Notes from Abroad
The Catcher in the Rye and Why Customers Hate Fake Voices
I have a complicated relationship with The Catcher in the Rye. I read it at seventeen, the right age, and I found Holden Caulfield insufferable. I read it again at thirty, and I found him heartbreaking. But one thing has not changed across either reading. He is right about the phonies.
Fahrenheit 451 and the Value of What You Write
I first read Fahrenheit 451 as a teenager and understood it as a book about censorship. The government burned books. That was the horror. But I reread it recently while watching the internet fill with AI-generated listicles, formulaic content, and brands shouting into a void, and I realized I had missed the point.
Why I Read ‘Lolita’ to Learn Empathy in Marketing
I first picked up Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita because of my 100 Greatest Novels project. I knew its reputation: beautiful prose, impossible subject matter. I assumed the experience would be academic. I would admire the sentences from a safe distance and return it to the shelf. Instead, it broke something in me.
Author Spotlight: Han Kang
So I’ve never done this before, spotlighting a single author’s work. There’s not often when I come across an author, I immediately need to rush through their whole bibliography. Also, if something like that happens, it’s not often that the author doesn’t seem to be read or even known by many readers.