Looking Sideways: 10 Things
Bartleby, a must-read article on outdoor access, and a wondrous Elliot Smith interpretation.
1. ‘Don’t try and cover Elliot Smith’: evergreen advice for any musician.
And yet Brad Mehldau has collaborated with Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Rosen on an cover of one of my favourite Smith songs, and it really could not be more up my boulevard.
It’s twenty years since Elliot passed, and I’m still gutted. What a senseless loss to the world. If you’ve yet to be acquainted with his subtle genius, here’s a playlist to get you started:
2. Whatever you think about football, it’s always a reliable weathervane of current geopolitical realities, as this brilliant Barney Ronay piece on the petro-state manoeuvring behind PSG’s run to the Champions League makes depressingly, and revealingly, clear.
3. A really interesting conversation with my pal Rebecca Olive on Nick Carroll and Hannah Anderson’s new podcast We Shouldn’t Be Friends. Really not what I was expecting, and very worth a listen.
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4. It’s 100 years since The Great Gatsby was published, so there’s some really interesting commentary out there - like Adam Rutherford’s fascinating piece (above), and Sarah Churchwell’s brilliant Radio 4 documentary.
5. Melville’s Bartleby, The Scrivener is one of THE great short stories; a brilliantly insightful and droll parable that, in Bartleby’s increasingly unsettling ‘I would prefer not to’ refrain, perfectly skewered the drudgery of capitalism back in (checks notes) 1853. This reading on Spotify does it full justice.
6. A great piece from
, that any brands, agencies, events or organisations involving themselves in conversations on outdoor access would do well to read.7. Absolutely wild that, 200-odd years later, people are STILL adapting a ‘ghost story’ 18 year-old (!) Mary Shelley wrote to win a bet with Lord Byron, original ‘Vampyre’ author John Polidori, and her husband Percy.
This time it’s Guillermo del Toro in the chair, with Oscar Isaac in the titular role. Pretty sure I’ll be watching.
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8. Want to sack off the clunky Substack app but still have instant access to this or other favourite Substack newsletters? This handy Note (above) tells you how.
9. Thom Yorke on Gaza/Israel - craven centrist both-sidesing? Or thoughtful commentary on the inherent tyranny and pointlessness of partisan online mobs? I guess your view will depend on your view of the parent issue, as ever. (Big up the number of people who reached for the ‘Karma police, arrest this man’ gag, though).
10. This week’s reading: The Voyageur, a French-Canadian picaresque that’s one part Jack London, one part True Grit.
Don’t forget: I just launched the new Looking Sideways book store. Buy anything from here and you’ll be supporting independent UK book stores, as well as helping finance Looking Sideways (I get a 10% commission) in a really simple way.
Click here to see my 2025 Reading List (including The Voyageur), and here to add your own recommendations.
Love the cover of The Voyageur!