the last book I ever read (Cousin Bazilio by Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz, excerpt seven)

from Cousin Bazilio by Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz (Translated by Margaret Jull Costa):

He exhaled a vast cloud of smoke and said darkly:

‘That house is turning into a veritable sink of iniquity!

‘Into a what‚ Senhor Paula?’

‘A sink of iniquity‚ Senhora Helena‚ it means “a brothel”.’

And the scandalised patriot strode away.

the last book I ever read (Cousin Bazilio by Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz, excerpt six)

from Cousin Bazilio by Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz (Translated by Margaret Jull Costa):

The house itself had a gentle‚ old-fashioned air: in the visiting room‚ which was only rarely used‚ the vast sofa and armchairs had the stiff appearance of the days of Dom José I‚ and the faded red damask upholstery was reminiscent of the grandeur of a decadent court; the dining room walls were hung with engravings depicting Napoleon’s first battles‚ all of which included a white horse standing on a hill towards which a hussar was galloping at breakneck speed‚ brandishing a sabre. Sebastião slept his dreamless seven hours’ sleep in an ancient bed made from carved blackwood; and in a dark little room‚ beneath the subtle sounds of mice scrabbling in the rafters‚ on a chest of drawers with gold metal handles‚ there stood‚ as he had for years‚ the patron saint of the house‚ St Sebastian‚ bristling with arrows and struggling against the cords that bound him to the tree trunk‚ and lit by an oil lamp carefully tended by Tia Joana.

the last book I ever read (Cousin Bazilio by Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz, excerpt five)

from Cousin Bazilio by Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz (Translated by Margaret Jull Costa):

Dona Felicidade was reading Rocambole. So many people had told her how wonderful it was! But it was so convoluted! She got lost‚ she forgot the plot … In fact‚ she was going to abandon it altogether‚ having noticed that reading seemed to exacerbate her indigestion.

‘Do you suffer much from indigestion?’ asked Bazilio out of polite interest.

Dona Felicidade launched into an account of her dyspepsia. Bazilio recommended using ice. And he congratulated her‚ because‚ lately‚ illnesses of the stomach had become positively chic. He asked after hers and requested more details.

the last book I ever read (Cousin Bazilio by Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz, excerpt four)

from Cousin Bazilio by Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz (Translated by Margaret Jull Costa):

Ernestinho entered the room‚ taking short‚ rapid steps‚ and flung his arms around Jorge.

‘I heard that you were leaving‚ cousin Jorge. How are you‚ cousin Luiza?’

He was Jorge’s cousin. A slight‚ listless figure‚ whose slender limbs‚ still barely formed‚ gave him the fragile appearance of a schoolboy; his sparse moustache‚ thick with wax‚ stood up at either end with points sharp as needles; and in his gaunt face‚ beneath fleshy lids‚ his eyes looked dull and lethargic. He was wearing patent leather shoes with large bows on them; and dangling from his watch chain over his white waistcoat was a huge gold medallion bearing a bas relief of enamelled fruits and flowers. He lived with an actress from the Ginásio–a scrawny‚ sallow-skinned woman with very curly hair and a tubercular look about her–and he wrote for the theatre. He had done translations‚ written two original one-act plays and a comedy full of puns. Lately he had been rehearsing a longer work at the Teatro das Variedades‚ a drama in five acts‚ entitled Honour and Passion. It was his first serious play. With his pockets stuffed with manuscripts‚ he was now constantly having to deal with journalists and actors‚ buying coffees and cognacs for everyone‚ his hat awry‚ his face pale‚ telling all and sundry: ‘This life will be the death of me!’ He wrote out of a deep love of Art‚ for he was an employee in the Customs Office‚ with a good salary and five hundred mil réis in government bonds. It was Art‚ he said‚ that was obliging him to spend money: for the ball scene in Honour and Passion‚ he had‚ at his own expense‚ ordered patent leather boots for the leading man and for the actor playing the father. His family name was Ledesma.

the last book I ever read (Cousin Bazilio by Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz, excerpt three)

from Cousin Bazilio by Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz (Translated by Margaret Jull Costa):

That night‚ they were talking about the Alentejo‚ about the treasures to be found in Évora‚ about the Chapel of Bones‚ when the Councillor came in with his coat over his arm. He placed it carefully on a chair in one corner and then made his prim‚ officious way over to Luiza‚ took both her hands in his and said in lofty‚ sonorous tones:

‘I hope I find my dear‚ good Senhora Dona Luiza in perfect health. Jorge told me as much. So glad! So very glad!’

