Eclectic Letters #15 — Josiah Gogarty
Middle-class Swedish hip-hop, Glenn O'Brien on iconoclasm, Jünger's diaries, Casa Malaparte, port, and the "Dancing Queen" vapourwave remix
“Kyoto” by Yung Lean
Hip-hop philistines are probably unaware that one of the most influential rappers of the past decade is a white, middle-class Swedish dude. Jonatan Leandoer Håstad, aka Yung Lean, was a bit of an internet joke when he first emerged: look at this baby-faced Euro in his bucket hat, spitting half-digested American slang. But as every other YouTube comment on his early banger “Kyoto” points out, his sound and aesthetic were at least five years premature; TikTok-addled Zoomers now dress a lot like Lean and the gang did back in 2013. The lyrics are fragments of free-associative genius — “I’m war, hoe, I’m Warhol, I’m Wario when I’m in Mario Kart” — and the beat is like malware-corrupted Japanese spa music.
“Sympathy for the Taliban” by Glenn O’Brien
This is my favourite-ever column (sorry Janan). Glenn O’Brien, an Andy Warhol associate and New York scenester who edited Interview magazine for a year in the early 70s, deserves fame far beyond the style world, because he’s an outrageously good writer. “Sympathy for the Taliban” has a delightfully contrarian premise — that the Taliban, which at the time (2001) had recently blown up some ancient Buddhist statues, might be on to something with their iconoclastic leanings:
I think that in a very extreme way they are making a point that is well taken. It certainly would have been more appropriate if they had trained their artillery on, say, Disneyworld, the headquarters of InStyle magazine, the Jerry Springer show, Julian Schnabel’s studio, or every copy of the film Titanic, but the rural zealots struck the only targets they had in range, the big old stone Buddhas. I suspect they were trying to point out that the world is too caught up in the worship of images, be it the Buddha or Brad Pitt.
Read the full thing, which skips through ancient Christian doctrine and abstract expressionism with wonderful lightness of touch, here. This piece and others would remain buried in old fashion mags were it not for Intelligence for Dummies, a great collection of O’Brien’s writing.
A German Officer in Occupied Paris by Ernst Jünger
Ernst Jünger was wounded multiple times in the First World War, but spent much of the sequel in occupied Paris as a Nazi censor, hanging out with artists (Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Celine) and having affairs. His diary of the period is a bit tangential in places, but also has some brilliant descriptive passages, like a much-quoted episode where he quaffs burgundy while watching an Allied air raid, comparing the ravaged city to “a calyx overflown by deadly pollination”.
Here’s another I think is even better, from 7 June 1944:
Took a walk with the president in the evening. Two heavy tanks had halted on the Boulevard de l’Amiral-Bruix on their way to the front. The young soldiers were perched on their steel behemoths in the waning sunlight of the day in that kind of elation tinged with melancholy that I remember so well. They radiated a tangible aura of the imminence of death, the glory of hearts ready to embrace immolation.
Watched the way the machines retreated, disappeared with all their technological intricacy and grew simpler and more comprehensible as they did so, like the shield and lance that the hoplite leans against. And the way the lads sat on top of their tanks, warily eating and drinking with each other like betrothed people just before the ceremony, as if partaking of a spiritual meal.
Casa Malaparte
Jünger and Curzio Malaparte are often mentioned together, given they both worked for the baddies in the Second World War and have that “esoteric right-wing weirdo” vibe people are really into at the moment. I won’t go over the unholy glories of Kaputt — other people have already told you to read it; I agree with them — so let’s sail over to Capri, where Malaparte built a stark modernist house on a finger of rock poking into the sea. It’s been featured in a Jean-Luc Godard film and a Jacquemus show, among much else, but what I really like is how the stairs leading up to the panoramic roof terrace are topped with regular red bricks: a clean conceptual structure betraying the reality of its construction up close.
Port
Not much to say specifically here, other than: port is delicious, and I wish it was served more widely. I toured a port cellar in Porto in 2022, where I was instructed in the difference between ruby port, tawny port etc; I have since forgotten all this. All I remember is that I really like port. Someone could make a killing opening a small-plates port bar in east/south London. If no-one else does it, I will.
The “Dancing Queen” vapourwave remix
The ubiquity of ABBA’s music can distract from the fact it’s deeply, deeply weird. Part of that strange happy-sadness, as Jan Gradvall writes in his great biography of the band, Melancholy Undercover, is that the bones of their songs come from accordion-driven Swedish folk rather than Anglo-American jazz, blues, etc. “Dancing Queen”, the greatest of all pop songs, becomes an even more unearthly beast when it’s slowed riiight down. The perfect soundtrack for the heat death of the universe.
Josiah Gogarty writes for British GQ, and occasionally The New Statesman, UnHerd, The Londonder and elsewhere. Follow him here.
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Vapourware ABBA is crunk