports writing forever
Harassment, lewd gestures, and food thrown at her were part of the price Jane Gross paid to push for equality. Without her, journalist Joanne C. Gerstner would never have been able to walk into any NBA locker room, for 11 years, without issue
in
Being in a locker room is important for a sports writer, as it is where we interview the coaches and players to get quotes/context for our content. And no, it’s not the same at a press conference. Being there, after a game, while things are fresh, adds a layer of emotion and realness. Sweaty humans and nasty hazmat clothes are also present. So imagine being Gross, already in a world that feels you cannot be a good sports writer because of your gender ... and then being denied access to the interviews you need. She watched her male competitors walk into the spaces she was denied and then use the access to beat her at her job. The work-around back then was players could agree to come out into the hall to speak to Gross. But many would not, saying they had already spoken to the (male) media. So she was often SOL.
She asked to be let in for access; first the Knicks, then ABA did the right thing. (Jokes department: may be one of the few things the Knicks have gotten right in many decades. HEY-yo!)
TECHNOLOGY
How to keep Twitter running
In his new Substack, former Twitter engineer Matthew Tejo lifts the lid on why it’s not “down” yet and how he kept it running for five years
in
Twitter supposedly lost around 80% of its workforce. Whatever the real number is, there are whole teams without engineers on it now. Yet the website goes on and the tweets keep coming. This left a lot wondering what exactly was going on with all those engineers and made it seem like it was all just bloat. I’d like to explain my little corner of Twitter (though it wasn’t so little) and some of the work that went on that kept this thing running.
FOOD & DRINK
Two Thanksgiving cocktails you won’t ever forget
Peter Suderman thinks holiday cocktails should always be a little bit personal. His takes on the Pecan Pie have stayed in readers’ memories years later
in
Pecan pie is not a Thanksgiving standard in the way that turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie are. But it’s not unusual to find it on Thanksgiving dinner menus, especially in the South.
As it happens, I grew up in the Panhandle of Florida, which, culturally, is functionally southern Alabama. There was almost always pecan pie at our Thanksgiving celebration.
But the pecan pie at our table wasn’t something anyone in my family made. Instead, it was the contribution of a family friend who lived just a few blocks down. She and her husband were friends of my parents.
She was also the piano accompanist for my musical solos—I played tuba, because I was an even bigger dork then than I am now—which meant we sometimes spent hours practicing music together in her music room, and sometimes traveled together to events. I always associate pecan pie with her, and with memories of someone patiently helping me learn to play an instrument that wasn’t really designed for solos. She loved music, in many forms, and she helped bring it into the world.
She was also a fixture at our family’s Thanksgiving dinner. And her main contribution was always homemade pecan pie—a pecan pie that I remember as being shockingly good on the first bite and tooth-murderingly sweet on every bite afterwards. By the second bite, I felt queasy. By the third bite, I could practically feel the armies of cavities planting victory flags in my teeth.
Recalling her pecan pie now, I remain somewhat mystified as to how it could have been so concentrated, so coma-causingly sweet. Even raw sugar isn’t that sweet. I don’t think I ever finished a whole piece.
Nevertheless, I loved the stuff, because that first bite—before I felt like maybe I would be the first teenager to actually die from a sugar overdose—was incredible.
So the goal for these cocktails is to make something that’s more approachable, but that captures that rich, delicious, satisfying first-bite sensation in every sip, without tipping into brain-death-by-sugar-overdose sweetness.
The fox owns herself
When essayist and author Antonia Malchik finds a fox sniffing outside her cabin porch, she is faced with a question of where true ownership lies: labor, possession, or something else entirely
in , recommended by
One of the most famous and pivotal property law cases in U.S. history, the 1805 case Pierson v. Post, involves the hunting of a fox. I have no interest in hunting foxes (I only hunt for food, and not very successfully at that), but the legalities of that particular case have staying power for a reason. They hinge on the question of what grants ownership: labor or possession? Was it Post, who was hunting the fox, or Pierson, who actually killed it, who owned the animal in the end? The New York State Supreme Court reversed a lower-court decision in Post’s favor and granted ownership to Pierson. The written decision reached back through centuries of legal thinking, drawing even from the Byzantine emperor Justinian I.
Law students—and people like me who read too much about this stuff—can get hung up for ages arguing about Blackstone and Locke and whether it was the labor of the hunt or the person who had physical possession in the end that determined ownership. Labor and possession are two keystones of property law.