He was tall‚ thin and dressed all in black‚ with a high collar tight around his neck. His face‚ with its pointed chin‚ grew wider and wider until it reached his vast‚ gleaming bald pate‚ which had a slight dent on top; the fringe of hair‚ that formed a kind of collar around the back of his head‚ from ear to ear‚ was dyed a lustrous black‚ and this only made his bald head‚ by contrast‚ appear even glossier; he did not‚ however‚ dye his abundant‚ greying moustache‚ which grew down around the corners of his mouth. He was extremely pale and never removed his dark glasses. He had a cleft in his chin and large‚ protruding ears.

the last book I ever read (Cousin Bazilio by Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz, excerpt two)

from Cousin Bazilio by Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz (Translated by Margaret Jull Costa):

Dona Felicidade de Noronha would normally arrive at nine o’clock. She would come in‚ arms outstretched‚ smiling her broad‚ kindly smile. She was fifty years old and very plump‚ and since she suffered from dyspepsia and wind‚ she could not‚ at that hour‚ wear corsets and so her opulent figure remained unconstrained. There were a few grey threads in her slightly curly hair‚ but she had a smooth‚ round‚ full face and the soft‚ dull white complexion of a nun; beneath her fleshy eyelids‚ the skin around which was already lined‚ shone two dark‚ moist‚ very mobile pupils; and the few soft hairs at the corners of her mouth looked like two faint circumflexes drawn with the finest of quills. She had been Luiza’s mother’s closest friend and had got into the habit of visiting ‘little Luiza’ on Sundays. Born into a noble family–the Noronhas of Redondela–and with influential relatives in Lisbon‚ she was rather devout and often to be seen at the convent church of the Incarnation.

the last book I ever read (Cousin Bazilio by Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz, excerpt one)

from Cousin Bazilio by Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz (Translated by Margaret Jull Costa):

Leopoldina was twenty-seven. She was not tall‚ but she was considered to have the best figure of any woman in Lisbon. She always wore very close-fitting dresses that emphasised and clung to every curve of her body‚ with narrow skirts gathered in at the back. Men rolled their eyes and said: ‘She’s like a statue‚ a Venus!’ She had the full‚ softly rounded shoulders of an artist’s model; and one sensed‚ even beneath the bodice of her dress‚ that her breasts had the firm‚ harmonious form of two lovely lemon halves; the luscious‚ ample line of her hips and certain voluptuous movements of her waist attracted men’s lustful glances. Her face‚ though‚ was somewhat coarse; there was something too fleshly about her flared nostrils; and her fine skin‚ with its warm‚ olive glow‚ bore the marks of faded smallpox scars. Her greatest beauty lay in her intensely dark eyes‚ liquid and languid‚ and their very long lashes.

the last book I ever read (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, excerpt fourteen)

from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

“I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill of real pleasure, Dorian,” interrupted Lord Henry. “But I can finish your idyll for you. You gave her good advice and broke her heart. That was the beginning of your reformation.”

“Harry, you are horrible! You mustn’t say these dreadful things. Hetty’s heart is not broken. Of course, she cried and all that. But there is no disgrace upon her. She can live, like Perdita, in her garden of mint and marigold.”

“And weep over a faithless Florizel,” said Lord Henry, laughing, as he leaned back in his chair. “My dear Dorian, you have the most curiously boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really content now with any one of her own rank? I suppose she will be married some day to a rough carter or a grinning ploughman. Well, the fact of having met you, and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she will be wretched. From a moral point of view, I cannot say that I think much of your great renunciation. Even as a beginning, it is poor. Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn’t floating at the present moment in some starlit mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies round her, like Ophelia?”

the last book I ever read (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, excerpt thirteen)

from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

“Culture and corruption,” echoed Dorian. “I have known something of both. It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found together. For I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I think I have altered.”

the last book I ever read (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, excerpt twelve)

from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

“Isn’t he incorrigible?” cried Dorian, leaning forward in his chair.

“I hope so,” said his hostess, laughing. “But really, if you all worship Madame de Ferrol in this ridiculous way, I shall have to marry again so as to be in the fashion.”

