The Week In Recommendations 3.19.25
Easy breakfasts, dressing for spring, and Halle Butler's "Banal Nightmare."
This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcast was about the Meghan Markle Sussex ~discourse.~ An episode about “Severance” season 2 is coming soon! Rich Text is a reader-supported project.
Civic challenge of the week:
Attend a March recess Town Hall for your members of Congress! You can call their offices and ask if they have any scheduled, and if they don’t, demand that they put one on the calendar.
And if you can’t make a town hall, at the risk of sounding like a broken record… Call! Your! Reps! and register your horrors at — looks around — everything???
Claire has been reading… 📖
“Banal Nightmare” by Halle Butler, which I finally finished this week. I’ll give it to you straight: It does exactly what it says on the tin. So I can hardly blame Butler for exacerbating my feelings, in recent weeks, of living amidst a banal nightmare. The novel follows Moddie, an artist and grant writer, who leaves Chicago and returns to the Midwestern college town where she grew up after a devastating breakup. Once there, she reconnects with old friends who still live there and have found work in and around the university, getting swept into their social scene.
It’s an ensemble novel, moving easily among the perspectives of Moddie’s new and old acquaintances and love interests. But one thing is consistent: everyone hates each other, and, deep down, themselves. Couples are fascinated with their contempt and revulsion for each other; old friends cling to deeply rooted grudges or newfound resentments; new friends develop almost instant antipathies. Many of them spend their time alone rapidly cycling through surges of animosity toward everyone around them, whom they blame for all their problems, then acute waves of self-loathing and self-flagellation. The process often culminates in literal screaming and writhing and crying from emotional distress and exhaustion. It reminded me of how I used to tell my therapist that I didn’t know how to resolve this cycle, to accept that other people are flawed and so am I; the prosecution of one side or the other always ran in my head like background noise. Rarely have I seen this captured so upsettingly in print.
The academic- and art-adjacent world in which Moddie finds herself is skewered for its petty politics, the smug clichés with which the women celebrate their own perceived virtues and signal the right progressive politics, and the sexually ravenous piggishness of the men. Most of these people are small-minded and ambitious, self-regarding and dull. In a way, it feels already dated, despite coming out last summer; an overly showy commitment to DEI and feminist values hardly seem like a significant issue facing universities. Then again, the shallowness with which Butler’s characters engage with these questions seems like a bellwether, in another sense, for what lay just ahead.
Butler is such an adept chronicler of the ways modern mores and social structures thwart our ability to connect authentically with others and ourselves that, despite how often I felt physically nauseated reading the book, I have no regrets. Take that endorsement for what you will!
Emma has been reading… 📖
After shaming myself in the newsletter last week, I am pleased to report that I finally finished “Onyx Storm.” I wasn’t as into the third installment of the “Fourth Wing” series at first — the sexual tension isn’t really tension-ing for me when the central couple is so together — but the story really picked up towards the end, and now I am left very much wanting the next book.
Claire has been watching… 📺
“A Real Pain” (2024), Jesse Eisenberg’s dramedy about a mismatched pair of cousins who honor their late grandmother by taking a Holocaust tour of her native Poland. We chose this movie in large part because of its length (90 minutes), but I was also curious to see Kieran Culkin’s Oscar-winning performance as the garrulous and emotionally volatile Benji. Believe it or not, it turns out to be quite similar to his loutish manchild role in “Succession” – no complaints, he’s good at playing this character, but it didn’t exactly display range. Jesse Eisenberg, too, plays a classic Eisenberg character: uptight and anxious, fidgety and repressed.
The cousins, once close, have drifted apart. This requires no real explanation, given how different they are and how little they seem to enjoy each other’s company. Then there’s the fact that David (Eisenberg) is married and has a small child in NYC but Benji, who is unemployed and at loose ends, expects David to make the effort to come visit him. Culkin sells Benji’s effortless charisma, but the character’s tendency to immediately lash out at people as soon as his charm has put them at ease made it difficult for me to understand the almost endless warmth offered to him by David and their companions on the guided tour. It turns out, of course, that the root of all this is pain – generational and personal trauma. For me, though, the film didn’t really come together as a story so much as an extended vignette, a portrait of a damaged relationship between two very different people.
