Tag: books

Best of 2024: Books

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

I’m a bit ashamed at how little I’ve read this year — just 24 books — though at least that’s better than last year’s pitiful 15. Here are the best — none of which were published this year, interestingly.

Yellowface, by R.F. Kuang

In my mid-year roundup I said this was “brilliantly funny, very gripping, and almost Nabokovian in its use of a detestable narrator”. I stand by that — and it’s still on my mind almost a year after I read it.

Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell

I previously said this “perfectly captures a very specific time of life, and is full of drop-dead gorgeous lines that permanently change the way you think”. A good reminder, for me, to always read the back catalogue of authors you love!

Cinema Speculation, by Quentin Tarantino

Back in May I said I “liked, but didn’t love” this. But the more I think about it, the more I like it. Tarantino is, unsurprisingly, an encyclopedia of film knowledge. I learnt a lot reading this — about old movies, yes, but also about Tarantino and why his films are the way they are. I’ve gained a lot of new appreciation for them from this book; that alone makes it worth reading.

On The Road, by Jack Kerouac

This is truly special. It’s both intimate and sweeping, propulsive and ponderous — I really adored it. I read “The Original Scroll”, which is uncensored and unanonymised, and I’m quite glad I did: I think the realism added to the magic.

Super-Infinite, by Katherine Rundell

I read this after enjoying Rundell’s appearance on Conversations With Tyler, despite it not seeming particularly up my street. But it’s great! I learnt a ton about John Donne, of whom I was almost entirely ignorant, who appears to have been both very funny and very … modern.

I also very much enjoyed A State of Fear, about the brutal years of Argentina’s “Dirty War” — which was in fact just a brutal military junta where it was very normal for random people to be abducted off the streets of Buenos Aires and murdered. Reading this in Buenos Aires was a trip — another win for Eland publishers. I did not enjoy the other Argentina-related book I read though, In Patagonia, which I found more than a bit overrated.

My other big trip this year was to India, prompting me to read the fun and interesting Loot (about Tipu Sultan) and The Anarchy (about the East India Company). I read Ways of Seeing in India too — interesting enough but didn’t shake me to my core or anything.

I also read a bunch of books about the history of the panorama/immersive art for an essay I never got round to writing (but might do next year): Panoramania was my favourite, but The Panorama, American Sublime and Deceptions and Illusions are all worth a skim too.

Quite a lot of sci-fi/fantasy this year, too. I read The Three Body Problem and its sequels The Dark Forest and Death’s End, all of which have interesting stories and ideas but pretty poor prose. I can’t really remember what happened in Rendezvous With Rama — nor The Ministry of Time. And The Poppy War, also by Kuang, sadly failed to reach the heights of Yellowface. The Secret History of Twin Peaks is very silly but a nice way to prolong my enjoyment of the show.

Other fiction included Circe (very good, particularly as an audiobook), I’m A Fan (decent but too didactic), and the oldest book I read this year, Rebecca (which feels pretty fresh given its age!).

Looking at my picks from last year: The Remains of the Day and Small Things Like These have stuck with me; the others not so much.

Bangalore/Hampi/Mysore, August 2024

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

I spent a few weeks in India last month; here are some thoughts and tips. Huge thanks to Sam Mendelsohn for his extensive tips and recommendations; if you’re going to India anytime soon his blog is an absolute must.

Specific details on each city below, but some general observations first:

  • I enjoyed this trip, but I enjoyed it less than my other two trips to India (Golden Triangle and Mumbai). I think some of that is that India is increasingly less novel to me, but I also think the south (at least these parts of it) is just less interesting to me than the north. (I have the obvious bias here of being ancestrally from North India, though.)
  • I was a little apprehensive about visiting during monsoon season, but it was totally fine. Some showers — especially in Bekal, where we ended up — but they’re generally over very quickly. The heat and humidity was a bit of a problem, especially in Hampi and Bekal, but it was never oppressively bad (and certainly better than it would have been in April/May).
  • The food down here is really good. I’ve never been a particularly big fan of dosas when I’ve had them in the UK; but in India they were excellent. Lots of things I’d never tried before, too (e.g. coconut chutney); almost all were great. It’s underrated just how different the food is from the north (though you can still get excellent northern dishes, too).

Bangalore

I was pretty surprised by Bangalore — it felt much more different to Delhi and Mumbai than I expected. I can’t quite put my finger on why: some of it is the greenery, but I think mostly it was the wealth that surprised me. Indiranagar and Church Street, in particular, felt very not-Indian; instead closer to something like Jordan or even the UK. The tech money is very visceral, though it also makes the city less interesting to visit, IMO.

Speaking of Church Street, I really enjoyed Blossom Book House, a chaotic labyrinth with a phenomenal selection. I would never have expected to find one of the world’s very best bookshops in Bangalore, but this is absolutely up there with The Strand, Daunt, Mast etc. as one of my favourites, anywhere.