“You will never marry again, Lady Narborough,” broke in Lord Henry. “You were far too happy. When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.”

the last book I ever read (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, excerpt eleven)

from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic communion, and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attraction for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered dalmatic, slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled, lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the “panis caelestis,” the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host into the chalice and smiting his breast for his sins. The fuming censers that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers had their subtle fascination for him. As he passed out, he used to look with wonder at the black confessionals and long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and listen to men and women whispering through the worn grating the true story of their lives.

But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual development by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of mistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable for the sojourn of a night, or for a few hours of a night in which there are no stars and the moon is in travail. Mysticism, with its marvellous power of making common things strange to us, and the subtle antinomianism that always seems to accompany it, moved him for a season; and for a season he inclined to the materialistic doctrines of the Darwinismus movement in Germany, and found a curious pleasure in tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the brain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of the absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions, morbid or healthy, normal or diseased. Yet, as has been said of him before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He felt keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment. He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal.

the last book I ever read (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, excerpt ten)

from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are conscious of sharing with the less highly organized forms of existence. But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic. As he looked back upon man moving through history, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been surrendered! and to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape; Nature, in her wonderful irony, driving out the anchorite to feed with the wild animals of the desert and giving to the hermit the beasts of the field as his companions.

Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism that was to recreate life and to save it from that harsh uncomely puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was to have its service of the intellect, certainly, yet it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a moment.

the last book I ever read (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, excerpt nine)

from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration that was in store for the fair face on the canvas. Once, in boyish mockery of Narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips that now smiled so cruelly at him. Morning after morning he had sat before the portrait wondering at its beauty, almost enamoured of it, as it seemed to him at times. Was it to alter now with every mood to which he yielded? Was it to become a monstrous and loathsome thing, to be hidden away in a locked room, to be shut out from the sunlight that had so often touched to brighter gold the waving wonder of its hair? The pity of it! the pity of it!

the last book I ever read (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, excerpt eight)

from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

The lad frowned. “I don’t like that explanation, Harry,” he rejoined, “but I am glad you don’t think I am heartless. I am nothing of the kind. I know I am not. And yet I must admit that this thing that has happened does not affect me as it should. It seems to me to be simply like a wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible beauty of a Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by which I have not been wounded.”

“It is an interesting question,” said Lord Henry, who found an exquisite pleasure in playing on the lad’s unconscious egotism, “an extremely interesting question. I fancy that the true explanation is this: It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us. In the present case, what is it that has really happened? Some one has killed herself for love of you. I wish that I had ever had such an experience. It would have made me in love with love for the rest of my life. The people who have adored me—there have not been very many, but there have been some—have always insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me. They have become stout and tedious, and when I meet them, they go in at once for reminiscences. That awful memory of woman! What a fearful thing it is! And what an utter intellectual stagnation it reveals! One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.”

the last book I ever read (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, excerpt seven)

from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

“Harry, you are dreadful! I don’t know why I like you so much.”

“You will always like me, Dorian,” he replied. “Will you have some coffee, you fellows? Waiter, bring coffee, and fine-champagne, and some cigarettes. No, don’t mind the cigarettes—I have some. Basil, I can’t allow you to smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.”

the last book I ever read (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, excerpt six)

from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

“Women are wonderfully practical,” murmured Lord Henry, “much more practical than we are. In situations of that kind we often forget to say anything about marriage, and they always remind us.”

the last book I ever read (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, excerpt five)

from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

“Never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair, Dorian,” he said after a few puffs.

“Why, Harry?”

“Because they are so sentimental.”

“But I like sentimental people.”

“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”

the last book I ever read (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, excerpt four)

from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

“How sad it is!” murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. “How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”

the last book I ever read (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, excerpt three)

from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth’s passionate purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. No wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him.

the last book I ever read (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, excerpt two)

from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

“I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won’t argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very fond of you?”

The painter considered for a few moments. “He likes me,” he answered after a pause; “I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.”

the last book I ever read (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, excerpt one)

from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his heavy, opium-tainted cigarette. “Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.”

