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miggy-figgy · 7 years ago

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Ludovic Saint Sernin By Miguel Figueroa Photos by Alex Franco

One of the best ways to get your first foot in fashion - or any type of business for that matter - is through apprenticeship. Back when they were the new kids on the block, Yves Saint Laurent, Donna Karan and Alessandro Michele learned and paid their dues, respectively, under the tutelage of Christian Dior, Anne Klein and Tom Ford. Three years after working at Balmain with Olivier Rousting, 27-year-old Ludovic Saint Sernin struck out on his own, presenting his first collection; a gender fluid homage to late nineties minimalism. We caught up with the designer on his birthday to talk about his influences, obsessions, next steps and unusual morning routine.

Hi Ludovic, let's start with the basics. What time did you get up this morning? I woke up at 10, I usually wake up earlier but I just got back from California and the jet lag is real. It was an amazing holiday/research trip, very inspiring!

Do you have a routine? What did you have for breakfast? Yes, I do! It is kind of ridiculous though. I have apple juice and cereal in bed and I religiously watch an episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians or The Real Housewives, just to ease in the day. Then I start work at 11, and right now I am researching and sketching for next season.

What did you want to be when you were a child? I have always wanted to be a fashion designer for as long as I can remember. When I was just a little boy I was obsessed with The Little Mermaid, I had the Barbie, the sun lounger, everything and I would dress her etc. This obsession for her slowly transitioned into an obsession with Lindsay Lohan, when I was a teenager I would draw her everyday. Lukas Heerich who did the soundtrack for the presentation included some bits of interviews from her and mixed it with minimal music as a nod to her.

I was probably 10 when a friend of my mom’s introduced me to Yves Saint Laurent, not literally but she had some old VHS of his most iconic shows and I remember thinking, this is it, this is what I want to do.

Who were or still are your fashion icons? Alaïa has always been a model for me. He's built something so unique and special. I recently watched the documentary by Joe McKenna who I'm obsessed with and it was so fascinating to see how he works. There's no one else like him he's such a perfectionist. Helmut Lang is obviously a big reference as is Rei Kawakubo and Issey Miyake. Kirtsen Owen, I don't think there's a single image that she's in that doesn't inspire me, she's a huge inspiration. I posted a picture of her from Steven Meisel the other day and the caption simply said : mom.

You broke from working at Balmain - which is the antithesis of your style - and created a beautiful, minimal first collection. What were your biggest lessons working there? Balmain was my first fashion family, they have been amazing to me and I am very grateful for everything I have learnt there. I was working on embellishment and textiles which was so exciting to do there because you can really propose stuff and create amazing pieces. And their approach was very artisanal which I really appreciate.

Have you always played with gender bending? What do you consider to be the most masculine feature in a woman and the most feminine trait in a man? I actually only had done womenswear up until that first presentation and initially I thought it was going to be women’s. I was doing a project on Instagram where I would recreate pictures of me with boys I knew from Instagram and make them pose in my clothes. I created some really cool relationships with some of these boys and one of them became my fitting model/muse.

So even tough the clothes were originally women's, turns out as we were trying them they looked really good on a boy too. And I decided that it wasn’t really relevant anymore to try and categorize my pieces to one sex only. I myself don't really look whether it's women's or men's when I'm shopping. As long as you feel good in it and it fits your body why restrain yourself. I knew I wanted to show it on guys though. I worked with this really talented casting director and friend, Piotr Chamier, we share the same aesthetic when it comes to casting and he did an amazing job finding boys. What I really appreciate is that even though it was presented during Men's after the show we received loads of press requests for women’s shootings. It’s been about equal with that of the men’s. I am looking forward to seeing how they work in both contexts.

With regards to the second part of the question, I am struggling to answer that. Truth is I don’t really think in that way. I have long hair so you might say that is the most feminine thing about me but others might find it quite masculine. Likewise the neck of my fit model is long and thin but I don’t think it looks particularly feminine. I really don’t think that way and interestingly I think a lot of people my age and younger are not categorizing through sex or sexuality.

Who would be your ultimate person to dress? Yesterday I watched Basketball Diaries for the first time and Leonardo DiCaprio is just beautiful and so good in it, he was just twenty years old but looks sixteen. I wish I could have dressed him back in the days, he had that special something about him and also this androgyny that I love. But to answer your question, I love the idea of dressing sons or little brothers of celebrities: for instance Uma Thurman's son is gorgeous, looks just like her but in a boy. Or Pamela Anderson's son is actually really hot too. I recently met up with Niels Schneider's little brother Vassili, and I'd love to dress him for a special project.

What is your favorite scent? For the presentation I used Potpourri from Santa Maria Novella, it smells amazing and looks really beautiful. It was displayed all over the conservatory where I had the presentation on little ceramics plates I brought back from Kyoto. I wanted the scent to blend in with the natural smell of the boys in the presentation, it was a really hot day, and they were walking around between plants in a manner that evoked cruising. The scent of the potpourri, the boys sweat and the plants just all worked really well together.

Hot! Which are your favorite hide-outs in Paris? I spend most of my free time in London, so I am going to give you my favorite hide-outs there: breakfast at the Towpath in de Beauvoir, their grilled cheese sandwich is to die for, I love walking along the canal, brunch at Rawduck, Epping forest, in the fall the colors are splendid, the British library is the best place to read a book, you need to make an appointment for the reading room and it's great to hide away from the crowd. Then back at the Towpath for drinks and dinner at Gujurati Rasoi, they have my favorite dish on earth there, I always order the same thing.

What turns you on? A Wolfgang Tillmans picture. I went to see his exhibition at the Tate in London it was simply breathtaking.

What turns you off? Being unthoughtful or unconscious. I'm quoting Jake Gyllenhaal, I had to google this answer, I couldn't think of anything that turns me off.

Can you share with us your latest obsessions? I have discovered this beautiful bookstore in Paris, where they have an amazing selection of queer literature and art. I recently read L’Age d’or by Pierre Herbart which I highly recommend. And I am in the middle of reading Call me by your Name by André Aciman which is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents villa on the Italian Riviera. It is being released as a film next year and I cannot wait to see how they will translate this beautiful book.

Where would you like to take your brand to next? I have some very exciting projects and collaborations coming up but it is a bit too early to reveal. It is amazing how quickly things can move these days but most of the time it’s just me and I’d like to do things slowly and well rather than rush them.

What are you doing after this? It's my birthday today [28th of August], so I am going to eat some cake and enjoy a lovely dinner with my family! Originally published in the Fall & Winter 2017/18-Spring 2018 issue of Hercules Universal, Neon Dreams. Out now.

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thesnhuup · 5 years ago

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Pop Picks — May 19, 2019

May 19, 2019

What I’m listening to:

I usually go to music here, but I was really moved by this podcast of a Davis Brooks talk at the Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/david-brooks-quest-moral-life. While I have long found myself distant from his political stance, he has come through a dark night of the soul and emerged with a wonderful clarity about calling, community, and not happiness (that most superficial of goals), but fulfillment and meaning, found in community and human kinship of many kinds. I immediately sent it to my kids.