The Museum of Art and Photography, a relatively new place, was very good, and features some of the best use of augmented reality I’ve seen in any museum, anywhere. Having Bloomberg Connects codes on every single exhibit was really impressive.

The flower market was my other highlight, much more expansive and active than I expected. It’s also a very interesting insight into what an economy with very low wages gets you: an astonishing number of people worked there, hand-threading garlands that are then sold by the metre and discarded after a few days. The surrounding ‘normal’ market wasn’t particularly interesting, though, and much worse than e.g. Chandi Chowk.

Karavalli was an exceptional restaurant, and though expensive by Indian standards it’s still cheap. Tons of hyper-regional stuff I’d never tried before (and expect I will never try again); the bebinka desert was particularly excellent. It’s a shame that they don’t do any sort of tasting menu though (and I did ask if they could) — I would have liked to try much more than we did. If you can go with a group, that’s obviously preferable, though there was a solo diner at the table next to us who seemed to be having a great time.

I was pretty underwhelmed by the Botanical Gardens, though we went in-between flower shows, which probably didn’t help. Worth visiting the area though so you can have lunch at MTR, which was a fun (and tasty) experience.

We stayed at the Adarsh Hamilton Hotel, which was great for the price (good location, decent breakfast). Then we flew from Bangalore to Vidyanagar (cheap and easy) and got a taxi from there to Hampi/Hospet (also cheap and easy; we didn’t have to prebook).

Hampi

Hampi is an interesting place, and I think it’s worth visiting, though I couldn’t help negatively comparing it to the sites of the north. It’s all good and impressive, but it’s samey and there weren’t many things that truly blew me away (in the way that e.g. the doorways in Jaipur’s City Palace or the marble windows in Fatehpur Sikri did). It’s not a slam-dunk must-visit, but if you’re nearish and interested in history, you’ll probably enjoy it. Perhaps the best reason for going is that it’ll force you to learn about the Vijayanagara Empire, which I’d never heard of but was once very important!

We stayed in Hosapete, which was fine; our hotel (Malligi Hotel) was nice enough and had two restaurants, which saved us bothering to go out in the evening. We did go to Naivedyam for lunch one day, which was pretty good.

I mostly followed Sam Mendelohn’s suggested itinerary, which worked well. On both days we hired an auto for the whole day; this was well worth it. My number one recommendation is probably to get the book Hampi Vijayanagara by John M Fritz and George Michell. Bring it with you (or get it on your phone) and read the relevant sections as you’re in each place. Much more useful and interesting than the guides, who don’t actually know very much (but are useful for photoshoots).

Day 1: Auto to the far end of Hampi Bazaar. Walk along the river, end up at Vittala Temple (which is pretty and expansive). Looped back round, saw the Achyutaraya Temple (which was empty aside from us) and the big nandi. Then we met our driver, who took us across the bazaar to the Virupaksha Temple (full of monkeys, and the stepwell behind it is pretty). By this point it was around lunchtime and we were tired, so we went back to the hotel to rest. That evening, our auto driver collected us again and took us to the Malyavanta Raghunatha Temple for sunset. We didn’t actually get to see the sunset because a jobsworth guard kicked everyone off the viewing point before the sun set, but the views were still nice and the temple is peaceful with lots of very fun monkeys to observe.

Day 2: We focused on the “royal enclosure“. We didn’t really control our itinerary here, our driver just took us from point to point — which was actually quite nice for reducing the cognitive burden of planning. I preferred this part of Hampi; the Islamic influence improves the architecture quite a lot. I enjoyed the Queen’s Baths, the stepwell, the “secret” passage, the Hazara Rama Temple, and the very ornate Lotus Mahal. Also really liked the massive Narasimha and Kadalekalu Ganesha monoliths. We also went to the museum, which was fine but not particularly good. After all that, we were pretty exhausted, so we just called it a day.

From Hosapete, we then took a sleeper train to Mysore. We booked two berths in a 1A carriage, which was obviously the right decision. We had to share our cabin with two other people, but they were a very nice and polite middle-aged couple who didn’t make any noise, so it was totally fine. The toilets were clean, and the whole journey was much more comfortable than the last Indian sleeper train I took — at least part of which is probably down to taking the unbeatable combo of melatonin and diphenhydramine just as I boarded. I highly recommend sleeper trains; it makes the best use of your limited travel time and saves you a night’s accomodation, too.

Mysore

This is a really lovely city: just the right amount of chaotic while still feeling very liveable, and with plenty to see and do. Mysore Palace is supposedly the highlight, but I was somewhat underwhelmed: it’s pretty, don’t get me wrong, but the visiting experience is a bit like being shepherded through a Disneyland queue. I couldn’t find anywhere to hire a guide, which I think detracted from the experience a lot. We went back to see the palace and gardens lit up at night; that was pretty and the live music was fun. Nearby is the Jagan Mohan Palace art gallery: the ground floor is excellent; the rest is skippable IMO.