“I know you will laugh at me,” he replied, “but I really can’t exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it.”

the last book I ever read (Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe, excerpt thirteen)

from Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe:

So O’Connor wrote her book and now I’ve written mine. In between I managed to string miles and miles of tin cans together until they reached all the way across the ocean. When we Zoomed, I had so much to ask her, so many things that I wanted to say and couldn’t say. After we went through all the standard interview questions, which she answered coherently and candidly, O’Connor and I spoke at some length about Dylan and his influence. At one point she started reciting some of his song titles, which I started scribbling down on a Post-it note.

As she ticked them off, she looked off to the side and her speech slowed. She seemed to be losing herself for a moment, as though she were reliving something, rather than just listing titles or remembering songs. After the interview, while I was waiting for her to send me the recording she’d made of her side of our conversation, I put together a playlist. The next day I popped on my headphones and pulled it up as I started vacuuming my house—a chore I’d long neglected as I prepped for the call.

the last book I ever read (Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe, excerpt twelve)

from Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe:

Born in 1958, the same year as Michael Jackson, Prince broke through rock’s racist barrier at roughly the same time. His first attempt, like Jackson’s, was not successful. Although he was personally invited by Mick Jagger to open for the Rolling Stones at the LA Coliseum in 1981, when Prince took the stage in a see-through jacket, thigh-high boots, and black bikini pants, the headlining act’s 90,000-plus audience was not receptive.

Even though Prince’s setlist leaned toward the rock spectrum of his repertoire, with songs like “Bambi” and “When You Were Mine,” the audience booed, shouting racist and homophobic rants, then started pelting Prince and his band with food and bottles. Promoter Bill Graham jumped onstage, trying to calm the audience, but to no avail. By the fourth song, Prince was forced to leave the stage, understandably distraught by the experience.

the last book I ever read (Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe, excerpt eleven)

from Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe:

If you’re exhausted and depressed by what I’ve just told you about O’Connor’s life post-1992, imagine what it must have been like to live it on repeat. As Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore once observed, it was impossible to name another woman who could generate the kind of publicity O’Connor did over the years without taking her clothes off. But it was never the good kind of publicity, the kind that would have helped her to revive and sustain a musical career on her own terms. Fifteen years after SNL, O’Connor was selling lots of newspapers, but not records.

the last book I ever read (Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe, excerpt ten)

from Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe:

Robert Christgau had grossly underestimated O’Connor when, in 1990, he dismissed her as a “folkie Madonna.” Jon Pareles was the one who had it right when he noted that for all of Madonna’s attempts to shock with sex, “O’Connor [had] stole[ n] the spotlight with one photograph of a fully-clothed man.”

Pareles pointed out that if a male artist or band had torn up a picture of the pope, it would have scarcely made a ripple. Male rebels were lionized, while women were crucified. But more than simply seeing herself as a rebel, O’Connor saw herself as a specific kind of antihero who believed herself to be the “property of Jesus,” in the mold of the Christian-era Bob Dylan.

It was Dylan whom O’Connor most emulated, whose music had sustained her through the difficult years of her childhood and adolescence. Dylan knew what it was like to really be misunderstood, rejected, and criticized for who he was—for everything from his appearance to the sound of his voice to his right to make the kind of music he wanted to.

the last book I ever read (Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe, excerpt nine)

from Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe:

In that resistance O’Connor found a raison d’être. She was finally being recognized as the protest singer she had always wanted to be. She knew that her willingness to express herself authentically, and without the slightest concern for professional self-preservation, made her dangerous, but also powerful. All Andrew Dice Clay could do in the face of it was to call her “the bald chick.” All Frank Sinatra could do was to call her “a stupid broad.” Those were just names. She’d experienced and survived far worse than that.

the last book I ever read (Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe, excerpt eight)

from Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe:

When audiences first heard that “Nothing Compares 2 U” was penned by Prince, many mistakenly thought O’Connor was just another of his many protégés, and many still do. In fact, “Nothing Compares 2 U” wasn’t even known as a Prince song when she put it out, and it was never a major song in his repertoire. It was first recorded and released by one of his side projects, The Family, in 1985, and went absolutely nowhere. This was the same year O’Connor signed her recording contract with Ensign, before anyone outside of Ireland knew who she was.

