Happy Friday! I have three good reads for you: a conservative's reading of Taylor Sheridan discovers his work to be right-coded; an NYT writer finds problematic rehab profits in Kentucky; a massive fan of Cormac McCarthy discovers the scoop of a lifetime: McCarthy's secret mistress. Each piece was well-written and held my attention. On the surface, they have nothing in common. Upon reflection, I think a close reading reveals a common and instructive theme.
Each author found something worth telling and in the telling shows us a similar thing. In making their arguments (Sheridan is rightwing; rehab on an industrial scale is exploitative; Britt inspired McCarthy's best work), we see something about what they're viewing, but a whole lot more about who is viewing it. You can't unironically quote the "good points" made in the monologues of Sheridan's TV villains and anti-heroes without your readers thinking that just maybe you started out on a careful hunt for the thing you eventually found—just because the show features locations between the coasts doesn't necessarily make it an unofficial subsidiary of Fox Nation. If your primary concern about a Kentucky town's being overtaken by the investments and jobs provided by a large addiction recovery operator is that the company may be just too powerful, then perhaps you arrived with your Times expense account primed to discover the worst aspects of drug treatment programs. If your spin on an author in his mid-forties picking up and then moving to Mexico with a 16 year-old is a knowing chuckle that it 'could seem like grooming', then maybe you should be labelling your work as hagiography. You learn a lot about how people view the world when you see assumptions like these three.
The things we have the hardest time seeing are the lenses through which we view everything else. If my glasses are dirty, it's easy to notice that I'm wearing them; my contacts, at least for the first few hours, are a transparent and unnoticeable film right over my eyes—the only thing I notice is just how clear far-off objects are. Assumptions work like that. If you view solely Cormac McCarthy as pure genius, perhaps Americas best literary genius, then your understanding of what he did to a teenage girl will be clouded by seeing her primarily as his literary inspiration. A plain reading of the facts reveals a more complex picture, but the lens through which the author view those facts matters a whole lot more to his story, and it's not clear that he realizes the distortions he's viewing through.
It's worth asking: is what appears clear actually so or am I thinking it's clear because I'm looking through a lens? In other words, what I am reading into this and what am I not seeing as a result?
Reading
The Anti-Woke King of Hollywood Lets Loose
Taylor Sheridan’s shows explain how and why we got Trump again
Opioids Ravaged a Kentucky Town, Then Rehab Became Its Business.
In Louisa, an unbearable social crisis has become the main source of economic opportunity.
Cormac McCarthy's Secret Muse Breaks Her Silence After Half a Century
When he was 42, Cormac McCarthy fell in love with a 16-year-old girl he met by a motel pool. Augusta Britt would go on to become one of the most significant—and secret—inspirations in literary history, giving life to many of McCarthy’s most iconic characters across his celebrated novels and Hollywood films. For 47 years, Britt closely guarded her identity and her story. Until now.