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P sends me articles he thinks I might find interesting every morning, and one of them was Performative Reading by Brittany Dennison. What begins as a review of Late Fame, Kent Jones’s 2025 film adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1895 novella, becomes something larger: an examination of ‘performative reading’ and the ways intellectual taste itself can become a performance.
The article argues that Late Fame is about a contemporary phenomenon in which literary culture becomes a form of social signalling. The film follows an ageing minor poet, Saxberger, whose work is rediscovered by a group of wealthy young New York writers who admire the idea of being literary, perhaps more than the inconvenient business of actually reading or writing. Dennison connects this to the rise of poetcore, where poetry, first editions, literary clothes, interiors and even a certain kind of lifestyle can be acquired and displayed as an aesthetic identity.
The criticism is that the film softens Schnitzler’s much sharper satire. In the original novella, both the forgotten poet and his admirers are ridiculous, exposing the human desire to be admired and taken seriously. Jones’s film, according to Dennison, becomes too sympathetic to Saxberger and too earnest about the value of the literary life. In trying to critique superficial cultural posturing, it ends up becoming a performative piece of culture about performativity itself.
It got me thinking about the commodification of intellectual taste: a book left open on the table, a particular chair, an old typewriter, annotated books, a fountain pen (mine doesn’t count; it’s been around since the Belgrave days), a shelf of first editions, a reference dropped into conversation. None of these things is false in itself. The strange part is the possibility of acquiring all the evidence of a cultivated life without having lived one.
It is manufactured depth: not quite pretending to know, but surrounding oneself with the evidence of knowing. The internet has made this particularly easy; we can collect the objects and references of a cultivated life almost instantly, arrange them beautifully, and let the arrangement speak for us. Almost anything that once signalled a life of the mind can now be turned into an aesthetic. What is harder, and less visible, is the life that has to exist behind them: the years of reading, attention, thought, and experience that turn taste from an image into something lived.
This week’s letter includes beautiful rooms that make me reconsider everything I thought I wanted, the return of physical music, new thinking on why AI might tempt us to resign from the pleasures of thinking, craft retreats to travel for, the future of ageing, diamonds, and a few things I’ve been thinking about, reading and noticing lately.
Before It Slips Away
On memory, attention, beautiful spaces, and the difference between knowing something and living it.
Last week’s letter includes beautiful rooms and the question of how we want to live in them, a new chapter for a favourite London seafood address, the strange social revival of an old game, a literary house with a remarkable history, and a few things I’ve been thinking about, reading and noticing lately.
Inside for paid subscribers: a closer look at the future of ageing, beautiful rooms and the return of colour, craft and making things by hand, the strange economics of AI, and a few good things worth wearing, using, keeping and giving.
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