LONDON PSYCHO-GEOGRAPHY (& OTHER ACTIVITIES)
Did I have to let it linger?
From the summer of 2012 to the summer of 2015, while I was working at the London Review of Books, I lived beside Primrose Hill in North London. I would often walk up to the spot pictured above, sometimes bringing friends, grapes, a bottle of some sort, tumblers, cigarettes. Once in the early morning my friends and I were ascending the hill to chase the night, we heard some hippies playing guitar and singing along. “Must be Dylan they’re singing,” I figured. But no, as we got closer, I made it out that the hippies were actually singing “Linger” by the Cranberries. The music of the 1990s was now as far away as the music of the 1960s and 1970s was from the 1990s. We hung out with the young hippies, who turned out to be Greek and were good fun. In any case, I have a review out today in the New York Times of a novel set largely between Primrose Hill and Chalk Farm. Other recent artifacts include a piece on the Hunter Biden biopic and a podcast discussion on Noah Baumbach’s White Noise with my old friend Nic Rapold. (His podcast is terrific and you should subscribe.) Pieces on Christopher Lasch, John le Carré, and Michael Mann are in the can at various publications. And pieces on Cookie Mueller, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, the Wu-Tang Clan, and USA v. Bertelsmann, which yesterday was decided in favor of USA (pending appeal), are in progress. After all this work is brought to a conclusion—an inevitability with magazine pieces, which either close or are killed—there will be hyperactivity in this space, as I tend to writing about everything I haven’t got round to writing about all year. Oh, I’ve also written the preface to Dimes Square & Other Plays by Matthew Gasda, which will be published in the spring. This weekend in the West Village, I will be performing in two shows of his play Berlin Story, on Friday and Sunday. Tickets are available here, and I encourage you to use the code “wealthcommon” for a discount. I leave you with this scene of George Smiley and Roy Bland walking on Primrose Hill.