Dear friend—
I have accidentally taken a break from this newsletter, and have not done nearly as much thoughtful reading and watching as usual these past few weeks. Hence, this kind of flaccid letter coming to your inbox this morning.
This summer, I started watching The Bear on Hulu, starring Jeremy Allen White, whom you might be familiar if you’ve ever seen Showtime’s Shameless. The Bear is similar to Shameless in some ways—the gritty Chicago backdrop, the messiness and the struggles of its characters, the seemingly boundless shouting and profanity, the complicated yet intense bonds of family, blood and found—but with several marked differences.
For one, I actually like all the characters. They’re silly, idiosyncratic, sometimes mean, but more consistent and understandable in their actions. They all have heart. And Jeremy Allen White’s character is the definition of “doing his best.” (There is some Good Discourse about what his character and the show overall says about masculinity. The bar is low for white men on TV, but I think The Bear raises it.)
The show centers on Carmy, a chef who once worked at Michelin-star restaurants but returns to Chicago to run his family’s beef joint after the death of its previous owner, Carmy’s brother. The show follows him as he navigates grief while trying to rescue The Original Beef, dealing with a reluctant, combative but ultimately charming kitchen staff.
I am a sucker for a good kitchen story (Ratatouille, anyone?). It’s a bit voyeuristic, I admit. From what I understand, restaurant work is surely one of the most emotionally and physically demanding things a person can do.
I also recently finished Stephanie Danler’s Sweetbitter, another bite of kitchen fiction. Sweetbitter follows Tess, a pretty, newly minted college graduate as she moves to New York City from her small Heartland town, pursuing a nebulous desire for more. She becomes a server at a renowned NYC restaurant, entangled in the lives and drama of its staff.
Tess’s journey (derived from Danler’s own experiences at a renowned NYC restaurant) swings between euphoric and traumatic. She suffers humiliation after humiliation as she juggles the struggles of the job and the slow-to-open family of the kitchen. She’s entranced with the enigmatic Simone, head server and connoisseur of wine and good food, and the brooding bartender Jake.
Reading Sweetbitter is similar to The Bear in its studied attention to restaurant work and its high-octane emotions, but I can’t recommend Sweetbitter as readily as The Bear. I didn’t find Danler’s main character very sympathetic. The dearth of plot is not for everyone. The dialogue is occasionally laughable. The novel seems to subsist on vibes alone—communicated through Tess’s first-person narration, they are often beautiful, wistful, bittersweet (ha!) which carried me through it, but won’t carry everyone.
Sweetbitter reminded me of author Brandon Taylor's writings at
on a certain subset of literary fiction. His critique is directed more toward the Cusks and Offills (disclaimer: whom I haven’t read) and Lockwoods (whom I have read but DNF’d) of the world, and their disembodied, arguably vibes-based novels. Taylor writes:What powers such a novel is not plot or even character. What powers such a novel is interior weather. Pith. Wry observation. An accurate recreation of psychological effects under the duress capital.
Sweetbitter does not have the same “IKEA” feeling of empty-room tableau with which Taylor diagnoses such contemporary novels. But it has the same feeling of “vibes first, characters second.” Of energy captured, Poignant Thoughts, flashes of internal passion that fade as soon as the next paragraph begins.
To frame it within a conversation of form vs. function: the function already exists, living and breathing in the world. The work’s act of generation is the way in which the form captures and then reflects or symbolizes or embodies that function.
This isn’t a bad thing, of course. Just not my cup of tea at the moment.
The wonder of The Bear is that is both vibes first and characters first. I wouldn’t say vibes are easier to portray well on TV, as novels and shows are very different mediums. And that also makes The Bear immune to Taylor’s assessment, as we are never in Carmy’s head the same way we are in Tess’s head or any other written protagonist.
But RE: the exterior vibes: the delivery is more efficient for the viewer. There are no words spent describing the dialogue, the setting, the characters themselves. We see and hear it all and connect instantly, viscerally. And so the story and characters thread through it on more equal footing.
(I actually haven’t finished The Bear. It is an emotionally exhausting show. There is a lot of tension, a lot at stake, a lot happening, all the time. You blink and you miss some perfect line, some nuanced glance. But of course, that’s what makes it so wonderful.)
I think I used to be a vibes-based writer, form over function. I used to debate about this with a friend of mine, also a writer, who thought beautiful sentences were nothing without a good story behind it. I argued—form is function. In my writing, the beautiful sentence was an end in itself, not the means to an end (story).
But I think I am starting to see their perspective. A beautiful sentence makes you feel some type of way, but a good story makes you feel some type of different way. Form is function, sure—but the forms I have cultivated do not correspond with the functions I crave in my reading and now want to cultivate myself.
For instance—a story’s rise and fall in pitch. The feeling of growing alongside a character. Of seeing relationships build and crack and tumble and build again. A slow burn with a head-whirling payoff that just might make the reader see stars.
I thought this was going to be one of my sillier little missives but turns out I actually had some Thoughts! Thanks for reading, I’ll be back soon,
—mia xx
(p.s. Brandon Taylor’s newsletter is sublime. Reading it actually inspired me to create my own. He writes about writing and literature and ~literary culture~. Read and subscribe here.)