Yet none of us asked: What about the fox herself?
SPORTS
What happened when I wore rainbows to the World Cup
Veteran soccer journalist Grant Wahl has been reporting on World Cups for decades. But what happened when he tried to enter the United States–Wales World Cup game in Doha was a first for him
in
One guard forcibly ripped my phone from my hands.
Nearly half an hour passed. One security guard told me that my shirt was “political” and not allowed. Another continually refused to give me back my phone. Another guard yelled at me as he stood above me—I was sitting on a chair by now—that I had to remove my shirt.
I told him no.
FRIENDSHIP
Thanks to “The Ice Cream Man”
When Matt Labash started an email exchange with a reader in hospice, he didn’t expect it to last long, or to have such a profound impact
inI started calling Tom “The Ice Cream Man.” I’d mentioned his favorite ice cream in “Doubting Thomas,” one of the small pleasures he was always on the hunt for as his body was irretrievably breaking down. Specifically, the Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip made by Graeter’s, the ice cream company that is the pride of Cincinnati. After the piece was published, Tom asked me for my address without specifying why. I thought he might send me a book or something. He was always forwarding articles he found interesting, on every subject from why fog was disappearing in the Bay Area to the latest misadventures of Trump, who Tom disparagingly called “the ferret wearer” to his MAGA-inclined relatives. He never stopped being interested in the world that he still inhabited. But a week or so after his address inquiry, a large Styrofoam cooler packed with dry ice and about a dozen pints of Graeter’s Black Raspberry arrived on my doorstep. It had to set this dying man in hospice back a good 150 bucks. He could’ve spent it on a new driver, which he’d need if he could gain enough lung power back to swing a golf club. (A fantasy he repeatedly voiced that was not to be.) “I can now watch golf and think about my swing in my head,” he wrote. “Not as much fun as standing in a trout stream, but one day that will be a memory for you.”
I’d like to report I ate all the Black Raspberry Chip, but my gluttonous family beat me to about half of it. Even my dog, Solomon, got in on the action. I think I can speak for all of us—even the dog—when I say it was the best ice cream we’ve ever had. And not just because of the taste. There was a card inscribed by Tom and his wife, Mary, who nursed him until the end. It said, “enjoy this in good health.” The ice cream is long gone. But I will keep that card until I tag out of this world.
FILM
Welcoming the Lohanaissance
Get cozy with a ski-lodge-feel hot cocoa… podcasters Claire and Emma discuss Lindsay Lohan’s comeback Christmas movie
and in
For the two of us, Lindsay Lohan was synonymous with the best parts of girlhood when we were growing up. Her bright red hair and visible freckles were icons in their own right. She was there with us navigating sibling relationships (“The Parent Trap”), parental relationships (“Freaky Friday”), and friendships (“Mean Girls”). We grew up alongside Lindsay, and then watched as the media delighted in her fall from grace, her struggles with addiction, her difficult transition from child star to whatever comes next.
But now it’s 2022, and a lot has changed for the women of the “Bimbo Summit.” Britney is free, Paris is bringing awareness to abuses in the “troubled teen industry,” and Lindsay is back on our screens, charming as ever. And we are extremely here for it.
Overheard on Chat
asked subscribers to share the beauty industry catchphrases they can’t get out of their heads, asks subscribers if they are leaving Twitter, and, if so, where are they going? And of wonders, How many emails are too many?Subscribe to their Substacks and download the Substack app on iOS to join in!
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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 by Hannah Ray.
Got a Substack post to recommend? Tell us about it in the comments.
Here's a few of my faves this week:
Lovely interview: Interview with Gabrielle Bates
https://themaplemoon.substack.com/p/interview-with-gabrielle-bates?r=k1bn&utm_medium=android
Amazing story of an art theft, finally put right:
https://kathleenmccook.substack.com/p/hernan-cortes-manuscript-stolen-from?r=k1bn&utm_medium=android
If you care about evidence, then this is a subtle and important piece (it's so good, I may assign it as a reading to my students):
https://hildabastian.substack.com/p/less-uncertainty-about-uncertainty?r=k1bn&utm_medium=android
This is a very interesting take on a Russian state propagandist indeed:
https://www.polemology.net/p/a-kubler-ross-interpretation-of-this?r=k1bn&utm_medium=android
Nice collection of Substacks in this issue. I’m especially interested in Atwood’s insights on practical utopias.