What I’m reading:

Susan Orlean’s wonderful The Library Book, a love song to libraries told through the story of the LA Central Library. It brought back cherished memories of my many hours in beloved libraries — as a kid in the Waltham Public Library, a high schooler in the Farber Library at Brandeis (Lil Farber years later became a mentor of mine), and the cathedral-like Bapst Library at BC when I was a graduate student. Yes, I was a nerd. This is a love song to books certainly, but a reminder that libraries are so, so much more. It is a reminder that libraries are less about a place or being a repository of information and, like America at its best, an idea and ideal. By the way, oh to write like her.

What I’m watching:

What else? Game of Thrones, like any sensible human being. This last season is disappointing in many ways and the drop off in the writing post George R.R. Martin is as clear as was the drop off in the post-Sorkin West Wing. I would be willing to bet that if Martin has been writing the last season, Sansa and Tyrion would have committed suicide in the crypt. That said, we fans are deeply invested and even the flaws are giving us so much to discuss and debate. In that sense, the real gift of this last season is the enjoyment between episodes, like the old pre-streaming days when we all arrived at work after the latest episode of the Sopranos to discuss what we had all seen the night before. I will say this, the last two episodes — full of battle and gore – have been visually stunning. Whether the torches of the Dothraki being extinguished in the distance or Arya riding through rubble and flame on a white horse, rarely has the series ascended to such visual grandeur.

Archive

March 28, 2019

What I’m listening to:

There is a lovely piece played in a scene from A Place Called Home that I tracked down. It’s Erik Satie’s 3 Gymnopédies: Gymnopédie No. 1, played by the wonderful pianist Klára Körmendi. Satie composed this piece in 1888 and it was considered avant-garde and anti-Romantic. It’s minimalism and bit of dissonance sound fresh and contemporary to my ears and while not a huge Classical music fan, I’ve fallen in love with the Körmendi playlist on Spotify. When you need an alternative to hours of Cardi B.

What I’m reading:

Just finished Esi Edugyan’s 2018 novel Washington Black. Starting on a slave plantation in Barbados, it is a picaresque novel that has elements of Jules Verne, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, and Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad. Yes, it strains credulity and there are moments of “huh?”, but I loved it (disclosure: I was in the minority among my fellow book club members) and the first third is a searing depiction of slavery. It’s audacious, sprawling (from Barbados to the Arctic to London to Africa), and the writing, especially about nature, luminous.

What I’m watching:

A soap opera. Yes, I’d like to pretend it’s something else, but we are 31 episodes into the Australian drama A Place Called Home and we are so, so addicted. Like “It’s AM, but can’t we watch just one more episode?” addicted. Despite all the secrets, cliff hangers, intrigue, and “did that just happen?” moments, the core ingredients of any good soap opera, APCH has superb acting, real heft in terms of subject matter (including homophobia, anti-Semitism, sexual assault, and class), touches of our beloved Downton Abbey, and great cars. Beware. If you start, you won’t stop.

February 11, 2019

What I’m listening to:

Raphael Saadiq has been around for quite a while, as a musician, writer, and producer. He’s new to me and I love his old school R&B sound. Like Leon Bridges, he brings a contemporary freshness to the genre, sounding like a young Stevie Wonder (listen to “You’re The One That I Like”). Rock and Roll may be largely dead, but R&B persists – maybe because the former was derivative of the latter and never as good (and I say that as a Rock and Roll fan). I’m embarrassed to only have discovered Saadiq so late in his career, but it’s a delight to have done so.

What I’m reading:

Just finished Marilynne Robinson’s Home, part of her trilogy that includes the Pulitzer Prize winning first novel, Gilead, and the book after Home, Lila. Robinson is often described as a Christian writer, but not in a conventional sense. In this case, she gives us a modern version of the prodigal son and tells the story of what comes after he is welcomed back home. It’s not pretty. Robinson is a self-described Calvinist, thus character begets fate in Robinson’s world view and redemption is at best a question. There is something of Faulkner in her work (I am much taken with his famous “The past is never past” quote after a week in the deep South), her style is masterful, and like Faulkner, she builds with these three novels a whole universe in the small town of Gilead. Start with Gilead to better enjoy Home.

What I’m watching:

Sex Education was the most fun series we’ve seen in ages and we binged watched it on Netflix. A British homage to John Hughes films like The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Pretty in Pink, it feels like a mash up of American and British high schools. Focusing on the relationship of Maeve, the smart bad girl, and Otis, the virginal and awkward son of a sex therapist (played with brilliance by Gillian Anderson), it is laugh aloud funny and also evolves into more substance and depth (the abortion episode is genius). The sex scenes are somehow raunchy and charming and inoffensive at the same time and while ostensibly about teenagers (it feels like it is explaining contemporary teens to adults in many ways), the adults are compelling in their good and bad ways. It has been renewed for a second season, which is a gift.

January 3, 2019

What I’m listening to:

My listening choices usually refer to music, but this time I’m going with Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast on genius and the song Hallelujah. It tells the story of Leonard Cohen’s much-covered song Hallelujah and uses it as a lens on kinds of genius and creativity. Along the way, he brings in Picasso and Cézanne, Elvis Costello, and more. Gladwell is a good storyteller and if you love pop music, as I do, and Hallelujah, as I do (and you should), you’ll enjoy this podcast. We tend to celebrate the genius who seems inspired in the moment, creating new work like lightning strikes, but this podcast has me appreciating incremental creativity in a new way. It’s compelling and fun at the same time.

What I’m reading:

Just read Clay Christensen’s new book, The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty. This was an advance copy, so soon available. Clay is an old friend and a huge influence on how we have grown SNHU and our approach to innovation. This book is so compelling, because we know attempts at development have so often been a failure and it is often puzzling to understand why some countries with desperate poverty and huge challenges somehow come to thrive (think S. Korea, Singapore, 19th C. America), while others languish. Clay offers a fresh way of thinking about development through the lens of his research on innovation and it is compelling. I bet this book gets a lot of attention, as most of his work does. I also suspect that many in the development community will hate it, as it calls into question the approach and enormous investments we have made in an attempt to lift countries out of poverty. A provocative read and, as always, Clay is a good storyteller.

What I’m watching:

Just watched Leave No Trace and should have guessed that it was directed by Debra Granik. She did Winter’s Bone, the extraordinary movie that launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career. Similarly, this movie features an amazing young actor, Thomasin McKenzie, and visits lives lived on the margins. In this case, a veteran suffering PTSD, and his 13-year-old daughter. The movie is patient, is visually lush, and justly earned 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (I have a rule to never watch anything under 82%). Everything in this film is under control and beautifully understated (aside from the visuals) – confident acting, confident directing, and so humane. I love the lack of flashbacks, the lack of sensationalism – the movie trusts the viewer, rare in this age of bombast. A lovely film.

