How I passed the time in 2024
Essays, books, albums, & reviews
Welcome to another end-of-year link post. This blog is about “the outdoors, the media I consume, and life.” Here is some of the best media I’ve consumed this year. In creating this post, the selections naturally formed into pairs. I hope you enjoy, and as always, thanks for spending some of your time with me.
Essays/Stories
Barn Burning by William Faulkner (1938) & Haruki Murakami (1992).
These two short stories share the same name but haunt the reader in different ways. Both authors make use of what is left unsaid as only masters can.
I’m not much of a fan of Murakami, but in this instance he excels. Read Faulkner’s first, then Murakami’s. Then, maybe read Murakami’s again.
Justification for an Elitist Attitude by Mark Twight (2000) and Anton Krupicka’s Southwest Summits Tour (2024)
Mark Twight’s screed in favor of his douchebag attitude toward climbing is among the best outdoors writing you’ll ever read. It is the ultimate trip report in my preferred style: telling what you did, but also telling why you did it. In Mark’s case, he wrote this essay because he really is that much better than you: “I'm an elitist prick and I think posers have polluted mountaineering,” he declares at the start of the essay. He proceeds to outline what he thinks mountaineering is, and should be, by describing his climb of the Slovak Direct on Denali in one 60-hour push with Steve House and Scott Backes, one of the great achievements in the alpine of all time.
Anton Krupicka’s description of “how he spent his March” this year is hardo, but packaged in a less elitist way, if I may use my own Hardo-Normie scale. This epic trip report combines gravel biking, climbing, and philosophy, along with beautiful photography, packaged neatly in an aspirational essay. Anton’s Dostoyevskian observation that “The reality is that constraints—some kind of chosen ground rules—are exactly what imbue meaning. Having zero restrictions—what is often mistakenly characterized as true freedom—is the same as having no choices” keeps me coming back to this essay.
Books
Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy & Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.
Blood Meridian is one of the most compelling pieces of writing I’ve ever read. The technical quality of the writing is stunning. I struggle to imagine these words coming out of a single human brain. As framed by a friend in discussing the book, “every sentence is a poem.” A horrible, bleak, violent poem, but a poem nonetheless. This book sent me on a Western reading spree, influencing my thinking and writing for the rest of the year. I want to buy a horse.
Blood Meridian has to be the Great American Novel… which is why I picked up Moby-Dick immediately after. While it spoke to me less than Blood Meridian, I am glad to have tackled this piece of the canon. Once you’ve read it, you notice its influence everywhere, Cormac McCarthy especially. In an article about McCarthy, his friend wrote about the two of them opening up Moby-Dick to random passages: “Cormac will look up and remark, ‘Where did that come from? How did he think to say, ‘it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote?’’ I cannot recollect another writer who elicits this kind of amazed response.” I would say the say about McCarthy.
Music
Tigers Blood by Waxahatchee and Manning Fireworks by MJ Lenderman
MJ Lenderman and Waxahatchee are both signed to Anti Records, the same label as last year’s favorite Wednesday. Anti has had a great two years between these three acts. Americana is IN! Interestingly, I saw Waxahatchee open up for Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit at Red Rocks a few years ago, and I know Wednesday (for whom MJ Lenderman was guitarist) opened up for Jason for a tour leg a couple years back. It’s cool to see that connection bear fruit in their collaborations this year.
MJ’s effort is goofy but full of memorable couplets and, hiding beneath the early Green Day-esque lines about drunk driving, Catholicism, and playing Guitar Hero, there exists some depth.
Highlights: Wristwatch, She’s Leaving You.
Waxahatchee’s album, which features MJ on a couple of songs, is flat-out beautiful. Lines like “You can take it pretty far on a prayer that’s pale and synthetic, Bending my crowbar with tension, it’s telekinetic, A paradox poetic, you get choked-up, reading the classics” have kept me yelling the lyrics to myself in the car all year.
Highlights: Right Back to It, Crowbar.
BRAT and Brat but it’s completely different but also still brat by Charli xcx
I could overintellectualize this, but I’ll withstand the temptation. This album, and the remixed album, rock. In a year where I listened to a lot of girl rock, this album’s cultural impact is undeniable. Mean girls featuring Julian Casablancas rivals his collaboration with Daft Punk in Instant Crush. I’m bumping that.
Highlights: 360, Von Dutch, 365, Guess feat. Billie Eilish, Mean girls feat. Julian Casablancas.
Passing Time Year in Review
This marks the 26th post on the blog this year. I met and exceeded my goal to publish twice a month.
Unique to this year, I met up with readers for the first time. In chronological order, I met with Rish in Austin, Anthony and David in Boulder, and Dan in New York City. Each meetup went far better than I could have hoped as far as “meeting up with strangers from the internet” goes, but perhaps that is because, having already exchanged ideas with these people over many texts, comment threads, and emails, it wasn’t really meeting them for the first time. As David quoted in one of my first (online) interactions with him, “I feel like I’m in conversation with a friend — what Proust described as ‘that fruitful miracle of communication in the midst of solitude.’”
If you’re ever in the Front Range of Colorado, readers, feel free to reach out! As I’ve written before, there is nothing more valuable you can do in your everyday life than make new friends!
Briefly taking some posts from the top:
My most popular post was a fact-check of the All-In Podcast. While Jason has acknowledged the error via Twitter and Notes, there has not been a correction from the show itself or Chamath, the one who made the mistake.
Learning Not to Trust the All-In Podcast in Ten Minutes
The most personally important post of this year was Mourning a Dam to Love a River, a story of how Hurricane Michael destroyed the Kapps Mill Dam in North Carolina. I worked on this story, interviewing locals, researching, and turning over my own feelings, for more than three years before deciding it was time to release it into the world.
Mourning a Dam to Love a River
The post that generated the most interesting discussions was Valuable, but not productive, about consulting and finance as black holes of human capital. See the discussion in the comments of the post or on r/consulting or r/slatestarcodex.
Valuable, but not productive
My posts have been read 70,000 times by more than 50,000 unique people this year. Around 650 of you have decided my blog is worth some amount of your time by allowing me into your inbox. As always, thanks for spending some of your time with me. I look forward to sharing how I spend my time next year.
Last year’s review:
It was fun to meet in person and I’m looking forward to the next one — with all our toes in working order.
I’ve been thinking about taste recently (yes, in part prompted by Scott Alexander’s piece) as self-awareness about what gives us pleasure. But I’m also realizing that clearly defined taste can also act as a kind of anti-curiosity filter. Like I just assume that I’ll dislike Carli xcx as a kind of mindless, British, bubblegum pop. I genuinely dislike most of the music made by Beyonce and Taylor Swift and assumed it’s in the same category. But maybe I’m wrong.
I just downloaded the original and remix albums to my phone and about to take them for a spin on my bike … so I’ll find out soon. :)
Thankful for your 26 pieces this year and thankful to call you a friend!
Gonna look into that Murakami piece as someone who has loved Murakami so far.. but also curious why you don’t love his work.