Instead, my highlight was Tipu Sultan’s Summer Palace in nearby Srirangapatna (you can book a taxi there, though we had to book a round-trip). This place is stunning — pictures don’t do it justice — and probably my highlight of the whole trip. The decoration is absurdly intricate and well-preserved, with an absolute ton packed into a really tiny space. The paintings mocking the British are particularly excellent. The nearby Gumbaz, where Tipu is buried, is also great. I think all of this was enhanced by reading Tania James’ Loot, a beautifully written novel about Tipu’s Tiger and colonialism, while in Mysore.

Two other unexpected highlights were the Sand Sculpture Museum and the Shell Museum, both conveniently near our hotel (the Windflower, which was lovely). Each is dedicated to a different, slightly mad, artist who has decided to pursue a niche craft to excellence: sand sculptures and shell sculptures respectively. The actual art in each isn’t exactly brilliant; it’s certainly not going to emotionally move you. But it is all incredibly impressive, and as testaments to the power of pursuing your passions they’re both really inspiring (as cheesy as that sounds). They’re across the road from each other and cost next-to-nothing to visit; you should go.

Shopping-wise, I was glad to get a selection of Mysore Pak from Guru Sweet Mart, though it’s very sweet, and the Cauvery Government Store has some cool stuff (though it’s very expensive and the checkout process is idiotically convoluted). As for food, I am eternally grateful to Sam for his recommendation of the Old Original Hotel Vinayaka Mylari, which has just moved into larger and fancier new premises. The Mylari dosa here is incredible and, at 55 rupees per dosa (with coconut chutney), possibly the best value food I’ve ever had. There is no menu or bill, they just tally up how many dosas you’ve had at the end and cross-reference it against this excellent wall-chart:

Bekal

There is not much to say about Bekal as we very intentionally did absolutely nothing while there. The drive from Mysore to Bekal, through the mountains and rainforests, was very fun (though at times a bit terrifying). We stayed at the Taj Bekal, which is a beautiful hotel with excellent (expensive) food, but iffy service. A great place to read your book in a pool, though, which is the best activity anyone could ever ask for.

2024 Culture Roundup (so far)

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

Here’s a quick rundown of everything I’ve seen/read that’s worth talking about so far this year.

GIGS

Fortuitous timing meant that I saw Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo one week after each other, providing an excellent opportunity to compare the two superstars of our age.

Swift, who I saw first, certainly offers value for money, especially at Parisian prices. Her three hour show cycles through all the hits (and makes you realise just how many she’s got). And a very flashy lighting setup, coupled with computer-controlled flashing wristbands on every audience member and a stage floor that doubles up as a screen of its own, certainly delivers a sensory overload.

But despite the glamour, the whole thing felt oddly unemotional and detached. Some of that comes from Swift’s over-reliance on screens, with little-to-no physical staging throughout the entire show, and a surprisingly small group of dancers who struggle to fill such a massive stage. Those staging decisions make the show feel intangible and distant. Another problem is that the show is, surprisingly, quite unpolished: many of the on-screen visuals use poor quality CGI, and the costume-change breaks are much too long and poorly executed, occurring after a song has finished instead of (as is more often the case) during an outro. Both choices ruin the immersion Swift’s clearly aiming for, taking audiences out of the show and ruining its pacing.

But much of the problem comes from Swift herself, who is so over-polished and tightly scripted that she never feels truly present. There’s very little audience interaction, and even while performing there’s little real emotion — it often feels like she’s just going through the motions. There was only one point where I felt like I saw the real Swift, right at the start of the show. Clearly feeding off the crowd’s adoration, she said “I want to see what happens if I do … this”, before pointing her finger at a section of the crowd, which predictably burst into screams. Beaming, she swept her finger across the arena, the ear-splitting scream moving perfectly in sync. It was the closest thing I’ve ever seen to someone being truly drunk on power, and cemented this idea of Swift-as-otherly-god-figure, as opposed to Swift-as-relatable-human: certainly a spectacle to witness, but not something that makes for a thrilling show.

Contrast, then, with Olivia Rodrigo, a performer overflowing with humanity from the minute she appeared. Throughout a tight, under two hour set, Rodrigo performed each song as if she really, really felt it, bopping around stage and having the time of her life. Watching her felt like watching a real, complicated, funny human being; a perfect fit for her raw and funny songs. And she was a natural performer, too, with a stunning voice and impeccable audience banter. And despite having a considerably smaller budget than Swift, it was much better spent: one sequence, with Rodrigo sitting on a moon that floats out over the crowd, surrounding by glowing stars, provided more memorable imagery than anything in Swift’s three-hour behemoth. A truly five star show.