December 4, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spending a week in New Zealand, we had endless laughs listening to the Kiwi band, Flight of the Conchords. Lots of comedic bands are funny, but the music is only okay or worse. These guys are funny – hysterical really – and the music is great. They have an uncanny ability to parody almost any style. In both New Zealand and Australia, we found a wry sense of humor that was just delightful and no better captured than with this duo. You don’t have to be in New Zealand to enjoy them.

What I’m reading:

I don’t often reread. For two reasons: A) I have so many books on my “still to be read” pile that it seems daunting to also rereadbooks I loved before, and B) it’s because I loved them once that I’m a little afraid to read them again. That said, I was recently asked to list my favorite book of all time and I answered Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. But I don’t really know if that’s still true (and it’s an impossible question anyway – favorite book? On what day? In what mood?), so I’m rereading it and it feels like being with an old friend. It has one of my very favorite scenes ever: the card game between Levin and Kitty that leads to the proposal and his joyous walking the streets all night.

What I’m watching:

Blindspotting is billed as a buddy-comedy. Wow does that undersell it and the drama is often gripping. I loved Daveed Diggs in Hamilton, didn’t like his character in Black-ish, and think he is transcendent in this film he co-wrote with Rafael Casal, his co-star. The film is a love song to Oakland in many ways, but also a gut-wrenching indictment of police brutality, systemic racism and bias, and gentrification. The film has the freshness and raw visceral impact of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. A great soundtrack, genre mixing, and energy make it one of my favorite movies of 2018.

October 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We had the opportunity to see our favorite band, The National, live in Dallas two weeks ago. Just after watching Mistaken for Strangers, the documentary sort of about the band. So we’ve spent a lot of time going back into their earlier work, listening to songs we don’t know well, and reaffirming that their musicality, smarts, and sound are both original and astoundingly good. They did not disappoint in concert and it is a good thing their tour ended, as we might just spend all of our time and money following them around. Matt Berninger is a genius and his lead vocals kill me (and because they are in my range, I can actually sing along!). Their arrangements are profoundly good and go right to whatever brain/heart wiring that pulls one in and doesn’t let them go.

What I’m reading:

Who is Richard Powers and why have I only discovered him now, with his 12th book? Overstory is profoundly good, a book that is essential and powerful and makes me look at my everyday world in new ways. In short, a dizzying example of how powerful can be narrative in the hands of a master storyteller. I hesitate to say it’s the best environmental novel I’ve ever read (it is), because that would put this book in a category. It is surely about the natural world, but it is as much about we humans. It’s monumental and elegiac and wondrous at all once. Cancel your day’s schedule and read it now. Then plant a tree. A lot of them.

What I’m watching:

Bo Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade and Elsie Fisher is nothing less than amazing as its star (what’s with these new child actors; see Florida Project). It’s funny and painful and touching. It’s also the single best film treatment that I have seen of what it means to grow up in a social media shaped world. It’s a reminder that growing up is hard. Maybe harder now in a world of relentless, layered digital pressure to curate perfect lives that are far removed from the natural messy worlds and selves we actually inhabit. It’s a well-deserved 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and I wonder who dinged it for the missing 2%.

September 7, 2018

What I’m listening to:

With a cover pointing back to the Beastie Boys’ 1986 Licensed to Ill, Eminem’s quietly released Kamikaze is not my usual taste, but I’ve always admired him for his “all out there” willingness to be personal, to call people out, and his sheer genius with language. I thought Daveed Diggs could rap fast, but Eminem is supersonic at moments, and still finds room for melody. Love that he includes Joyner Lucas, whose “I’m Not Racist” gets added to the growing list of simply amazing music videos commenting on race in America. There are endless reasons why I am the least likely Eminem fan, but when no one is around to make fun of me, I’ll put it on again.

What I’m reading:

Lesley Blume’s Everyone Behaves Badly, which is the story behind Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and his time in 1920s Paris (oh, what a time – see Midnight in Paris if you haven’t already). Of course, Blume disabuses my romantic ideas of that time and place and everyone is sort of (or profoundly so) a jerk, especially…no spoiler here…Hemingway. That said, it is a compelling read and coming off the Henry James inspired prose of Mrs. Osmond, it made me appreciate more how groundbreaking was Hemingway’s modern prose style. Like his contemporary Picasso, he reinvented the art and it can be easy to forget, these decades later, how profound was the change and its impact. And it has bullfights.

What I’m watching:

Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is just exceptional. It’s filmed on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which provides a stunning landscape, and it feels like a classic western reinvented for our times. The main characters are played by the real-life people who inspired this narrative (but feels like a documentary) film. Brady Jandreau, playing himself really, owns the screen. It’s about manhood, honor codes, loss, and resilience – rendered in sensitive, nuanced, and heartfelt ways. It feels like it could be about large swaths of America today. Really powerful.

August 16, 2018

What I’m listening to:

In my Spotify Daily Mix was Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman, one of the world’s greatest love songs. Go online and read the story of how the song was discovered and recorded. There are competing accounts, but Sledge said he improvised it after a bad breakup. It has that kind of aching spontaneity. It is another hit from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, one of the GREAT music hotbeds, along with Detroit, Nashville, and Memphis. Our February Board meeting is in Alabama and I may finally have to do the pilgrimage road trip to Muscle Shoals and then Memphis, dropping in for Sunday services at the church where Rev. Al Green still preaches and sings. If the music is all like this, I will be saved.

What I’m reading:

John Banville’s Mrs. Osmond, his homage to literary idol Henry James and an imagined sequel to James’ 1881 masterpiece Portrait of a Lady. Go online and read the first paragraph of Chapter 25. He is…profoundly good. Makes me want to never write again, since anything I attempt will feel like some other, lowly activity in comparison to his mastery of language, image, syntax. This is slow reading, every sentence to be savored.

What I’m watching:

I’ve always respected Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but we just watched the documentary RGB. It is over-the-top great and she is now one of my heroes. A superwoman in many ways and the documentary is really well done. There are lots of scenes of her speaking to crowds and the way young women, especially law students, look at her is touching. And you can’t help but fall in love with her now late husband Marty. See this movie and be reminded of how important is the Law.

July 23, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spotify’s Summer Acoustic playlist has been on repeat quite a lot. What a fun way to listen to artists new to me, including The Paper Kites, Hollow Coves, and Fleet Foxes, as well as old favorites like Leon Bridges and Jose Gonzalez. Pretty chill when dialing back to a summer pace, dining on the screen porch or reading a book.

What I’m reading:

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson tells of the racial injustice (and the war on the poor our judicial system perpetuates as well) that he discovered as a young graduate from Harvard Law School and his fight to address it. It is in turn heartbreaking, enraging, and inspiring. It is also about mercy and empathy and justice that reads like a novel. Brilliant.

