Matthew Clayfield

I wrote another thing. Learn how I spent New Year's Eve and also came to be part-owner of a camel. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

Eerily close, the dead Notes on Shimla, Delhi, Bondi, and James Joyce

Latest piece is up. More of a grab-bag than usual. Merry Christmas.

Mariana Enriquez: Mastering the Macabre

This is a great interview. In the face of extreme Australian ignorance and reticence about discussing anything confronting—you can tell by the interviewer's curt use of "interesting" every time she's scared—Enriquez keeps assuming her listeners are adults. pca.st/episode/46dc...

Be warned. This one is long. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

Does Christopher Hitchens still matter? Two from the archives on the anniversary of his death

Fourteen years ago today. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

Has anyone else pointed out that JAY KELLY is basically just STARDUST MEMORIES?

High school never ends. Wild to see it not ending in the wild, though.

It does withhold information, but only from Carol. We actually know slightly more than she does through most of the season's episodes—but only just. The one POV we never get to share is that of the World.

I'm not sure about you, but for me the thing reads as a long, glorious bitch about AI.

This warms the cockles of my cold, reptilian heart.

Sitting on the train listening to two women hate read the synopsis of an old school friend’s book. This is the true miracle of publishing. The envy. The bitterness. The secret purchase later and the denial they did it until one day they break down crying cause they always wanted to write a book.

Today we launch a new @empirepoduk.bsky.social mini-series to mark the beginning of the Ashes:

A FOREIGN FIELD:
THE HISTORY OF COLONIAL CRICKET

With Tim Wigmore @timwig
Author of Test Cricket: A History
Winner of this year's William Hill Sports Book of the Year
share.google/rukQ1zLzMQT8...

Ernest Hemingway would not have liked you With additional notes on Ken Burns, Modi, Chandigarh, and Mumbai

open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

To Kheerganga and back A postcard from the Parvati Valley

On my recent trek into the Himalayas. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

The worst spokesman for a Ken Burns film is Ken Burns. He's always spoken in platitudes and bromides, but now that he's plugging his Revolution film he's also spouting straight-up nonsense. I just heard him call it the most important event since the birth of Christ. Come on, man.

Here's my angry, hopeful, self-loathing little postcard from last week's Ubud Writers & Readers Festival. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

A wild colonial boy Adam Lindsay Gordon in Mount Gambier and Port MacDonnell

I set out to write something short about Adam Lindsay Gordon. Things didn't work out that way. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

A wild colonial boy Adam Lindsay Gordon in Mount Gambier and Port MacDonnell

I set out to write something short about Adam Lindsay Gordon. Things didn't work out that way. open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

"Police focus on ladder placed against the side of the Louvre"

I spend a year plotting a mystery novel and then this happens.

Just went through the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival program and drew up my four-day plan of attack. As always, I’m making an effort to avoid speakers I could see elsewhere and trying to focus on local writers. I’m hoping to walk away having had my horizons expanded a little.

Just went through the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival program and drew up my four-day plan of attack. As always, I’m making an effort to avoid speakers I could see elsewhere and trying to focus on local writers. I’m hoping to walk away having had my horizons expanded a little.

Tim Curry Isn’t Done Yet

This is at once both lovely and rather sad. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/b...

Terrific!

Ryan Ruby, Post-American Blues — Sidecar On Thomas Pynchon.

"Usually, the term [post-American] is used to refer to the decline of American influence abroad, but [Pynchon] clearly has something more domestic in mind: a change in the national character resulting from the cancellation of the twentieth century he grew up in..." newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

Close Attention - Dissent Magazine An interview with Frederick Wiseman.

"The best book I ever read about film editing is the correspondence between George Sand and Flaubert. Because when they're writing about writing, I think they're writing about film editing." www.dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...

Thank you!

I'm not sure what is meant by "leaving publishing". As in, no longer working in publishing, no longer trying to get published by mainstream houses, no longer trying to get published at all, no longer writing at all?

Following pieces on M*A*S*H and CHEERS, I'm capping off my unofficial trilogy about classic sitcoms with one on FRASIER.

As an aside, I probably wouldn’t advise watching thirty-three seasons of television in quick succession. It's bad for you.

open.substack.com/pub/matthewc...

"I read long systems novels. I am morally superior to you."

Eternally bitter Murakami fans?