Welcome back to The Weekend Press! Today, “Little House on the Prairie” passes the test of time with flying colors. Suzy Weiss calls Taylor Swift’s wedding “psychotic.” Two drinks with Joe Allen, messiah of the anti-AI MAGA-ites. And much more!
But first: What kind of story can still unite the world?
There was once a time when we all watched the same shows, read the same books, experienced the same stories. No longer. We live in an age of great abundance—it would take about four years of continuous viewing to watch everything on Netflix—and it’s left the culture fragmented.
But this summer, one of the world’s ultimate stories—one that launched a thousand adaptations, translations, tributes; one that’s been on curricula for centuries; one you’ll know even if you never read it—is coming to a theater near you. Christopher Nolan’s star-studded take on The Odyssey is out Friday. And when we were talking about who we wanted to write about this wildly ambitious, culturally unifying blockbuster, one name was top of the list.
Daniel Mendelsohn started teaching undergraduate seminars on The Odyssey in 2011 at Bard College, where his 81-year-old father decided to attend his course. Six years later, he published a memoir about the experience of reading the epic with a father whose interpretation was constantly at odds with his own. Then, last year, he released a translation of his own, to great acclaim. He, too, can’t get this story out of his head. And we’re delighted to have him in our pages to explain why this story has endured for millennia.
In his piece, he argues that we all see ourselves in its complicated, cunning hero—described, in the epic’s first line, by a word notoriously hard to translate: polytropos. Roughly: “Having many turns.” “Who among us does not dream of travel, exposure to new places and ideas,” writes Daniel, “while simultaneously craving the stability that comes with having a home and security?”
Whereas the conflicts of The Iliad feel foreign—with its brutally violent heroes and gods watching war as we now watch the World Cup—we see in Odysseus the great, eternal, and internal battles of being human. And once you’ve read Daniel’s essay, you’ll see why he’s the perfect protagonist for one of our greatest living moviemakers. —The Editors
When poet Joseph Massey was a child, his stepfather “didn’t talk; he screamed.” So when he became an adult, Joseph wanted nothing to do with home. But in the spring of 2019, with his life in tatters, Joseph visited his mother and stepfather for the first time in 10 years. “What I remember most vividly were the late afternoons and evenings spent watching ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ ” he writes in today’s Things Worth Remembering. “With every scene, I could feel the longing between us for a stronger bond begin to grow.” The classic show would then boom in popularity in lockdown and inspire a Netflix remake that was released this week. It prompted “Time” to state that the story “fails the test of time.” Joseph, beautifully, suggests the opposite is true.
“I voted for Trump hoping he would close the borders,” says Joe Allen, “including the border between us and that circle of hell from which AIs emerge.” So far, Allen—the anti-AI MAGA messiah who serves as the “transhumanist editor” for Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast—has been disappointed by the president’s cozy relationship with the AI industry, but: “He still has two and a half years to change course,” he told Suzy Weiss over two glasses of Chianti. They talked about putting humans first, where Lady Gaga went wrong, and why Allen thinks the Satanic Panic was “directionally right.”
Joe Klein is 80 years old, and he’s realized he’s a cliché. Over the course of his long lifetime and magnificent writing career—he’s been a “Time” columnist, a Guggenheim Fellow, a novelist—he’s gradually shifted from the left to the center. Reporting on the closing of steel mills showed him the hollowness of the “intellectual left’s romance with the working class.” As a journalist with the underground press in 1970s Boston, he realized civil rights activists don’t always listen to what normal black families want. “Experience turns out to be more reliable than ideology,” he writes in the latest Ancient Wisdom. “Idealism fails to grasp human imperfection.”
Second Thought
Taylor Swift has confirmed absolutely nothing about her wedding, except that it happened. But when you invite more than 1,000 people, details are going to get leaked—and Suzy Weiss pounced on them in the latest episode of Second Thought. There was a raffle? One of the prizes was a Chevrolet? They invited the British TV chef Jamie Oliver? Why? Along with her co-host Dan Ahdoot, Suzy unpacks it all. They also discussed the Korean company bringing your dead relatives back to life, and Team USA’s exit from the World Cup, which Suzy doesn’t care for anyway: “The fields are too big and the people are too small.” Don’t miss this hilarious episode. You can watch it below or listen wherever you get your podcasts; and for more Suzy, don’t miss her newsletter.
Knock Knock, It’s Cupid!
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We’ve published a lot of stories worth catching up on this week, including Kat Rosenfield’s moving report on the death doula industry and River Page’s wry observations from an anti-tech conference in Brooklyn. Also, Arthur Brooks raised his eyebrows at reports of a Taylor Swift prenup . . .
How should you spend the rest of your weekend? We asked our community manager Ryan Engelhardt for her recommendations . . .
🍦Make . . . Popsicles. Simple, timeless, underrated. Who doesn’t love a cold Popsicle on a hot summer day? Just grab your favorite juice, pour it into a Popsicle mold, freeze, and voilà. If you’re feeling adventurous, mix a few juices together and throw in some fresh fruit. If you need a mold, here’s my favorite on Amazon. Let’s bring back the lost art of the homemade Popsicle.
🎵 Listen . . . to “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones. I’ll forever think this is one of the coolest and most mysterious songs ever written. On the surface, it’s an irresistible groove. But listen closely and you’ll hear a story about history, human nature, and the darkness ordinary people are capable of. The line “I shouted out who killed the Kennedys? / When after all, it was you and me” is pure genius.
📖 Read . . . the Free Press Forum. The Forum has quickly become one of my favorite corners of the internet. Join thousands of other Free Pressers to dig deeper into articles, share ideas, and discover wisdom and unexpected reasons to smile. Don’t know where to begin? Start by introducing yourself, then add your own recommendations here.
Last but not least: While we wait for Taylor Swift’s wedding photos, behold the fans who were having a party of their own outside the arena.
That’s all, folks! Have a great weekend.
Suzy and Dan I'm in :)
Regarding "Sympathy for the Devil," Mikhail Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" inspired the song. Marianne Faithfull loved the great subversive 1930s Russian novel and pushed it on Mick.
The story concerns a visit by Satan and his coterie to Soviet Moscow, a doomed novelist and his lover, and Pontius Pilate.
The Pevear and Volokhonsky translation is superb.