What I’m watching:

Fauda. We watched season one of this Israeli thriller. It was much discussed in Israel because while it focuses on an ex-special agent who comes out of retirement to track down a Palestinian terrorist, it was willing to reveal the complexity, richness, and emotions of Palestinian lives. And the occasional brutality of the Israelis. Pretty controversial stuff in Israel. Lior Raz plays Doron, the main character, and is compelling and tough and often hard to like. He’s a mess. As is the world in which he has to operate. We really liked it, and also felt guilty because while it may have been brave in its treatment of Palestinians within the Israeli context, it falls back into some tired tropes and ultimately falls short on this front.

June 11, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Like everyone else, I’m listening to Pusha T drop the mic on Drake. Okay, not really, but do I get some points for even knowing that? We all walk around with songs that immediately bring us back to a time or a place. Songs are time machines. We are coming up on Father’s Day. My own dad passed away on Father’s Day back in 1994 and I remembering dutifully getting through the wake and funeral and being strong throughout. Then, sitting alone in our kitchen, Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence came on and I lost it. When you lose a parent for the first time (most of us have two after all) we lose our innocence and in that passage, we suddenly feel adult in a new way (no matter how old we are), a longing for our own childhood, and a need to forgive and be forgiven. Listen to the lyrics and you’ll understand. As Wordsworth reminds us in In Memoriam, there are seasons to our grief and, all these years later, this song no longer hits me in the gut, but does transport me back with loving memories of my father. I’ll play it Father’s Day.

What I’m reading:

The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin. I am not a reader of fantasy or sci-fi, though I understand they can be powerful vehicles for addressing the very real challenges of the world in which we actually live. I’m not sure I know of a more vivid and gripping illustration of that fact than N. K. Jemisin’s Hugo Award winning novel The Fifth Season, first in her Broken Earth trilogy. It is astounding. It is the fantasy parallel to The Underground Railroad, my favorite recent read, a depiction of subjugation, power, casual violence, and a broken world in which our hero(s) struggle, suffer mightily, and still, somehow, give us hope. It is a tour de force book. How can someone be this good a writer? The first 30 pages pained me (always with this genre, one must learn a new, constructed world, and all of its operating physics and systems of order), and then I could not put it down. I panicked as I neared the end, not wanting to finish the book, and quickly ordered the Obelisk Gate, the second novel in the trilogy, and I can tell you now that I’ll be spending some goodly portion of my weekend in Jemisin’s other world.

What I’m watching:

The NBA Finals and perhaps the best basketball player of this generation. I’ve come to deeply respect LeBron James as a person, a force for social good, and now as an extraordinary player at the peak of his powers. His superhuman play during the NBA playoffs now ranks with the all-time greats, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, MJ, Kobe, and the demi-god that was Bill Russell. That his Cavs lost in a 4-game sweep is no surprise. It was a mediocre team being carried on the wide shoulders of James (and matched against one of the greatest teams ever, the Warriors, and the Harry Potter of basketball, Steph Curry) and, in some strange way, his greatness is amplified by the contrast with the rest of his team. It was a great run.

May 24, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I’ve always liked Alicia Keys and admired her social activism, but I am hooked on her last album Here. This feels like an album finally commensurate with her anger, activism, hope, and grit. More R&B and Hip Hop than is typical for her, I think this album moves into an echelon inhabited by a Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or Beyonce’s Formation. Social activism and outrage rarely make great novels, but they often fuel great popular music. Here is a terrific example.

What I’m reading:

Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad may be close to a flawless novel. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer, it chronicles the lives of two runaway slaves, Cora and Caeser, as they try to escape the hell of plantation life in Georgia. It is an often searing novel and Cora is one of the great heroes of American literature. I would make this mandatory reading in every high school in America, especially in light of the absurd revisionist narratives of “happy and well cared for” slaves. This is a genuinely great novel, one of the best I’ve read, the magical realism and conflating of time periods lifts it to another realm of social commentary, relevance, and a blazing indictment of America’s Original Sin, for which we remain unabsolved.

What I’m watching:

I thought I knew about The Pentagon Papers, but The Post, a real-life political thriller from Steven Spielberg taught me a lot, features some of our greatest actors, and is so timely given the assault on our democratic institutions and with a presidency out of control. It is a reminder that a free and fearless press is a powerful part of our democracy, always among the first targets of despots everywhere. The story revolves around the legendary Post owner and D.C. doyenne, Katharine Graham. I had the opportunity to see her son, Don Graham, right after he saw the film, and he raved about Meryl Streep’s portrayal of his mother. Liked it a lot more than I expected.

April 27, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I mentioned John Prine in a recent post and then on the heels of that mention, he has released a new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, his first new album in ten years. Prine is beloved by other singer songwriters and often praised by the inscrutable God that is Bob Dylan. Indeed, Prine was frequently said to be the “next Bob Dylan” in the early part of his career, though he instead carved out his own respectable career and voice, if never with the dizzying success of Dylan. The new album reflects a man in his 70s, a cancer survivor, who reflects on life and its end, but with the good humor and empathy that are hallmarks of Prine’s music. “When I Get To Heaven” is a rollicking, fun vision of what comes next and a pure delight. A charming, warm, and often terrific album.

What I’m reading:

I recently read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, on many people’s Top Ten lists for last year and for good reason. It is sprawling, multi-generational, and based in the world of Japanese occupied Korea and then in the Korean immigrant’s world of Oaska, so our key characters become “tweeners,” accepted in neither world. It’s often unspeakably sad, and yet there is resiliency and love. There is also intimacy, despite the time and geographic span of the novel. It’s breathtakingly good and like all good novels, transporting.

What I’m watching:

I adore Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and while I’m not sure his Shape of Water is better, it is a worthy follow up to the earlier masterpiece (and more of a commercial success). Lots of critics dislike the film, but I’m okay with a simple retelling of a Beauty and the Beast love story, as predictable as it might be. The acting is terrific, it is visually stunning, and there are layers of pain as well as social and political commentary (the setting is the US during the Cold War) and, no real spoiler here, the real monsters are humans, the military officer who sees over the captured aquatic creature. It is hauntingly beautiful and its depiction of hatred to those who are different or “other” is painfully resonant with the time in which we live. Put this on your “must see” list.

March 18, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Sitting on a plane for hours (and many more to go; geez, Australia is far away) is a great opportunity to listen to new music and to revisit old favorites. This time, it is Lucy Dacus and her album Historians, the new sophomore release from a 22-year old indie artist that writes with relatable, real-life lyrics. Just on a second listen and while she insists this isn’t a break up record (as we know, 50% of all great songs are break up songs), it is full of loss and pain. Worth the listen so far. For the way back machine, it’s John Prine and In Spite of Ourselves (that title track is one of the great love songs of all time), a collection of duets with some of his “favorite girl singers” as he once described them. I have a crush on Iris Dement (for a really righteously angry song try her Wasteland of the Free), but there is also EmmyLou Harris, the incomparable Dolores Keane, and Lucinda Williams. Very different albums, both wonderful.

