• When a contemporary person hears the word “fairy,” they imagine a diaphanous, minuscule creature: a few inches tall, butterfly wings, usually female, mostly helpless. The flower fairy was a construction of Victorian and Edwardian imaginations, thanks to writers like J.M. Barrie (the creator of Peter Pan), artists like the iconic Cicely Mary Barker, and famous hoaxes like the Cottingley fairies.
• But in the pre-industrial world, fairies posed a real threat in the minds of rural peasants, and belief in their existence could be found even among the clergy and the learned classes.
• Mr. Norrell’s “respectable,” post-Enlightenment wizardry, and Jonathan Strange’s wild, medieval mysticism
• When I first read the book as a teenager, what stood out to me was Clarke’s depiction of fairies. Her fairy characters were human-sized, ancient, and decidedly devious. They lived in a perpetual present and were largely incapable of empathy. Most of all, they possessed god-like powers over the natural world.
• introduced me to our own modern myth-making, and how our knowledge of Victorian imperialists and missionaries can cloud our understanding of medieval conversions. This has led to Internet-driven fantasies of covert, pagan worship extending centuries after Ireland and the U.K.’s Christianization in an attempt to explain fairy lore; these beliefs are often fueled by a fundamental misunderstanding of medieval Christianity and the nuances of popular faith
• In this series, we will explore it all: the roots of “godlings” or “small gods” in British folklore, the development of fairy myths in Celtic communities, and the rise of the post-industrial flower fairy.

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• he takes the reader through battlefields in World War I, suffocating colonialism in Africa, rattling subway cars in New York, and delirious asylums in the shadows of Paris. No fluff, no facade, no pretension. Just the author’s gritty reality as he experienced it.
• the side of himself he never showed in the novel: Céline’s vehement, vile anti-Semitism.
• The author followed his debut with Death on the Installment Plan, a novel about his youth. Apart from his one thousand references to jerking off—still not to scale, of course—there isn’t much to like about it. The critical response was poor.
• he penned Trifles for a Massacre in 1937 and School of Corpses one year later. These were not works of literature, but manic pamphlets overflowing with anti-Semitic sewage. The style of writing was so demented that prominent fascist figures in France, such as Robert Brasillach, needed to qualify their endorsement of him.
• the response from journalists, both right and left, was relatively muted. In part this is because the language was so scathing that many thought it was a work of irony. But the main reason many were quiet was because racism was extremely commonplace at the time. Just think of the words Hemingway uses to describe Robert Cohn, a Jewish friend of the protagonist in The Sun Also Rises. Or the way Miller rips into Jews at length in Tropic of Cancer. Or take any of the other thousands of examples.
• he managed to escape. First he went to Germany; then he went Copenhagen where the Danes locked him up for a year and a half at the request of the French government. Finally, in 1951, a frail, broken, and withered Céline made his way back to Paris. He would live there with his wife and pets until his death in 1961.
• It’s for Journey that they’re after me!
• It’s impossible to determine how much each factor, from childhood experiences to innate brain chemistry, leads one to madness. In Céline’s case, however, I’d wager that the hellish battles of World War I played a major role
• Both of his manifestos, and his willingness to align with Hitler’s evil empire, were aimed at preventing another colossal armed conflict.
• Who better for writers and readers to learn from and enjoy? Without Céline, there’d be no Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Kurt Vonnegut—too many others to count. Avoiding his genius, especially now that he is dead, is to squander a great treasure.

• Céline is my Proust! Even if his anti-Semitism made him an abject, intolerable person. To read him, I have to suspend my Jewish conscience, but I do it, because anti-Semitism isn’t at the heart of his books… Céline is a great liberator.

  Well said, Mr Roth

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• beauty work so integrated into the performance of femininity that it seems invisible or is incorrectly labeled “hygiene” – the baseline for those who want to avoid covert judgment and overt mocking. Removing body hair. Removing or lightening facial hair. Smoothing, straightening or curling the hair on your head. Grooming your eyebrows. Using whitening toothpaste or Crest White Strips or getting your teeth bleached at the dentist. Dieting and exercising to maintain a certain weight or shape, or dressing in a way that emphasizes or disguises a certain weight or shape.
• Then, there’s the effort of looking Presentable. Professional. Many women, particularly in the workplace, are expected to show up with clear or concealed skin, a layer of no-makeup makeup and manicured nails.
• Now we can get to the additional slog of becoming one of The Beautiful Ones, which has been cataloged to perfection by millions of #GetReadyWithMe and “That Girl” videos. A typical routine might involve a multi-step, anti-ageing skincare regimen (morning and night); a small arsenal of hair care products and styling tools; and a larger collection of color cosmetics for covering, highlighting, contouring, lining and glossing. Add facial massage (gua sha for the traditionalist, or NuFace for the tech enthusiast) and a collagen supplement (because, of course, beauty begins on the inside) for good measure. And that’s just daily!
• On a weekly basis, That Girl may reach for a series of non-invasive, at-home devices: LED light masks, high-frequency acne wands, facial steamers, pore extractors and microneedling tools. There are quarterly appointments for facials, hair dye or highlights, keratin treatments. Botox and filler are increasingly common. And don’t forget about plastic surgery: two of the most gorgeous girls in my college cohort got summer-after-high-school nose jobs.
• Making That seem “casual” also requires labor. See the recent rush of “high-maintenance to be low-maintenance” routines on TikTok, which celebrate the extreme effort that goes into appearing effortless: semi-permanent eyebrow and lip color tattoos, eyelash lifts and tints, full-coverage overnight face masks

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