It’s the end of the year, and like everyone else I’m happy to see it go. Still, I'm going to do one of those year-in-review threads, so please do mute if you’re not in the mood.
Main achievement: @katiekitamura and I have two happy sane children who have learned some stuff at home. We lost my uncle to covid and my parents haven’t seen their grandchildren in a year, but we’re doing ok.
I wrote a lot of non-fiction this year. In March for @nybooks I reviewed @DaleBeran's book about 4chan, Gamergate and how the angry internet fringe went mainstream nybooks.com/articles/2020/…
In July I wrote about @mashagessen’s Surviving Autocracy, and explored the various ways 45 has sought to exit democratic politics nybooks.com/articles/2020/…
In the same week that my Gessen essay was on the cover of the NYRB, I had fiction in the New Yorker, which made me feel like I'd really got the hang of this NYC writer thing newyorker.com/magazine/2020/…
interlude: 7 minutes until I lose the right to live and work across the EU. 2021, year of 'sovereignty'.
In September, after the summer of #BLM protests, I wrote about the history of “whiteness”, and how it has come to inflect so much of American political discourse nybooks.com/articles/2020/…
Also in September I published Red Pill, a novel in which I tried to make sense of the experience of the last few years. Here’s Jenny Offill’s review
nybooks.com/articles/2020/…
Here’s a thread from September about Wannsee in Berlin, where much of the action of Red Pill is set twitter.com/harikunzru/sta…
I teach on the @NYUCWP and like a lot of friends on here I had to move online, so a shout out to everyone who was in my MFA fiction seminar in the spring, the NYU undergraduates who escaped quarantine by zooming in to summer school and all in the Fall non-fiction seminar
Hmm trying again with the Red Pill Wannsee thread as the link seems to be broken
I spent much of 2020 making ‘Into the Zone’ for @pushkinpods . 8 episodes, each one about (as one listener put it) ‘one of my nerdy obsessions’, from my family’s involvement in the Indian independence struggle, to Adorno’s stay in LA pushkin.fm/show/into-the-…
Here's a thread introducing Into the Zone
The New York Times named Into the Zone one of the best podcasts of the year. Which was nice. Red Pill also made the list of NYT 'notable books', as well as lists from the LA Times, NPR and elsewhere nytimes.com/2020/12/21/art…
Not to judge but 2020-wise I think I’ve held it together better than some
Viral accident of the year: on the day the election was finally called for Biden, I was walking around doing errands, venting on twitter about the crooks and scoundrels who’ve been running things. 40k likes later...
Almost at the end of the list. For the first time I'm going to be writing a regular column - the 'Easy Chair' slot at the front of @Harpers - first one out now
And because the pandemic has generated a new reality every few weeks, I’ve been keeping a diary. Around 1800 pages of notes so far
So that was my year. Thanks for reading - health, happiness and a sense of futurity to you all for 2021

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More from @harikunzru

31 Dec 20
It’s as if the US is half-asleep. It’s unable to rouse itself, even in a crisis. Tranquilized. Opiated.
Some of it is abdication of responsibility by the executive. Some of it is a health system that’s been so stretched that it hasn’t had capacity to plan a vaccination program. But there’s something else. Indifference. Helplessness.
The pollution of the media environment and the politicization of public health information have paralyzed the US virus response and cost thousands of lives. It will be remembered as a criminal act by a destructive administration.
Read 5 tweets
7 Nov 20
You may want to mute this account for a while because I feel I may have to individually insult every member of the outgoing administration in crude and personal ways
Mike Pence you repressed joyless would-be witchfinder, every time you spoke you always looked like you were straining to expel an enormous bolus of your own hypocrisy from your clenched sphincter
Betsy DeVos you blandly foolish soulless entitled child-stealing witch, rotting like a corpse inside your Chanel suit
Read 16 tweets
24 Sep 20
It's possible that I may have mentioned once or twice that I have a novel out. It's called Red Pill and it's partly set in Berlin. While I was researching it, I found out a lot about life in the former East Berlin. Some of that found its way into the book. But there was more ... ImageImage
I was interested in surveillance. These days we all have a spy in our pocket, and the people watching are mostly from big tech companies, looking to predict our behavior. In the GDR, they had the Stasi Image
At first I was interested in how the Stasi monitored political dissidents and artists - people like the writers Juergen Fuchs and Sascha Anderson Image
Read 18 tweets
21 Sep 20
So many questions. Who is ‘they’? Where is the valve? How does the beautiful water save the tiny fish?
I am now googling combinations of smelt / valve / water / tiny fish / in an attempt to find out what he might be referring to.
Turns out it’s a sort of first grade account of his attempt to undermine environmental regulation in Northern California theguardian.com/environment/20…
Read 4 tweets
20 Sep 20
Just arrived - Carnatic violin from 78’s collected by my friend (and Into the Zone guest) Chris King. Thanks @thirdmanrecords Image
Great liner notes too. Fascinating to see Chris joining the dots between Indian violin and his passion for Greek violinists like Alexis Zoumbas
On Into the Zone, Chris and I talked about prewar American rural music, and he played me jug bands and some amazing early Cajun music. We talked about the friendship between singer and accordionist Amédé Ardoin and violinist Dennis McGee.
Read 6 tweets
17 Sep 20
There's a new episode of Into the Zone out today. For 'It's Always Sunny in the Dialectic' I went to LA with @_hbraithwaite to eat at a place where your breakfast is a mantra: Image
We're living in difficult times. For some people, it's all about thinking positive Image
For others, not so much. This is Theodor Adorno, one of the pioneers of critical theory, who fled the Nazis and ended up in the world capital of positivity, Los Angeles Image
Read 12 tweets

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