What I’m reading:

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on Christopher Steele presents little that is new, but she pulls it together in a terrific and coherent whole that is illuminating and troubling at the same time. Not only for what is happening, but for the complicity of the far right in trying to discredit that which should be setting off alarm bells everywhere. Bob Mueller may be the most important defender of the democracy at this time. A must read.

What I’m watching:

Homeland is killing it this season and is prescient, hauntingly so. Russian election interference, a Bannon-style hate radio demagogue, alienated and gun toting militia types, and a president out of control. It’s fabulous, even if it feels awfully close to the evening news.

March 8, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We have a family challenge to compile our Top 100 songs. It is painful. Only 100? No more than three songs by one artist? Wait, why is M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on my list? Should it just be The Clash from whom she samples? Can I admit to guilty pleasure songs? Hey, it’s my list and I can put anything I want on it. So I’m listening to the list while I work and the song playing right now is Tom Petty’s “The Wild One, Forever,” a B-side single that was never a hit and that remains my favorite Petty song. Also, “Evangeline” by Los Lobos. It evokes a night many years ago, with friends at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA, when everyone danced well past 1AM in a hot, sweaty, packed club and the band was a revelation. Maybe the best music night of our lives and a reminder that one’s 100 Favorite Songs list is as much about what you were doing and where you were in your life when those songs were playing as it is about the music. It’s not a list. It’s a soundtrack for this journey.

What I’m reading:

Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy was in the NY Times top ten books of 2017 list and it is easy to see why. Lockwood brings remarkable and often surprising imagery, metaphor, and language to her prose memoir and it actually threw me off at first. It then all became clear when someone told me she is a poet. The book is laugh aloud funny, which masks (or makes safer anyway) some pretty dark territory. Anyone who grew up Catholic, whether lapsed or not, will resonate with her story. She can’t resist a bawdy anecdote and her family provides some of the most memorable characters possible, especially her father, her sister, and her mother, who I came to adore. Best thing I’ve read in ages.

What I’m watching:

The Florida Project, a profoundly good movie on so many levels. Start with the central character, six-year old (at the time of the filming) Brooklynn Prince, who owns – I mean really owns – the screen. This is pure acting genius and at that age? Astounding. Almost as astounding is Bria Vinaite, who plays her mother. She was discovered on Instagram and had never acted before this role, which she did with just three weeks of acting lessons. She is utterly convincing and the tension between the child’s absolute wonder and joy in the world with her mother’s struggle to provide, to be a mother, is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Willem Dafoe rightly received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. This is a terrific movie.

February 12, 2018

What I’m listening to:

So, I have a lot of friends of age (I know you’re thinking 40s, but I just turned 60) who are frozen in whatever era of music they enjoyed in college or maybe even in their thirties. There are lots of times when I reach back into the catalog, since music is one of those really powerful and transporting senses that can take you through time (smell is the other one, though often underappreciated for that power). Hell, I just bought a turntable and now spending time in vintage vinyl shops. But I’m trying to take a lesson from Pat, who revels in new music and can as easily talk about North African rap music and the latest National album as Meet the Beatles, her first ever album. So, I’ve been listening to Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy winning Damn. While it may not be the first thing I’ll reach for on a winter night in Maine, by the fire, I was taken with it. It’s layered, political, and weirdly sensitive and misogynist at the same time, and it feels fresh and authentic and smart at the same time, with music that often pulled me from what I was doing. In short, everything music should do. I’m not a bit cooler for listening to Damn, but when I followed it with Steely Dan, I felt like I was listening to Lawrence Welk. A good sign, I think.

What I’m reading:

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I’m not usually a reader of biographies, but I’ve always been taken with Leonardo. Isaacson does not disappoint (does he ever?), and his subject is at once more human and accessible and more awe-inspiring in Isaacson’s capable hands. Gay, left-handed, vegetarian, incapable of finishing things, a wonderful conversationalist, kind, and perhaps the most relentlessly curious human being who has ever lived. Like his biographies of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, Isaacson’s project here is to show that genius lives at the intersection of science and art, of rationality and creativity. Highly recommend it.

What I’m watching:

We watched the This Is Us post-Super Bowl episode, the one where Jack finally buys the farm. I really want to hate this show. It is melodramatic and manipulative, with characters that mostly never change or grow, and it hooks me every damn time we watch it. The episode last Sunday was a tear jerker, a double whammy intended to render into a blubbering, tissue-crumbling pathetic mess anyone who has lost a parent or who is a parent. Sterling K. Brown, Ron Cephas Jones, the surprising Mandy Moore, and Milo Ventimiglia are hard not to love and last season’s episode that had only Brown and Cephas going to Memphis was the show at its best (they are by far the two best actors). Last week was the show at its best worst. In other words, I want to hate it, but I love it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t binge watch it. You’ll need therapy and insulin.

January 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Drive-By Truckers. Chris Stapleton has me on an unusual (for me) country theme and I discovered these guys to my great delight. They’ve been around, with some 11 albums, but the newest one is fascinating. It’s a deep dive into Southern alienation and the white working-class world often associated with our current president. I admire the willingness to lay bare, in kick ass rock songs, the complexities and pain at work among people we too quickly place into overly simple categories. These guys are brave, bold, and thoughtful as hell, while producing songs I didn’t expect to like, but that I keep playing. And they are coming to NH.

What I’m reading:

A textual analog to Drive-By Truckers by Chris Stapleton in many ways is Tony Horowitz’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning Confederates in the Attic. Ostensibly about the Civil War and the South’s ongoing attachment to it, it is prescient and speaks eloquently to the times in which we live (where every southern state but Virginia voted for President Trump). Often hilarious, it too surfaces complexities and nuance that escape a more recent, and widely acclaimed, book like Hillbilly Elegy. As a Civil War fan, it was also astonishing in many instances, especially when it blows apart long-held “truths” about the war, such as the degree to which Sherman burned down the south (he did not). Like D-B Truckers, Horowitz loves the South and the people he encounters, even as he grapples with its myths of victimhood and exceptionalism (and racism, which may be no more than the racism in the north, but of a different kind). Everyone should read this book and I’m embarrassed I’m so late to it.

What I’m watching:

David Letterman has a new Netflix show called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” and we watched the first episode, in which Letterman interviewed Barack Obama. It was extraordinary (if you don’t have Netflix, get it just to watch this show); not only because we were reminded of Obama’s smarts, grace, and humanity (and humor), but because we saw a side of Letterman we didn’t know existed. His personal reflections on Selma were raw and powerful, almost painful. He will do five more episodes with “extraordinary individuals” and if they are anything like the first, this might be the very best work of his career and one of the best things on television.

