What else I've been reading in May 2026
Plus, the Korea Deconstructed podcast interviews me about newtro and more
This is one in a series of monthly posts that round up the (mostly non-city-related) books and essays that also figure into my reading life.
A month ago, David Tizzard interviewed me on his podcast and Youtube show Korea Deconstructed. We discuss my latest book Korean Newtro, the romance of Seoul's humble streetscapes, why I don't trust translation, and much else besides. This marks my second appearance; you can watch the first, from 2023, here.
Essays
“In this day and age, can’t I be a husband but identify as a boyfriend?”
"Even in outlets and intellectual spaces considered chic today, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the majority of people in the western world in the 1960s were not interested in the cutting edge of culture or politics, even a little."
"Para Marsé, la patria no es la lengua, sino el lenguaje; su patria es, en el fondo, además de los lugares de la infancia, la ficción literaria. El bilingüismo constituye, como repitió una vez tras otra, una riqueza."
“The heroine of Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1987) realizes that the man she idolized ‘wasn’t a person but an image … a childish dream.’ Classicism — the creed of reason, restraint, and reality — means abandoning fantasy.”
"For detractors, it’s the biggest concentration of urban decay in prime Seoul real estate; for supporters, it’s the last place to experience an authentic 20th century Seoul, now at serious risk of extinction by gentrification."
"Un personaje noble nunca muestra miedo. Como los héroes de las novelas del siglo de oro español. Fue el Romanticismo quien eleva al antihéroe a héroe. Al melindroso. Al cobarde, en una palabra. Miremos el siglo XXI y preguntemos: ¿dónde están los héroes?"
"The car is not just a convenience in Los Angeles; it is, for many people, a matter of identity. The D Line extension is the most significant test yet of whether any of that is changing."
“Love of the work, for Bloom, usually meant love of the author, and no wonder he took it so hard when Roth (for one) stopped returning his letters.”
"영어는 열심히 공부해서 좋아하는 소설을 원서로도 읽어보고, 더 많은 정보를 얻기 위해 해외 언론의 기사를 원문으로 읽어보려는 노력도 하는데 선조들의 글을 생생히 원문 그대로 보기 위해 한문을 공부하려는 노력을 하지 않을 이유가 없었다."
“It seems that Dunne found something about the city strangely soothing — its transience and uniformity, the feeling that people there were living not in the moment but in the long aftermath of whatever the moment had been.”
"Especially when Rex hated a movie, his evisceration was so colorful that it made me want to see it. That was his gift: he could pan something so viciously that it felt unmissable."
"Lo que en una obra historiográfica podría criticarse como un exceso partidista pueril, en la ficción de Enrigue funciona gracias a su tono cómico."
"Why are we made to root for this family? It isn’t because of who they are as fully-rounded people with an inner-life, and it certainly isn’t because of their great moral virtue. It’s because they’re poor, and they’re highly competent."
"Money laundering is the thing that makes almost all crime possible, especially the crimes that states claim to be most concerned about: drugs and terrorism. The apparatus set up to combat it doesn’t work."
"Quand on nous dit « Route 66 », on pense cowboys, Indiens, hors-la-loi, diners au carrelage noir et blanc où les serveuses portent un uniforme fifties, musique sortie tout droit d’un vieux jukebox, panneaux Burma Shave dont les slogans littéraires."
"To borrow the distinction from M. H. Abrams’s book about the Romantic theory of literature — a work that Amis at one point knew well — he aspired to be a ‘lamp,’ not a ‘mirror.’"
"The idea of a road trip organised around trials and hearings at courthouses across the US had been in my head for years. Last autumn I found myself in a position to make it a reality."
“Le texte évite le double écueil de l’histoire conservatrice, prompte à réduire les communards à une foule de pillards criminels, et de celle qui, par sympathie idéologique, en fait de purs combattants de la liberté.”
"The puer aeternus tends to have both a superiority complex and an inferiority complex. Which is to say, he recognises — on some level — that he is a failure. But he often interprets this failure as evidence of his own superiority."
"Editors no longer possess the training required to distinguish stylistic pressure from stylistic effect. They speak of ‘world literature’ and its frictionless translation, with no comprehension that this is the gateway drug for machine-generated prose."