Prince didn’t release his own version of “Nothing Compares 2 U” as a single until 1993—as a duet with Rosie Gaines, who actually was one of his protégés. This was three years after O’Connor put it on the map, it blew up, and it became her signature song. Prince played no part in mentoring her career, her decision to sing the song, its arrangement, its recording, or its release. All he did was cash the check for the songwriting royalties, a business transaction that entailed the personal involvement of neither party.

the last book I ever read (Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe, excerpt seven)

from Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe:

At the same time, she was scheduled to perform “Mandinka,” at the ceremony. Her late-night appearance on Letterman aside, this would be her first exposure on primetime US network TV. There would be tens of millions of people watching, a chance for her to make her mark without any of the awkwardness she experienced in her interviews, without having to slog through dumb questions about her haircut or her days as a kiss-o-gram girl.

Had she been careerist, O’Connor could have played it safe that night, lip-syncing her way through her song and ending with a gracious smile and a bow. Instead, she used her appearance to call attention to inequities in the industry. As a fuck-you to the label heads, O’Connor wore her son Jake’s sleep suit tied behind her waist—a subtle gesture that audiences might have missed. But they could not miss that she performed with an enormous gold Public Enemy logo shaved into the side of her close-cropped hair, a symbol of her solidarity with rap artists who had been erased from the program.

the last book I ever read (Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe, excerpt six)

from Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe:

To promote her debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, O’Connor had tried the traditional route, traveling across Europe and sitting for upwards of ten traditional press interviews a day, while also caring for her son, Jake, who was only a few months old. She was exhausted and painfully self-conscious, and, unlike Madonna, terrible at self-promotion.

But she was excellent at expressing herself through her music, an asset not lost on John Maybury, an edgy young director who got his start working with the experimental filmmaker Derek Jarman. Whereas the first music videos were low-budget affairs, they had since become high-concept films with sophisticated plots and storylines, something Maybury could work with.

When he met up with O’Connor in Dublin to direct the music video for her lead single, “Troy,” Maybury recognized that her look was central to her brand. Rather than concealing it, he suggested that she shave her buzzcut hair completely, then filmed her set against a pitch-black background, and then again in an open field that was deeply saturated in black and white.

the last book I ever read (Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe, excerpt five)

from Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe:

He and Quincy Jones worked their way through more than seven hundred demos for his next solo studio album, Thriller. They consciously brought in a mix of musical genres, looking to transcend radio format boundaries and reach the broadest possible audience. When they got to “Beat It,” Jones encouraged Jackson to work with a rock icon. After Pete Townshend turned down the request, Jackson tapped Eddie Van Halen, who agreed to play guitar on the track and ended up assisting Jackson on the arrangement. Whether or not Van Halen’s blistering solos set a monitor speaker on fire during the recording sessions, as legend has it, his contributions did stamp “Beat It” as legit for rock stations.

It’s notable that Van Halen wasn’t paid for his work, nor did he initially take credit for it. He’s said to have asked for only a case of beer and a dance lesson from Jackson as compensation. This has often been described as an expression of his modesty, or, more practically, his desire not to violate the terms of his band’s noncompete agreement. But it’s at least as likely that he was reluctant to be seen as crossing the line into R&B.

Van Halen could not have known then that after its November 1982 release, Thriller would go on to be the first major label album to debut worldwide, the first to be marketed to multiple radio formats simultaneously, and the first to be worked for a marathon stretch of two years, with seven songs being pushed as singles rather than the usual two or three.

the last book I ever read (Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe, excerpt four)

from Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe:

But in 1977, a decade into its run, Wenner declared San Francisco a “cultural backwater” and moved Rolling Stone’s operations to New York, a sign that the self-professed voice of the antiestablishment was comfortable with becoming the establishment. The magazine was no longer able to lay claim to leading or even reflecting the zeitgeist; bands began to sell the covers rather than the other way around. As its core readership aged and rock’s glory began to fade, Rolling Stone expanded its coverage to include A-list celebrities, entertainment, and pop culture.

the last book I ever read (Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe, excerpt three)

from Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe:

When the Grammys were over, O’Connor returned to Ireland and brought Jake’s sleep suit to her mother’s grave, where she rested it on her tombstone. In her memoir she described this gesture as bringing her mother a “souvenir” from the show, but my gut tells me that it’s more like a sacrifice—a memento of loss symbolic of the grandchild she would never meet, the daughter’s success she would never share. 9 The image is beautiful, and heartbreaking, and, in a way, representative of who O’Connor was: not fearless or flawless, but wounded and courageous.