But despite that, it still wasn’t the best show I’ve seen this year! That honour goes, unexpectedly, to Ustad Noor Bakhsh, for a thrilling performance at the Southbank Centre back in March. The 79 year old benju player from rural Balochistan is a virtuoso in and of himself, playing all sorts of gorgeous compositions; but the true magic came from a largely South Asian crowd with an uncontainable energy. My heart goes out to the poor security guard who unsuccessfully kept trying to stop people from coming to the stage and dancing; but I’m very glad he failed. Bakhsh is playing Glastonbury next month; he’s easily the performer I’m most excited to see.

THEATRE

So far, this has mostly been a year of disappointments. I had high hopes for Machinal, Hadestown, Enemy of the People, Player Kings, and Boys from the Blackstuff; all underwhelmed (especially the latter). Thankfully there was only one truly dire production: Simon Godwin’s abysmal Macbeth, which misleadingly used “site-specific” marketing to disguise a bog standard, dull production, pointlessly staged in a warehouse with awful acoustics and terrible seating. Everyone involved with that should be ashamed of themselves.

That said, a couple of highlights. Port of Entry in Chicago has the best immersive set design I’ve ever seen, bar none, and was an unforgettable and moving production (despite some at-times-ropey storytelling). Yael Farber’s King Lear was wonderful (making up for an underwhelming Branagh production last year), with an incredible cast (Danny Sapani and Clarke Peters in particular) really bringing the text to life. The Portrait of Dorian Gray was a wonderful showcase of how to effectively use cameras and video on stage, and Sarah Snook was superb throughout. And The Hills of California, though lacking the profundity of other Butterworths, was still a thrilling evening.

Other things I saw: The Comeuppance; Nachtland; Double Feature; Collaborator; The Gods The Gods The Gods; The Last Show Before We Die.

ART/EXHIBITIONS

I travelled to Paris in January to see the Rothko retrospective, and I am so glad I did. It was an absolutely stunning exhibition; full of emotion and pain that hit you on a really visceral level. I spent several hours just absorbing it all. It wasn’t perfect — some of the lighting was surprisingly shoddy and Fondation Louis Vuitton is a logistical mess — but it’s definitely an exhibition I’ll never forget.

While in Paris, I also saw Parfums d’Orient at the Institut du Monde Arabe, which was a real gem. Clever use of scent boxes and interactivity made an otherwise hard to exhibit topic come to life, and the curation (which took you through different spaces where scent is used, like the home, the mosque, and the baths) was quite lovely.

And although I’m biased, my dear friend Surya Bowyer’s exhibition Paper Cuts (still on at the Peltz Gallery) was really wonderful — a thoughtfully chosen selection of images of Indians filtered through the colonial-gaze, paired with some gorgeous new commissions and really insightful wall text. Infuriating and beautiful, all at once.

Some duds, of course; most notably UVA Synchronicity which was the clearest example of “shallow Instagram bait” I’ve seen in some time. And Entangled Pasts at the RA had all the potential of a good show, but was let down by a number of stupid curatorial decisions.

GAMES

I finally got round to playing Disco Elysium, which is not quite as good as everyone makes out, but is still really special. Norco, too, was an interesting play. And I liked Botany Manor more than I expected to. Inscryption starts off really strong, but deteriorates annoyingly quickly. Doki Doki Literature Club! is batshit, but it’s free and certainly worth playing. And I’m hopelessly addicted to Hades, despite being quite bad at it.

My standout, though, is not a video game but a cooperative tabletop escape-style game called Threads of Fate. It’s an absolutely genius puzzle game, combining real-life props and diaries with Wikipedia trawling, and all held together by a surprisingly affecting story. It’s so satisfactorily designed, with really thoughtful and tricky puzzles that never make you feel cheated, and gorgeous physical materials. So good, in fact, that as soon as I finished it I went out and bought all of the company’s other games (which you can, and should, do here).

MOVIES

Film is easily the medium where I’ve had the most luck this year; perhaps that’s because it’s also what I’ve most-consumed. Basically all the Oscars entrants were superb. I’m still thinking about Zone of Interest, and Poor Things, The Holdovers and The Iron Claw were all great too.

Of other new releases, Dune: Part Two was stunning (the changes from the book might all be improvements!), particularly in dual-laser IMAX (70mm left something to be desired). Challengers was an absolute riot; that final scene is one of the best things ever committed to film. Perfect Days, Past Lives, How to Have Sex, and Monster were all great too. And I really liked Civil War, which is much more politically interesting than people give it credit for.

I saw a bunch of excellent older releases for the first time, too: Psycho, Cleo from 5 to 7, Paris, Texas, Carrie, The Wicker Man, and Days of Heaven all wildly live up to the hyper, particularly the latter. Hereditary and Four Lions still delighted on rewatch, too. (The Phantom Menace, less so.)