December 22, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished Sunjeev Sahota’s Year of the Runaways, a painful inside look at the plight of illegal Indian immigrant workers in Britain. It was shortlisted for 2015 Man Booker Prize and its transporting, often to a dark and painful universe, and it is impossible not to think about the American version of this story and the terrible way we treat the undocumented in our own country, especially now.

What I’m watching:

Season II of The Crown is even better than Season I. Elizabeth’s character is becoming more three-dimensional, the modern world is catching up with tradition-bound Britain, and Cold War politics offer more context and tension than we saw in Season I. Claire Foy, in her last season, is just terrific – one arched eye brow can send a message.

What I’m listening to:

A lot of Christmas music, but needing a break from the schmaltz, I’ve discovered Over the Rhine and their Christmas album, Snow Angels. God, these guys are good.

November 14, 2017

What I’m watching:

Guiltily, I watch the Patriots play every weekend, often building my schedule and plans around seeing the game. Why the guilt? I don’t know how morally defensible is football anymore, as we now know the severe damage it does to the players. We can’t pretend it’s all okay anymore. Is this our version of late decadent Rome, watching mostly young Black men take a terrible toll on each other for our mere entertainment?

What I’m reading:

Recently finished J.G. Ballard’s 2000 novel Super-Cannes, a powerful depiction of a corporate-tech ex-pat community taken over by a kind of psychopathology, in which all social norms and responsibilities are surrendered to residents of the new world community. Kept thinking about Silicon Valley when reading it. Pretty dark, dystopian view of the modern world and centered around a mass killing, troublingly prescient.

What I’m listening to:

Was never really a Lorde fan, only knowing her catchy (and smarter than you might first guess) pop hit “Royals” from her debut album. But her new album, Melodrama, is terrific and it doesn’t feel quite right to call this “pop.” There is something way more substantial going on with Lorde and I can see why many critics put this album at the top of their Best in 2017 list. Count me in as a huge fan.

November 3, 2017

What I’m reading: Just finished Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, her breathtakingly good second novel. How is someone so young so wise? Her writing is near perfection and I read the book in two days, setting my alarm for 4:30AM so I could finish it before work.

What I’m watching: We just binge watched season two of Stranger Things and it was worth it just to watch Millie Bobbie Brown, the transcendent young actor who plays Eleven. The series is a delightful mash up of every great eighties horror genre you can imagine and while pretty dark, an absolute joy to watch.

What I’m listening to: I’m not a lover of country music (to say the least), but I love Chris Stapleton. His “The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is heartbreakingly good and reminds me of the old school country that played in my house as a kid. He has a new album and I can’t wait, but his From A Room: Volume 1 is on repeat for now.

September 26, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. It took me a while to accept its cadence and sheer weirdness, but loved it in the end. A painful meditation on loss and grief, and a genuinely beautiful exploration of the intersection of life and death, the difficulty of letting go of what was, good and bad, and what never came to be.

What I’m watching:

HBO’s The Deuce. Times Square and the beginning of the porn industry in the 1970s, the setting made me wonder if this was really something I’d want to see. But David Simon is the writer and I’d read a menu if he wrote it. It does not disappoint so far and there is nothing prurient about it.

What I’m listening to:

The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast. I love this band. The opening piano notes of the first song, “Nobody Else Will Be There,” seize me & I’m reminded that no one else in music today matches their arrangement & musicianship. I’m adding “Born to Beg,” “Slow Show,” “I Need My Girl,” and “Runaway” to my list of favorite love songs.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

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Willem Dafoe has had one of the most eclectic and distinguished careers in film, earning a reputation for versatility and tackling difficult characters, like Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ or the character named only as “He” in the twisted horror film Antichrist.

Dafoe has worked with scores of the most important directors in the industry, collaborating repeatedly with auteurs like Lars Von Trier, Paul Schrader, and Wes Anderson. But he’s no stranger to mainstream fare, too: Dafoe played supervillain Norman Osborne in the 2002 reboot of Spider-Man. He voiced Gill the fish (leader of the “Tank Gang”) in Finding Nemo. And he’s appeared in movies as different as John Wick, The Boondock Saints, and The English Patient. His role as a kindly motel manager in The Florida Project netted him his third Best Supporting Actor nomination at last year’s Oscars.

Now Dafoe has teamed up with the painter and filmmaker Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Basquiat) to play Vincent Van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate. The Van Gogh of the film is in his waning years, and disdained by most of his peers — including, to some extent, his buddy Paul Gauguin, played by Oscar Isaac. He’s portrayed as an outsider artist, a man sinking into depression and mania while also becoming more and more prolific — and more and more convinced that painting is his divine calling.

At Eternity’s Gate premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, where Dafoe won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. I interviewed him in Manhattan the morning after the film’s North American premiere, as the closing night selection at the New York Film Festival. We talked mostly about painting — what he had to learn to do to play Vincent Van Gogh, how Schnabel was instrumental in teaching the craft, and how learning to paint like Van Gogh is really learning how to see.

Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Alissa Wilkinson

So, how do you get inside the head of Vincent Van Gogh?

Willem Dafoe

I got inside his head — well, by painting, painting, painting.

Dafoe in At Eternity’s Gate, after Van Gogh cuts his ear off. CBS Films

Alissa Wilkinson

Have you painted much before?

Willem Dafoe

I had, but it was many, many years ago, and it was very different. It was a different kind of painting, for a movie called To Live and Die in L.A. I played a counterfeiter who also happened to be a painter. In order to inhabit that character, I learned to paint, but not nearly with the same understanding and the same intensity that I approached this — because obviously, this was different.

And I’ve been around painters all my life.

Alissa Wilkinson

Oh, really?

Willem Dafoe

Yeah. I really came of age in downtown New York, where the [art] worlds were very mixed up. It was a time of a lot of do-it-yourself stuff, and loft living, and a lot of my friends were painters. And Julian [Schnabel], I’ve known for like 30 years, so —

Alissa Wilkinson

I was wondering if you’d known Schnabel before now, back when he was best known as a painter, before he made Basquiat.

Willem Dafoe

I’ve been in the studio with him. He’s painted me. I’ve helped him move paintings. I’ve been there when he makes things.

Alissa Wilkinson

Van Gogh’s style of painting, and his technique, is very specific and very interesting to watch. How did you become able to imitate his style?

Willem Dafoe

Basically, with the help of Julian, I started painting shoes. I started painting cypress trees. We looked at the Van Goghs. He taught me a different way of looking, a different way of seeing.

When you’re not trained, you really leap to identify things in paintings — we’re so ingrained, no matter what our education is, toward thinking about representation. We’re literal about things, not really looking deeply.

But to express something may mean making a painting that doesn’t look like exactly like what it “looks like.” So Julian taught me to paint lights.

