Huw Nesbitt
@huwnesbitt
writer and editor huwnesbitt.xyz
Another curio about Scilla, a melancholic coastal town in Calabria, southern Italy, opposite Messina, Sicily, is that it is also famous for being one of the first places to have recorded—in English at least—a fata morgana. Waiting patiently for one last October, I left ultimately left disappointed.
Fun fact about Scilla of the Odyssean 'Scylla and Charybdis' variety: its beach is now home to a rockin' Beatles and Stones bar, which proudly features this portrait of messrs. Mick, Keif et al – an amusing tribute, should you ever find yourself marooned there, etc, etc.
Winced when I saw the new NYRB cover and thought it was a Paul McCartney special.
Glad to finally see Sátántangó at the cinema, but you can't help but worry that its newfound posthumous fame will only speed the revival of both the backward flat cap and the fedora.
Sartorially and sonically, Chas from Chas 'n' Dave was the true heir to McCartney's Abbey Road-era aesthetic.
For the @thetls.bsky.social this week, I wrote about the—brilliant! troubled! eccentric! disgraceful! bonkers!—French writer JK Huysmans, author of À Rebours/Against Nature, and the idle pleasures of style in fin de siècle literature. www.the-tls.co.uk/lives/biogra...
Quite chuffed to have a page in the latest Lit Review with a piece on Andrey Platonov's utopian Soviet satire, Chevengur. literaryreview.co.uk/first-as-tra...