The only “bad” thing I’ve seen was Fungi: Web of Life (a shallow, dull documentary). Plenty of good-not-great flicks, though, including Mad Max 2, La Chimera, Hoard, Galliano: High and Low, Love Lies Bleeding, Evil Does Not Exist, Room 666, The Funhouse, The Searchers, American Fiction, Hoop Dreams, Side by Side, Jodorowsky’s Dune, and The Boy and the Heron.

BOOKS

I’ve not finished nearly as much as I’d have liked; instead I’m midway through a bunch of middling books. 

The two standouts came from authors I’ve previously read and loved: RF Kuang’s Yellowface and David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green. The former is brilliantly funny, very gripping, and almost Nabokovian in its use of a detestable narrator. The latter perfectly captures a very specific time of life, and is full of drop-dead gorgeous lines that permanently change the way you think.

I also enjoyed the Three Body Problem and its sequels; the writing (in translation) is pretty dire but the story and ideas are interesting. Circe was good, too. And I liked, but didn’t love, Cinema Speculation, Rendezvous with Rama, I’m A Fan, The Secret History of Twin Peaks, and Rebecca.

Best of 2023: Books

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

I only read 15 books last year; some of them were quite good though.

Arabia: Through The Looking Glass; Jonathan Raban

Eland’s a very underrated publisher, resurfacing books you’d never otherwise find but are still well worth reading. This is one example: a lovely time capsule of the Middle East of 50 years ago, with plenty of lessons for today too.

The Remains of the Day; Kazuo Ishiguro

Probably my favourite of Ishiguro’s now — a slow burner but, if you bear with it, a brutally bleak critique of mid-century Britain.

Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality; David Edmonds

The only book from this year to make my favourites. A pacy book about a very important thinker, with a wealth of personal anecdotes that help you really understand Parfit’s character — and how that influenced his (and by proxy your) ideas.

Small Things Like These; Claire Keegan

It’s incredible how much power Keegan manages to cram into such a short book. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so moved, so quickly.

Honourable mentions: Devil In The White City, The Maniac, The English Understand Wool, Our Wives Under The Sea, This Is Not America, Chip War, Biography of X, Trust, The Alignment Problem, Babel, The Glass Hotel

Some good things, January-June 2023

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

Theatre etc.

My highlight so far this year is probably A Morte do Corvo, a Punchdrunk-inspired immersive production in Lisbon. I’ve been fortunate with a range of good immersive experiences: Phantom Peak, in London, was very silly but very fun; Heresy: 1897, in New York was a brilliantly difficult immersive escape room (with a coherent plot!); Saw: Escape Experience is too easy but has excellent production value; and The Burnt City continues to be excellent (though I think its impending closure is for the best, it is time for something new). The Grim, meanwhile, was a very unimpressive and somewhat repugnant immersive production.

On the conventional theatre front, I very much enjoyed Phaedra at the National Theatre. (Simon Stone is probably my favourite director today.) The Almeida’s Romeo and Juliet — currently playing! — was also very good. And I saw some pleasant, if not particularly memorable, other shows: The Return of Benjamin Lay, The Motive and the Cue, Women Beware The Devil and Medea. I’m excited for the upcoming theatre season, which looks quite a lot better.

There were two very different magic shows in London: Derren Brown’s Showman, which was very good but not his best; and Penn & Teller, which was fine but a little lacklustre.

Also some good dance productions: Creature by Akram Khan was quite nice but Woolf Works was stupendous. Sadly the other Wayne McGregor I saw, Untitled, was not very good. On the opera front, Akhnaten was spectacular.

Books

Nothing so far has truly blown me away. Small Things Like These came closest — it’s heartbreaking — and The Glass Hotel was also very good. Babel, Trust, and the Biography of X are all also good, but not groundbreaking. On the non-fiction side, Chip War, Parfit and The Alignment Problem are all pretty good but none are essential (though the former might be, depending on your semiconductor knowledge).

Art

Again, a rather mediocre six months. The big shows — Ai Weiwei and Cezanne in London, Yayoi Kusama and Georgia O’Keefe in NYC — were all just fine. Souls Grown Deep Like The Rivers was rather good, as was Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Tate Britain. But my highlight has to be the permanent collection at the excellent National Gallery in DC — the Rothko/Newman rooms in particular are breathtaking.

Gigs

Four Tet’s Squidsoup show was incredible — just absolutely stunning, with a gorgeous set list and genius 360-degree sound system. Rival Consoles also put on an amazing show at the Barbican — he is incredible at taking you on a lengthy journey through noise. And I’ve already written about Jamie XX’s very fun and eclectic set at Printworks.

