Welcome back to The Span, the world’s best source of recent culture writing from Defector. This week, it’s all about strange and unreal places. We’ve got the vaguely post-apocalyptic University in The Vivisectors, the made-up fields of a made-up baseball league, Kane Parsons’ ominous Backrooms, and the most uncanny place of all: Love Island.
Here are some cool blogs from Defector:
I Finally Understand Why I’m Obsessed With ‘Love Island’
It is a curse to be so hot in your youth, and the curse is that everything is easy for you except empathy.
‘The Vivisectors’ Is A Brilliant Novel In Any Reality
The ideas on display in The Vivisectors, the things that Williams wrestles with, are simultaneously ancient and bleeding-edge contemporary.
‘Backrooms’ Doesn’t Quite Capture The Weirdness Of The Originals
There’s a disconnect between Parsons’ vision and the demands of the film-shaped container he’s working within.
There Is A Whole World In ‘The Universal Baseball Association, Inc. J. Henry Waugh, Prop.’
Sycamore Flynn. Toothbrush Terrigan. Jaybird Wall.
Here are some cool blogs from elsewhere on the internet:
Granta: Melanie Klein Among the U-Boats
Psychoanalysis starts from fantasy, not reality. This has always been a hard pill to swallow.
From now until August, Love Island USA fans will have six hours of television to watch every single week. Still, that might not be enough for some people. I have watched so much Love Island in the last year, but somehow I also managed to read two books about it. I recommend them both:
I spent last weekend reading Anna Peele’s new book about Love Island. Peele has covered the show as an entertainment reporter for years, and has interviews with some of the show’s biggest contestants (Rob Rausch, Leah Kateb, Ariana Maddix, Maura Higgins, etc) and biggest fans (Charli XCX). Peele visits the villa and writes with care, humor, and empathy about what it might be like to live there. It changed the way I think about the show, and my own understanding of why I watch it.
I have thought about Aisling Rawle’s novel almost every week since I read it last summer. The Compound is fiction, but clearly based on the extensive amount of Love Island UK that Rawle (who is Irish) has watched. The reality show in The Compound challenges contestants to stay as long as possible in their villa, which is shown on television every day, to compromise their gameplay for sponsor money, and to do all of it while trying to fall in love. It’s violent, strange, and an incredibly fun read.