the last book I ever read (Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe, excerpt two)

from Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe:

When I was six years old, I thought the coolest girl in the world was Leather Tuscadero on Happy Days, having no idea that she was played by an even cooler real-life girl, Suzi Quatro (both girls were way cooler than Fonzie). Two years later, Leather Tuscadero was supplanted by the sunglasses-donning, cigarette-smoke-blowing, trash-talking Betty Rizzo. I vividly remember seeing Grease in a second-run movie theater with a couple of girls from the neighborhood. They were swooning for Danny, but I was tuning in to another frequency altogether.

When Rizzo started into “There are Worse Things I Could Do” and got to the part where she belts out, “I don’t steal and I don’t lie, but I can feel and I can cry, a fact I’ll bet you never knew, but to cry in front of you, that’s the worst thing I could do . . .” I had to bolt for the bathroom stall, where I bawled my eyes out, hurting for the both of us, isolated and alone.

the last book I ever read (Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe, excerpt one)

from Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe:

When he arrived, they were in the middle of recording a song called “Troy,” a hauntingly mesmerizing account of love and betrayal, set in a lush bed of symphonic strings. O’Connor’s voice shifts from sorrow to fury and back again, referencing the slaying of dragons, the rising of the phoenix from the flame.

One of the lines in the refrain, “There is no other Troy for you to burn,” was drawn from W. B. Yeats’s poem “No Second Troy.” It was published in 1916 for his beloved Maud Gonne, a revolutionary for Irish independence and women’s rights, who had shattered him by spurning his affection.

the last book I ever read (The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas, excerpt nine)

from The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas:

On the phone, I told my mother that we were assembling a portfolio for a loan application.

I can’t believe it, my mother said. I would never have expected it of the two of you.

Our families had a foundational myth of me and Mama that was different from our own. My mother believed that our love for each other had something to do with the way that we tolerated each other’s mess and procrastination, even enabled it. For my father it was the fact that we lived so modestly, with a great tolerance for discomfort. He couldn’t understand why our couch was so narrow, our bathroom so cramped, our meals so meager. For Manu’s parents, we were united in our love of old things. The first time they visited us in the city, soon after we’d moved into our apartment—which we’d furnished with a farm table, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, and a record player—they said that the place was like the village homes of a century ago. It wasn’t a compliment. To them, old things did not have the charm they did for us. Aged objects pointed to hardship, to ways of life they did not need to romanticize, because they had experienced them firsthand. Their own home resembled the lobby of a three-star hotel.

the last book I ever read (The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas, excerpt eight)

from The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas:

When Ravi arrived, he greeted Lena briefly, before joining another conversation. Lena came up to me.

You’re such a good housewife, she said.

It was the sort of comment she and I would have laughed about, but I didn’t find it funny after a day of cooking. In fact, I was finding it harder to laugh with Lena. She could probably sense this because she was all the more sarcastic.

the last book I ever read (The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas, excerpt seven)

from The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas:

The apartment was old, but more charming than decrepit. Wooden beams crossed the living room ceiling; there was a tiled fireplace in the bedroom, though is was out of use. Still, we could fill the hearth with candles. I had already made a mental arrangement: many white ones of different sizes. I could suddenly see us there with our own couch and dishes and towels. I wondered whether this was how some women felt about the prospect of having a child: that they could easily imagine a space for it.

the last book I ever read (The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas, excerpt six)

from The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas:

I’d planned to go home once my grandmother was out of the hospital, but then I realized that I couldn’t leave the city: our residency permits had expired and our new ones still had not arrived.

Don’t worry about it, my mother said, each time I apologized for not being there. We have everything sorted out.

That made me even sadder, as if my arrival had never been expected and they’d never really counted on me to help.

the last book I ever read (The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas, excerpt five)

from The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas:

The sun had set by the time we got on our bikes. We took the scenic route back, the wind biting our cheeks. It started to rain softly and the lights of lampposts blurred in front of us. We passed many neighborhoods, a tour of our various years in the city: the year we moved, the year we had no friends and went to every museum, the year we met Ravi and ate out with him almost daily.

That night, when we’d changed for bed and Manu set on the floor rolling a joint, I could barely recall anything from the brunch.