The biggest show I went to was Beyoncé’s, having bought a last minute ticket. She was very good with a technically impressive production, though the set was designed without viewing angles being taken into consideration (a pet peeve of mine). And I continue to think she’s a bit overrated — reviews called this the most impressive arena tour ever, but I personally think Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Ball topped it over a decade ago. (Also Beyoncé uses a teleprompter, which is a bit embarrassing.) Still, I had a lot of fun despite not really being a Beyoncé fan, so credit where it’s due.

Movies

Probably the medium where I’ve had the most luck this year. I’ve been watching lots of fantastic older movies: In the Mood for Love, Hiroshima Mon Amour and Casablanca all blew me away. Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire baffled me in a very pleasing way. La Dolce Vita, Vertigo and The Seventh Seal didn’t quite connect with me, but are impressive nonetheless. When Harry Met Sally, Scream, and Legally Blonde are all a lot of fun. Some recent-ish gems, too: Ford vs. Ferrari (which I watched just before going to Le Mans) is excellent; so is Tripping With Nils Frahm, a gorgeous concert film.

Of new releases, Asteroid City is my highlight so far. I think it’s my favourite Wes Anderson, though I need to rewatch it — it moves very quickly. Across the Spider-Verse was very good, though worse than its predecessor; the same is true for John Wick: Chapter 4. I didn’t really get Decision to Leave, and M3gan didn’t quite live up to its potential.

Some of my favourites, though, were rewatches. Some movies, like Shutter Island and Saw, don’t hold up well on second viewing. Others really shine, though. Raiders of the Lost Ark is still fantastic. And rewatching The Dark Knight in IMAX was exhilarating.

Some good things, May/June 2022

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

Books

In the last couple months I read two of the best books I’ve read in a long time: The Dream Machine, on the very early history of Silicon Valley, and Regenesis, on the agricultural future we need to build. Both highly recommended. I also wrote a list of my five favourite books on Silicon Valley for The Economist, you can read that here.

TV

I finally started For All Mankind and it’s as good as everyone says it is.

Restaurants

40 Maltby Street continues to fire on all cylinders. In Cornwall, I had an unbelievably good strawberry and honeycomb dessert at North Street Kitchen, great spider crab croquettes at Pintxo and a phenomenal tartine at Coombeshead Farm. But the highlight of the last month was my trip to Queens Night Market in New York, which somehow managed to exceed my very high expectations. Nansense‘s chapli kebab smash burger was revelatory.

Theatre

The Father and the Assassin was very good, and revived my interest in India/Pakistan history. Ivo’s Age of Rage was also good, but the weakest of his “epic” trilogy. Hans Kesting was great, as ever, but it was very interesting to watch Édouard Louis play himself in Who Killed My Father — I think he probably did a better job than Kesting. The buzziest thing I saw was That Is Not Who I Am, which was very good, but didn’t deliver on the weird gimmick it’s framed as.

Art

The Guggenheim’s Vasily Kandinsky exhibition is great; a rare example of an artist who got better with age. But the best thing I’ve seen in ages was Cornelia Parker at Tate Britain: the art is great by itself, but her intellectual curiosity means it’s even better when you read the accompanying descriptions. Highly recommended.

Cultural philanthropy: Influencing the culture to improve the world

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ 2 Comments

Disclosure: I personally know some of the people discussed in this article.

When you decide to use your money to do good, you’re presented with a plethora of options. You might purchase malaria nets, or give direct cash transfers to the world’s poorest. You could fund research on AI safety, or lobby for new climate change policies. Or you could walk down the street and give some money to a homeless person in your community.

But there is another kind of philanthropy—one that is much less common, but growing in importance. It’s based on the idea that the culture we live in influences the decisions of everyday people, entrepreneurs and policymakers. Recognising that influence, this kind of philanthropy wants to change that culture.

I’m going to call this “cultural philanthropy”. It is very distinct from other forms of supporting culture, e.g. building a new wing at the Met or paying for stage-hands’ balaclavas at the Royal Opera House (no, seriously). That kind of philanthropy is done out of a general love for the arts (and, often, a desire for status). “Cultural philanthropy”, as I use the phrase, is specifically defined by a clear theory of change: the idea is to use culture to disseminate ideas that will go on to change the world.

Stripe and its founders, the Collison brothers, are two prominent examples of cultural philanthropists. Stripe Press, a publishing division of the payments giant, produces books, articles, podcasts and films with a view to improving the world. Whether exploring why technological development has stalled or advocating for better heat systems, Stripe Press is laser-focused on diagnosing the world’s problems and offering solutions. Neither Stripe nor the Collisons will directly make money from this (though they do hope that by increasing “the GDP of the internet”, Stripe will be able to take a cut). The primary motivation is altruistic. The hope, it seems, is that distributing these ideas might make people think about things differently, encouraging them to make better decisions, which will in turn put humanity on a better path.

