"Pulphead: Essays" by John Jeremiah Sullivan (2011)

John Sullivan is a photographer. He makes photography look easy, just as Truman Capote did. 

Sullivan has little interest in a narrative. His is impressionistic, photographic writing driven by an open, curious mind. He is especially good at writing about people, for people supply their own narrative by virtue of living. In the “Career of an Eccentric Naturalist,” his writing is akin to a stack of B&W street photographs. The narrative the protagonist's life supplies culminates in exposing secular humanism as self-evident. 

Sullivan's non-biographical writing lacks a narrative, which makes it hard to deduce the subject matter. Was “American Grotesque” about Obamacare? Was it about the American right? It is unclear.

Is Sullivan's writing particularly Southern? Adam Gopnik wrote that science was competitive storytelling. Sullivan does not compete. He is nonjudgemental and kind. Is Southern excellence achieved by means other than competition?

Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen (2026)

The movie is expertly edited by Dev Singh. The cinematography is good outdoors but is way too dark indoors. Camila Morrone is a formidable lead.

One of the questions the movie raises is whether the property of being soulmates is symmetric. The apparent answer is that it is not.

No decision is worse than indecision.

Shrinking: Seasons 1–3 (2023–2026)

Paul in Shrinking is Harrison Ford's best role ever. He is consistently superb throughout the series. So is Jason Segel. Indeed, every character is perfectly written and cast—except for Derek #2, who is so impossibly dull that one could not help but to anticipate a plot twist whereby he would turn out to be a villain in disguise.

The motion picture is perfectly written, perfectly directed, perfectly photographed (one does not notice the cinematography), and perfectly edited. It is intelligent, optimistic, and witty (which is another way to say that it is optimistic). This coherent project has been conceived and executed by a pride of producers, a wisdom of writers, and a murder of directors. Only in Hollywood may an ecosystem like this exist and resist (and perhaps occasionally profit from) the recent onset of climate change.

The motion picture leans into the idea that people need (and, in some corners, can still afford) people.

The Drama (2026)

Zendaya and her character are good. The male protagonist is a fashionable weakling. The movie's dilemma is whether three people who did wrong ought to ostracise a self-confessed one-time thought criminal who did not. The moral of the story is that everyone deserves to be forgiven, weaklings and thought criminals alike.