Dorian Lynskey

I love that story. “Yeah OK. Plan B. You can play, er, a folksinger called, er, Bobby. Don’t suppose you’ve got any new songs?”

I love it when a blurb reads like a prepared hostage statement. “My captors are… treating me… well”

I find it fucking insane that in conflicts like Israel and Palestine partisans for either side will try and argue about like archeological findings as though you should think “oh well they really were/weren’t there 2000 years ago, guess you’re right and wanting to kill them is fine”

"Joe Biden refused to grasp the nettle and continue the US war in Afghanistan, and also he was doing the genocide in Palestine" is a buck ass wild set of takes to hold.

How the goddamned fuck is the World Cup still happening in the US

Ha ha

Kind of interesting how this Oscar season went from “Timothée Chalamet Is The Odds-on Favorite” to “Why Hasn’t Timothée Chalamet Been Beaten Within an Inch of His Life?”

I can see how you could read it that way. I think he’s describing something real without endorsing it

??

I read it as him saying that this is a misguided and fruitless symptom of impotence

I don’t think he’s endorsing that

My narcotic journey has reached the stage where if I have two strong coffees too close together I feel slightly mad

"The Epstein Class" is now a pretty obvious antisemitic dog whistle, even if people who started using this term certainly didn't mean it that way.

So many. Most of them are nice

No

A corner of north London where food has become a battleground in the Israel-Gaza war | Jonathan Liew A smashed window here, a provocative sticker there. In an age when protest feels increasingly meaningless, it’s no wonder that acts of petty symbolism are on the rise, says Guardian columnist Jonathan...

the war at home

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Many nonfiction book reviews are perversely resistant to telling the reader whether the book is good or not. I always try to give some indication

It’s a brilliantly made buzzkill

Can’t rival that

That’s why it’s fascinating when someone is a dick even in that setting

I don’t weather discomfort well so it’s painful to have a nasty experience even it makes for an entertaining piece in the end

Yeah that’s part of it. Makes sense to give an hour to lovely chat on Table Manners rather than to a print journalist, annoying though that is for me

Damon Albarn used to be the classic example of that dissonance although last time I interviewed him he was fine

Ha not them. It’s actually a very short list and at least two of them were just having a bad day and are usually all right

Oh that surprises me

Interviewees sometimes ask who the worst person I’ve interviewed is. Last time I answered, it turned out it was one of their good friends, which required some backtracking. I should have played safe and said Morrissey

I should say that at least 90% of people I’ve interviewed have been pleasant but I do think the audio format is a powerful additional incentive to come across as nice

I’m listening to a lot of podcast interviews with actors. Having done hundreds of print interviews, I think the knowledge that they’ll be heard by the public makes them a lot more agreeable. It’s a kind of performance to an audience, not just the interviewer, so they want to be charming

I think a good critic will give the reader a sense of whether or not this is for them. I’ve read rave reviews of Sirat but none claims that it’s a feelgood smash for all the family. And the same critics will often praise mainstream movies. But criticism has to be more than a consumer guide

Oh I’m not recommending it to you. Absolutely not. That’s just an objective description. I came out somewhat depressed. You would hate it for exactly the reasons you think you’d hate it