Sam Bankman-Fried, a crypto billionaire and effective altruist, is another advocate for cultural philanthropy. His FTX Future Fund is explicit about it: its website claims that “books and media are enormously important for exploring ideas, shaping the culture, and focusing society’s attention on specific issues.” Unlike the Collisons, who are doing much of this culture-changing-work in-house, SBF takes a more distributed approach: he’s funding a $500,000 blogging prize for “effective ideas”. This is similar to some of the work Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, two other effective altruists, fund through Open Philanthropy, their foundation. Open Philanthropy has recently given grants to YouTubers promoting effective altruist ideas. And while it appears to be picking up steam, cultural philanthropy isn’t entirely new: the Rockefeller Foundation’s previous support for Future Perfect and the Gates Foundation’s support for The Guardian are older examples (though still quite recent!).

You might draw parallels between this and the billionaires who philanthropically own news outlets, such as Jeff Bezos with The Washington Post, Marc Benioff with Time and Laurene Powell Jobs with The Atlantic. But this is different. For one, those organisations are still run somewhat like a business—profit is not an afterthought. More importantly, Bezos, Benioff and Powell Jobs all seem interested in the idea of journalism in and of itself, as being key to a healthy democracy. They are less interested in the specific ideas those publications disseminate, and they don’t have nearly as much editorial control over them.1

Nor is it quite like the Murdochian approach to media. Rupert Murdoch’s outlets are certainly no stranger to advocacy, but I don’t think they promote those ideas because he wants the world to be a certain way. He instead chases audiences, profit and power for its own sake. (The Sun switching from supporting the Tories to Labour and back again is a good example of this, as is his reluctance to back Trump at the beginning of his 2016 campaign. Murdoch just wants to back winners.)

If there is an analog to the Collison-SBF-Moskovitz approach, it is billionaire funding of think tanks. In both cases, the hope is to spread valuable ideas. But rather than doing all the work in house and taking a narrow focus on who might receive the ideas, the new approach takes a more bottom-up approach, finding ideas where they might arise, and hoping they take root in the culture.2 (It is not a coincidence, I think, that two of the people leading Stripe Press’s Works In Progress are former think-tankers; nor that the Collisons, SBF and Open Philanthropy all also fund the new Institute For Progress think tank).

The strategy has a plausible, if uncertain, theory of change. Matthew Yglesias summed it up quite well while discussing Future, a much-hyped online publication from Andreessen Horowitz:

“I think to make pro-tech, pro-markets, pro-innovation sustainable, you need a public culture that reflects those values. That means publications that propound them.”

Like many of the philanthropists funding this work, I have a pro-tech, pro-markets and pro-innovation worldview—which means I view this sort of cultural philanthropy as something that could be really good for the world. But, as with all things, views differ. Reasonable people might dislike the views of SBF, Moskovitz and the Collisons. And some people funding similar projects have very different views: most notably Peter Thiel, who promotes views I find repellent (and, in the case of René Girard’s mimetic theory, just plain weird). And while I believe most of these people—including Thiel!—have good intentions and genuinely want to make the world better, that will not always be the case. It is entirely plausible that people will masquerade as cultural philanthropists while actually spreading ideas that serve only their interests.

That isn’t necessarily a problem: people ought to be allowed to back whatever ideas they want. But we need to emphasise transparency. As money pours into cultural philanthropy, certain ideas will gain traction that otherwise wouldn’t have. Yet without transparency, the average person—even the average lawmaker—might not know that the only reason they’re suddenly hearing about a certain policy is because a couple of Silicon Valley billionaires wanted it to be heard. And if they did know that, maybe they’d think about it a bit more critically. While this problem is important, it is by no means a dealbreaker. Something as simple as clear, prominent disclosures on the bottom of each philanthropically-funded article would help, I think—as would clear statements from the philanthropists on what they are doing, and why they’re doing it.3

But transparency aside, I am broadly optimistic about the potential of cultural philanthropy. As FTX notes, culture plays a key role in how both the ruling class and the masses understand the world, and subtly shifting it in a more positive direction could have significant gains. A world in which “cheems mindset” is common parlance and serious consideration is given to the benefits of frontier technologies like artificial wombs strikes me as a very appealing one. The cultural philanthropists might help us get there.

Footnotes

1. Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition fits in this category, too: if his stated motivations are true, he is buying the platform because he thinks it is crucial to a modern democracy, rather than because he wants to promote any specific ideas. (There is some evidence, though, that he is in fact buying it to promote more right-wing ideas, which would push it in the direction of cultural philanthropy.)

2. When I talk about the “culture”, I don’t necessarily mean popular culture. All of these philanthropists seem particularly concerned with shaping, for lack of a better term, “elite” culture—policymakers, entrepreneurs and journalists who are in a position to have a potentially large impact. But they don’t limit themselves to targeting these people, and there’s an understanding that getting mass adoption of these ideas would help things along (it’s just much harder).

