Necessary clichés

Plus: a 'grouchy' take on 'Liars,' desire as lack, the charms of 'Love is Blind: UK,' and more in the weekend roundup.

Photo: Gerry Roarty

The other morning, I went rock climbing and made it near the top of this tall bouldering wall. Just one more handhold before reaching the little placard reading “finish.” But it required wedging my toe into this awkward yellow slippery blob shape and propelling myself upward in this—ugh, cringe, sorry—leap of faith. There it was, a perfectly cliché metaphor that followed me around for the rest of the day.

Including when I listened to the first link in today’s roundup.

To the links…

A podcast interview with Brittney Cooper and Rebecca Traister about this unusual political moment and the need for the kind of faith, paired with aggressive and ongoing activism, that can break your damn heart.

Parul Sehgal had a “grouchy” take on Sarah Manguso’s Liars. I often enjoy the way Sehgal tickles my brain, even when I disagree with her, but there is more than usual that I disagree with here, including her dismissal of the cultural coercion around marriage and the book’s framing of abuse. And, yeah, maybe some of us do feel like “sexually indiscriminate infants” sometimes. I think that in her self-described “grouchiness” she exhibits the same failures that she sees in Liars: a lack of distance, perspective, and proportion.

Amanda Montei

on cow moms vs. cat ladies.