Emma has been watching… 📺
People have been talking about the newly-minted Netflix version “Temptation Island,” so obviously I had to start watching. And it is MESSY as hell. (We’re planning to do an eventual bonus episode on the season over on Love To See It!) Unsurprisingly, I’ve already made a handful of new mortal enemies… all men. Truly, the men are not okay and they must be stopped. I truly hope almost all of these couples break up by the end. However, I was delighted to see Mia from “FBoy Island” back on my screen. (Note to Netflix: Please bring “FBoy Island” back from the dead next.)
Also… I watched the “Severance” finale screener. (!!!!!!) I (of course) can’t say anything spoiler-y, but I truly can’t wait to discuss this season. I have so many thoughts and feelings. Big feelings!!!
Claire has been listening to… 🎧
Podcasts that are helping me process everything that’s happening right now!
Moira Donegan and Adrian Daub’s podcast In Bed With the Right put out a great episode on the conservative evangelical conception of masculinity, and how far it has drifted from the Biblical teachings of Jesus (who urged, when you get down to it, some quite traditionally feminine and maternal virtues). Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez explains how this evolution has come about, as well as digging into the weird new line evangelicals are pushing about empathy being bad.
The Citations Needed podcast put out a short episode in response to Palestinian student and protester Mahmoud Khalil’s unjustified detention, which helped me process and contextualize how we got here and how universities and liberal institutions have been complicit.
Emma has been listening to… 🎧
AD of “Love Is Blind” fame launched a podcast, “What’s The Reality?” in which she does long form interviews with other “Love Is Blind” alums. So obviously I had to listen to it! I started with her conversation with LIB DC’s Marissa George and Alex Byrd. The podcast is produced by Kinetic Content, the production company behind “Love Is Blind” and “Married At First Sight,” so I was interested in how much room they would give AD and the other alums to say things that might challenge the narrative we saw on the show. So far, I’m impressed! AD is a great host, and the episode I listened to includes some really candid observations about diversity on the show and what it was like for AD to be one half of the only Black couple on her season. They also *went in* on Ben and Devin’s mealy-mouthed political convictions, which was extremely satisfying. Obviously I’m sure there are limitations to what AD and her guests will say, but it’s not a bad thing to have another voice — a WOC — in the mix of the post-show press rounds!
Claire has been buying… 🛍️
I’ve still been cutting back on my spending, but I did break my shopping fast to restock some of my beauty essentials – The Ordinary Niacinamide and Zinc serum, Merit Brow 1980, Kosas Cloud Set Baked Setting & Smoothing Powder, and Supergoop! Mineral Mattescreen.
After hearing the news that Trump plans to put 200% tariffs on European wine and liquor (Editor’s note: This is really adding insult to injury -Emma), I’ve also been looking into stocking up on a case or two from my local wine shop, since I normally buy one bottle at a time. First, however, I have to sample all the options!
Emma has been buying… 🛍️
The perfect butter yellow linen button-up from GAP. I am willing spring sunshine into existence with this sunny, breezy shirt. Truly the only thing allowing me to feel semi-sane these days is the random breakthrough sunny days where the temperature hits the high 50s. The world feels so dark right now, that I’m desperate for any bit of light… I guess even in my wardrobe.
Also, a handful of my favorite buttery-soft, oversized Anine Bing t-shirts went on sale on Revolve. I ended up ordering this letterman one, which I can’t wait to wear all spring and summer long.
Claire has been making… 🧶
A favorite spring-time breakfast – whole-grain toast spread thickly with full-fat Greek yogurt, sprinkled with berries, and drizzled with honey. It always makes me feel like I’m grabbing a quick breakfast at an expensive cafe, but it takes 30 seconds to make.
Emma has been making… 🧶
Adam has gotten really into breakfast granola bowls, so I’ve been pilfering his good granola to make my own. Key ingredients: Greek yogurt, granola, Trader Joe’s peanut butter with honey, and whatever fruit we have in the fridge. Today I sprinkled a bunch of pomegranate seeds on top. Delish!
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Further fostering my parasocial relationship with y’all by running out of my niacinamide from the ordinary at the same time as Claire LMAO
I hope that you receive compensation in some way for the shopping links you post (yes I know that your choices are independent of that)The amount of Quince and Hill House etc. etc…in my closet 🥰