3. The Blogging Prize complicates things, because people are writing with the hope of receiving funding, rather than receiving funding before writing. I also have a suspicion that some people are going to write and publish takes they don’t fully believe, purely in the hope of winning the prize. Given the prominence of the prize and the people backing/paying attention to it, this could have a fairly large distorting effect on the “marketplace of ideas”, as it were. A potential solution might be for the Prize to require all entrants to put e.g. “This blog is an entrant for the Blogging Prize, funded by the FTX Future Fund” on each post, though that’s a little crude and a pain to enforce.

My review of “Whole Earth” and “We Are As Gods”

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

I reviewed the new biography and documentary about Stewart Brand. The best part of both is where they dive into the tension between Brand’s techno-utopianism and environmentalism (even though I tend to side with Brand that the two can and should co-exist).

You can read the whole thing at The Economist, here’s an excerpt:

Mr Brand’s technophilia helped shape Silicon Valley. But it drove a wedge between him and his ecologically minded friends. He had always been an outlier, enjoying Ayn Rand’s libertarian books at university. His fascination with humans settling in space—he financed the subject’s first major conference in 1974—widened the divide. In 2009 Mr Brand distanced himself from his fellow environmentalists, advocating for genetically modified organisms and nuclear power. As for the eco-warriors, he labelled them “irrational, anti-scientific and very harmful”. In response George Monbiot, an activist, suggested that Mr Brand was a spokesperson for the fossil-fuel industry. The criticism echoed Mr Kesey’s remark decades earlier: “Stewart recognises power. And cleaves to it.” 


More good things (books, films, restaurants)

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

Books

The Planet Remade by Oliver Morton — I’ll write more on this soon, but it is a very good, wide-ranging and surprisingly poetic book.

Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand by John Markoff — will also have more on this soon, but if you’re interested in Brand (and you should be), this is worth reading.

From Satori to Silicon Valley by Theodore Roszak — a short and very readable overview of the links between Silicon Valley and the ’60s counterculture.

Various Batman graphic novels — Year One was the highlight for me, though The Dark Knight Returns and Hush are good too. Neither are as good as The Long Halloween, Arkham Asylum or The Killing Joke, though. I also read The Black Mirror and The Court of Owls, neither of which impressed me very much.

Films

That comic binge was brought on by anticipation for The Batman, which was much better than I expected. It’s probably my favourite Batman film, though The Dark Knight is arguably a better film in and of itself. (I also watched a few animated films, and would recommend both Under the Red Hood and Mask of the Phantasm if you liked The Batman.)

We Are As Gods is a very good documentary about Stewart Brand, and by extension about the ’60s, de-extinction, and techno-utopianism.

I also watched Dune for the fourth time, this time at home, which confirmed my suspicions that it derives a lot of its power from the big screen (particularly IMAX). Still good, though.

Restaurants

Bake Street has started doing biryani on Sundays, and if the first batch was anything to go by this is now one of London’s best meals. Everything else there is still fantastic too, obviously. I’m very excited that Feroz is opening a new outlet in the promising-looking Arcade Food Hall.

Towpath reopened the other week, and a sunny lunch of taramasalata, carrot-top fritters and peas was pretty much perfect.

A lunch at Dosa Express was particularly memorable for the snacks — pani puri, samosa chaat, dhai vada. The dosas were good too, particularly the crispy rava ones.

The Black Axe Mangal x St John meal kit was worth it just for the t-shirt; the excellent food was the icing on the cake.

Music

I’ve been listening to a lot of Acid Arab, Michael Giacchino’s The Batman soundtrack, Floating Points’ new single, and Music from Saharan Cellphones.

fabric at the Opera was a very clever and fun event, which I hope they do a lot more of. Rival Consoles and Frank Wiedemann stole the show.

Some recommended things from the last month

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

Book: Eating to Extinction by Dan Saladino. This is one of the best food books I’ve read. It’s both very poetic and information-dense: I suspect I am significantly more pro-capitalism than the author and I view the Green Revolution as an unambiguously good thing, but Saladino’s writing does make me mourn the diversity we’ve lost and want to help save it as best I can. (Happily, doing so involves buying delicious ingredients.)

Film: Dune in 1.43:1 IMAX. I’d already seen this twice in cinemas, including once in 1.9:1 IMAX. Watching it in full IMAX (at London’s Science Museum) was still breathtaking — the extra height makes a huge difference in conveying the scale of the world. Showings are few and far between but I highly recommend trying to find one.

Restaurant: Brat x Climpson’s Arch. Beautiful tomatoes and cod’s roe on toast; divine burnt cheesecake.

Play: A Number at the Old Vic. More plays should be this short and more actors should be this good.