Oscar Isaac and Emmanuelle Seigner in At Eternity’s Gate. CBS Films

He also taught me about making marks. There is no bad mark. Painting is a series of marks, next to each other — putting colors next to each other. When I’m looking at you [he starts gesturing, indicating areas of my face], rather than seeing a woman, I see some black there. I see white there. There’s white there. There’s almost, maybe, there’s a little pink and a little orange, maybe? There may even be green there. You don’t have green on your face, but I’m seeing green.

And if I bring those things to a painting, I may be able to express something in you that really gets to who you are, or gets to a truth or a union with the nature of who you are, rather than a representation. It’s that kind of thinking, understanding of the origin of things and where things are going, that is a way of seeing. So I’m not just talking about the visual — I’m talking a certain kind of psychology of experience.

Alissa Wilkinson

And of knowing too, right? Of perception?

Willem Dafoe

Seeing things clearly. It’s very instructive when [Van Gogh] says, “I don’t invent these paintings. They already exist in nature, and I just have to free them.” That’s profound to me.

To be able to express that in a movie, in a non-didactic way, through action, through a narrative that’s constructed in a way that you just get swept up, is a beautiful thing.

My friend [the playwright] Richard Foreman quotes … I forget who he quotes when he says this … but he says, “Stories hide the truth.” I think there’s some truth to that. Van Gogh talked about that too — about The Sower, Jean-François Millet’s painting that he admired so much, he said, “There’s more power, there’s more truth, there’s more soul in that than any sower in the field.”

For me, that’s inspiring.

What I hope is that this movie gets seen, and wherever people respond to it, it’s for them, no matter what they do, even if they aren’t artists. It’s about ways of seeing and reconciling ecstatic states with what life is.

Alissa Wilkinson

A lot of what I loved about the film is that it’s a story about a man learning to see himself differently, through a framework of eternity.

Willem Dafoe

So much of the text —some of it’s inventive, some of it comes from his letters. But it was very good food for me. And then of course, I was painting. And I had beautiful conversations with actors who made themselves very available. That’s a beautiful place to be: to have a good conversation, and to be out in nature, and to paint.

Those were my activities on this movie. So I’m not thinking about interpreting, or expressing, or deciding, or saying who Van Gogh was. I’m not even thinking about Van Gogh. But I’m borrowing certain things from his life, to inhabit, to create something, to make something. To express a work of art, another work of art has to be made.

Alissa Wilkinson

A lot of this film was shot outdoors, in France. Some of it looked like it might not have been totally comfortable to shoot!

Willem Dafoe

Not comfortable for your body, but totally comfortable, because it guides you. But yeah, I can complain about who cold Arles was. How miserable.

We shot in all the places Van Gogh was. Saint-Rémy, that’s the actual place where he was. I’m not saying that to claim bragging rights — it just connects you. It was amazing to be in Auvers-sur-Oise, which isn’t so far from Paris. It blew my mind.

Willem Dafoe as Vincent Van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate. CBS Films

Here in New York City, we can go upstate, and sometimes I’m amazed. I say, “Wow, it’s so green.” And, “Wow, it’s so close to the city.” Well, there are still landscapes, in Auvers-sur-Oise, that are recognizable from Van Gogh’s paintings. Particularly in Europe, land management and usage doesn’t change as radically as it does here, because it stays in the family, or it’s protected.

I was in those landscapes, and they’re his landscapes. He was seeing many of the same things. That does connect you. It’s why we go to historic places and have a sigh, and pretend we’re those people sometimes. To imagine events, and ways of being.

Alissa Wilkinson

I’ve spent some time in the south of France, and it’s always amazing to —

Willem Dafoe

But in the warm time?

Alissa Wilkinson

Yes, for Cannes [Film Festival].

Willem Dafoe

Ah, it’s completely transformed. Arles in the winter is quite severe, and there aren’t any tourists around, and restaurants are open like one or two days a week. It’s really a different thing. And because of that solitude, and that roughness but also coziness, it felt like another time.

I would walk from the little hotel room where I was staying out to where Julian was staying, and we’d paint. It had the feel of a village. It’s hard to imagine, but it was our little village.

Alissa Wilkinson

So were you painting things of your own, during the production?

Willem Dafoe

No, I was painting — I was practicing — the things that I would paint in the movie.

Alissa Wilkinson

Which are very recognizable.

Willem Dafoe

They’re done not always for exact likeness, and many paintings were made for set dressing, because Van Gogh was living amongst his paintings. It was a beautiful thing to see. There was a whole workshop of people making, basically, forgeries for the set.

And then Julian would see them and he’d say, “Ah, that’s pretty good.” It would be a good likeness. It would look like a Van Gogh. It was a good copy. But he’d say, “It’s dead.” And then he’d get out the paint, and he’d start making marks, and the painting would come alive. It may have been less exactly like a copy of the Van Gogh, but it was more alive.

That was evidence of not only Julian’s power as an artist. But also in doing that, I could often see how marks mattered. Strategies, abandoning strategies, going toward technique and abandoning technique, all those things. It was a very concrete way to come to a better understanding of also what I was painting.

We’d start simple. He was a freak about how to hold the brush, how many brushes you could have in your hand and how to mix the colors, and keeping things neat. But working fast, you know? It was fascinating.

It was great, and scary, because I was his creature. I was his Van Gogh. So I had to inhabit it. I was the go-between, between this creation and the director.

Which is a beautiful place to be.

At Eternity’s Gate opens in theaters on November 16.

Original Source -> “I was his creature”: Willem Dafoe on playing Van Gogh in Julian Schnabel’s latest film

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internetbasic9 · 6 years ago

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Business Carl Bernstein calls Bob Woodward’s Trump book ‘indisputable’

Business Carl Bernstein calls Bob Woodward’s Trump book ‘indisputable’ Business Carl Bernstein calls Bob Woodward’s Trump book ‘indisputable’ https://ift.tt/2NOCpQG

Business

Business A version of this article first appeared in the Reliable Sources newsletter. You can sign up for free right here.

Business “CRAZYTOWN”

The noise machine is really cranking up to challenge Bob Woodward’s book “Fear.” But the book is about something fundamental, something that’s hard for the pro-Trump media to fully counter. It’s about whether Trump is fit for office. The book is full of reasons to doubt his fitness. And it details a White House that isn’t just dysfunctional, but is downright broken. Here’s the very latest…

— “Fear” was #12 on Amazon BEFORE WaPo and CNN published excerpts around 11:15am Tuesday. By 5pm, the book was firmly #1, and it’s not going to budge for days…

— The publication date is still 9/11… Simon & Schuster is enjoying the pre-order spike…

— So far there’s been no known threat of legal action from Trumpworld, but I’m on the lookout because that’s what happened with “Fire and Fury” and “Unhinged…”

— All three books “tell basically the same story, it’s just that Woodward has by far the most credibility of those three,” Chris Hayes said on MSNBC. “It’s basically an ‘even worse than you thought’ sort of theme…”

— For the time being, Trump is trying a “fake news” defense, claiming (without a shred of evidence) that Woodward might have made up the stories in the book…

— Will “he made it up!” really work against one of the most-respected, well-known reporters in the country? Maybe…

— WaPo’s Josh Dawsey tweeted: “Of 13 current and former White House officials I spoke to today, seven said they spoke to Bob Woodward for his book…”

Business “Furious” and “paranoid”

>> WaPo’s Wednesday story says Trump is “furious” and “particularly paranoid” right now. And as CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reported earlier, he’s irritated that his aides turned down Woodward’s requests to interview him.

