Hello,

Apologies for my experimental marketing tactics.

Obligatory shilling. I was interviewed by Berny Belvedere of Arc Digital about writing, politics and religion.

I watched and reviewed Elon Musk’s Saturday Night Live appearance for the Spectator's American outlet - for masochistic reasons.

For my paying subscribers, I wrote about the uses and abuses of the literary biography.

I also wrote for my paying subscribers about the personalism of political and philosophical debates. (Yes, that is more than enough writing about writing for a few long weeks.)

Viral goings. Nicholas Wade, formerly of the New York Times, analyses the research and safety procedures at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and concludes that COVID-19 probably emerged from its confines. As Wade says, there is no direct evidence - but there is no direct evidence for anything else. Wade writes:

The common sense perception that a pandemic breaking out in Wuhan might have something to do with a Wuhan lab cooking up novel viruses of maximal danger in unsafe conditions could eventually displace the ideological insistence that whatever Trump said can’t be true.

The biologist Mark Hanson criticises Wade's scientific claims, as does Philippe Lemoine. I am not fit to judge arguments about RRAR and PRRA furins but I do think the “lab leak” hypothesis was dismissed with peculiar haste last year - back when the experts were also sure that masks, border closures et cetera were useless. Hopefully it will get a more thorough hearing.

Bertie to Binface. Will Lloyd writes well for UnHerd about the myth of the English eccentric:

This tale has something in it, but it’s probably closer to the truth to note that the eccentric was swallowed whole and digested by another type — the exhibitionist.

Nowadays, the English eccentric is imagined to be bumbling, ineffectual and Wodehousian. It can be true, of course. But old English eccentrics like Francis Younghusband were also daring adventurers and soldiers - not just useless aristocrats with appalling aunts.

Wise guy. A New Yorker journalist somehow landed an interview with John Swartzwelder, the reclusive comic genius behind many of the best Simpsons episodes, who quit the show as it slid into irrelevance and devoted himself to self-publishing his novels. What an admirable life!

“The Joy of Bullying”. A very funny piece from The Fence about writers’ worst pitches:

This is the pitch rejection that keeps me up at night:
Hi! Thanks for the pitch. This feels a little look-at-these-freaks to me. I think it is a pass for us but feel free to pitch again.

Dark Side of the Ring. My favourite television series, about the triumphs and tragedies (mostly tragedies), of professional wrestling has returned for its third season. I am especially looking forward to the episode about Xtreme Pro Wrestling, which I assume will focus on the strange occasion where the champion was fired after sleeping with the boss's wife and then had his thumb chopped off by mystery assailants.

Newcomer. Heterodox left-wing writer Angela Nagle has joined Substack.

Food feuds. The nutrition writer Seth Yoder critiques “low-carb” legend Gary Taubes' new book The Case for Keto. I have a big problem with people who demonise the nutritional content of either a baked potato or a boiled egg. Of course, different diets work for different people. Whatever works for you. But the idea that we should blame foods we have been eating for millennia for an expansion of waistlines that happened to coincide with the invention of the frozen pizza and the potato chip strains credulity.

Are we doomed? Ed West pitilessly dampens Conservative optimism in the UK:

...for now Boris can kick around and enjoy his great advantage, with an enfeebled opposition whose values repulse much of the country, knowing that he truly has the luck of the devil. But Mephistopheles, and demography, will come for him and his party eventually.

Is Ed too pessimistic? Perhaps. (From a right-wing perspective anyway. My left-wing readers might find him positively utopian.) But for that to be so, a party which is very good at acquiring power will have to get better at using it.

Athwart. One of my favourite online magazines has enjoyed its first birthday. As well as publishing the many wonderful essays I link to here, they have allowed me to write about everything from deathmatch wrestling to the surreal paintings of Zdzisław Beksiński. Here is to many more years of Athwart.

Have a great week,

Ben

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