If you haven’t listened to Woodward’s recording of his 8/14 phone call with Trump, listen to/read it here. And think about this: Trump evidently thought he could single-handedly turn “Fear” into a positive, “accurate” book by talking to Woodward.

From the call, a Trump quote for the ages: “Accurate is that nobody’s ever done a better job than I’m doing as President. That I can tell you. So that’s — And that’s the way a lot of people feel that know what’s going on, and you’ll see that over the years. But a lot of people feel that, Bob.”

Business Bernstein calls the book “indisputable”

There was something special about listening to Carl Bernstein analyze Woodward’s bombshells on CNN on Tuesday.

Bernstein’s main point to Anderson Cooper: “Yes, there’s been reporting on this, a good deal of it. But now we have a coherent, indisputable narrative that is absolutely chilling in the following way: The people closest to the president of the United States, in his W.H. and in his administration, are saying that they see their job as protecting the United States FROM the president of the United States. That he is a danger to the republic. That is the text of this book. Every meeting that Bob writes about, that is the subtext. And it’s not just a sentence here or somebody calling somebody an idiot there, it is detail piled upon detail…”

>> Bernstein also vouched for Woodward’s reporting talent as only Bernstein could do. “This is an irrefutable picture, because of Bob Woodward’s methodology,” he told Brooke Baldwin earlier in the day…

Business “Dozens of deep throats”

Robert Costa and Philip Rucker published the first excerpts in a WaPo story. CNN’s Jeremy Herb, Jamie Gangel and Dan Merica followed with another eye-popping story just a few minutes later. Together, the two story formed the basis for a full day of news coverage, criticism, denials, etc.

Gangel made this point on “AC360:” Woodward had “dozens of sources,” dozens of so-called deep throats. “He has hundreds of hours of taped interviews, almost every interview was taped… So people may be denying things now for their own reason. Maybe they’re denying it because they do consider themselves ‘the thin blue line,’ and they feel that it’s more important that they be in the job. But there are tapes.”

Business Keep this in mind

From an emailer: “It’s pretty shocking to me how many journalists are willing to draw firm conclusions about the book based on today’s news coverage without actually reading the book…”

Business Top reactions to the excerpts

— WaPo veteran Robert G. Kaiser: “Just a reminder: Woodward does not make mistakes. He doesn’t invent stuff. In our 40 years together at the Post, I remember just one correction of a Woodward story — Watergate aficionados know the story, an insignificant slip-up.”

— Sean Hannity: “A book filled with speculation, rumors, hearsay.”

— Ezra Klein tweeted that “there should be a word for the pain of being repeatedly confronted with what you already know is true. That’s the experience of reporting on Trump, and reading these Trump books. What’s going on in the White House is exactly what it looks like, and that’s scary every single time.”

— Panelist Morgan Ortagus on Fox’s “Special Report:” “At the Applebee’s in Winter Haven, Florida, where I waitressed in high school and college, no one is talking about the Bob Woodward book tonight. No one.”

— Brit Hume on Twitter: “The denials from Kelly, Dowd, Mattis are pretty explicit and direct. Bob Woodward’s sources are, as always, anonymous so we may never know who’s right.”

Business Been there, done that…

–> Ari Fleischer: “I’ve been on the receiving end of a Bob Woodward book. There were quotes in it I didn’t like. But never once — never — did I think Woodward made it up. Anonymous sources have looser lips and may take liberties. But Woodward always plays is straight. Someone told it to him.”

–> Paul Begala: “24 years ago, Woodward quoted me in his Clinton book saying all kinds of profane and rude things. Why? Maybe because he’s a Republican. Or maybe because: I. Said. Them.”

Business Woodward’s only comment

He shared a five-word statement with reporters who asked him about the admin denials and other reactions to the book’s revelations.

“I stand by my reporting.”

Woodward has already taped his first TV interview about the book — with David Martin for “CBS Sunday Morning” — and right now Sunday seems like a long ways away. But authors like Woodward and the book publicists at S&S have been through this before…

>> On Tuesday’s “CBS Evening News,” Martin mentioned the interview. “I can tell you, from having interviewed Woodward, he is VERY confident of his information, much of which comes from diaries and notes…”

Business Lowry’s take

Brian Lowry emails: Chuck Todd’s Atlantic piece about the damage done to journalism over the last 50 years — and the orchestrated campaign to achieve those ends — was a must-read. But the one thing he didn’t resolve, in my mind, was how journalists can defend themselves and their work without sounding, well, defensive. It was striking, too, in light of Todd’s argument to see Woodward’s one-line statement — “I stand by my reporting” — in response to the denials and criticism directed at his book. It was an almost-perfect demonstration of the old-school mentality, as opposed to the greater transparency — and more full-throated defense — that many, including Todd, are advocating…

Business It’s about fitness.

Based on the WaPo and CNN excerpts alone, it’s safe to say that “Fear” contains a wealth of new evidence that is making Trump’s fitness a subject of discussion again. Furthermore, the book indicates that it already is being discussed by some of the highest-ranking officials in his administration.

Book after book, story after story, news cycle after news cycle all come back to the same uncomfortable question: Is he fit for office? You can expect to hear the Q asked a lot more in the coming weeks. Here’s my column about it…

Business The White House’s response was delayed…

The W.H. knew this book was in the works for months. It knew the pub date for weeks, just like the rest of us. Still, it took the press shop four full hours to release a statement dismissing the book as “nothing more than fabricated stories.”

>> Maggie Haberman’s reaction: “Took the WH four hours to come with the same statement it’s used for the last two books.”

Business Trump + The Daily Caller

Maybe the press shop was busy setting up this Oval Office interview with two reporters from The Daily Caller. In the interview, Trump claimed that Woodward might have made the stories up, contradicting his own previous praise of the author’s reputation.

“It’s just another bad book,” Trump said. And he was right in one respect: “Fear” is not the first book to contain damning claims about the Trump W.H.

Read more of Tuesday’s Reliable Sources newsletter… And subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox…

Chris Ruddy brought this up on Chris Cuomo’s show: “This book is not so much ‘fake news’ as it’s OLD news,” Ruddy said. “I mean, it’s a redo of Michael Wolff’s book. Very similar themes.” But Cuomo pointed out that the commonalities between “Fire and Fury,” “Unhinged” and “Fear” actually buttress the points of all three books…

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 5, 2018: 12:12 AM ET