Did you have a good day? I asked.

Great, he said. I loved our ride back.

It might go on my list—the scenic bike ride. But I didn’t know whether it was sturdy enough to stand its ground, the two of us biking around a foreign city.

the last book I ever read (The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas, excerpt four)

from The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas:

Tereza called to ask whether we would like to come with her to a concert; she had extra tickets from a charity she had been a member of for years. The program was Brahms and Dvořák and Paganini, she said, none of which sounded very interesting to us. We told her we’d be happy to go.

the last book I ever read (The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas, excerpt three)

from The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas:

The following morning when Sara woke up, Manu and I were already in the living room, drinking coffee. It pleased me that Sara felt comfortable enough to sleep in. Somehow this seemed like a sign that our lives were real.

the last book I ever read (The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas, excerpt two)

from The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas:

She had been married and divorced three times. I knew this because Ravi and I had fetched out every item of personal history we could from the internet, and photos of the Dame as a young woman, looking fierce and intelligent, even at the risk of eclipsing her beauty. Years ago, she’d made a documentary about a group of women—artists, cooks, socialites, pigeon-feeders—whom she filmed in their bedrooms and studios and on the street. I loved this film, its humor and stubbornness. The way it didn’t smooth out the women’s madness. There were scenes of the object cluttering their homes, slow shots of their thickened hands, their creased faces like lines of a poem. On-screen, the women were restored to a state of dignity that might have been refused them in their lives. I had always thought that the film was a kind of self-portrait, a collage of what the Dame valued in herself and how she wanted to be seen.

the last book I ever read (The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas, excerpt one)

from The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas:

I mumbled in agreement, because I didn’t want her to think I was strange. This was a fear of mine: that my family would think I was becoming a stranger.

Instead, I told my grandmother I had a photograph of her on my desk. The one of her reading under a tree.

I was sixteen years old, she said. I was the best writer in class. No one could write an essay like I did. And I was awarded a prize for my singing.

She sighed, meaning that she had wasted her life.

the last book I ever read (The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell, excerpt fourteen)

from The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell by Alex Fernandes:

The 6 November meeting of the Revolutionary Council is the flame that ignites the tinderbox the country seems set atop. Prime Minister Pinheiro de Azevedo demands action that allows him to govern under the current state of anarchy that prevails in Lisbon. One of the decisions taken that evening, then, is to silence the bombastic and provocative Rádio Renascença once and for all. At 04:30 on 7 November, under orders of the chief of staff of the Air Force, Morais da Silva, a squad of paratroopers and police sets off a bomb against the antennae of the occupied radio station, taking it off the air. The action sets off a wave of protests among the increasingly politicised and radicalised paratroopers who, since their involvement in 11 March, have veered progressively more to the left, and feel once again as though they are being tricked, used as fodder for reactionary aims. On 8 November, General Morais da Silva and Vasco Lourenço visit Tancos to try and justify the action and calm the paratrooper regiment, but the meeting is disastrous–a soldier takes the microphone and calls the general ‘bourgeois’, and there is a mass walkout to a parallel meeting. It’s an embarrassing display of insubordination that leads Vasco Lourenço to turn to his colleague and state, ‘I’m never coming anywhere with you again.’ That very day, in protest at the level of discipline in the lower ranks, 123 officers walk out of the Tancos Paratrooper School and leave it under the command of sergeants and privates. Soon after, the occupants of the school pass a motion repudiating the bombing of Renascença. On 11 November, two of those sergeants arrive at the COPCON headquarters and offer their units to Otelo, in exchange for COPCON’s support in the paratroopers’ struggle. Otelo agrees; soon after, there is a confrontation between the COPCON commander and the Air Force chief of staff, when Morais e Selva begins the process of dissolving the paratrooper units altogether.

the last book I ever read (The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell, excerpt thirteen)

from The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell by Alex Fernandes:

Much as with both 25 April and 28 September, the power of radio proves decisive in shaping the day. As the details of the coup attempt become known, Rádio Renascença–a station whose workers had been on strike for twenty-two days–breaks its silence and opens up its frequencies to Rádio Clube Português–and there is an immediate appeal to the population to mobilise. Colonel João Varela Gomes, through his role at the head of the 5th Division, breaks protocol and also begins calling for mass mobilisations through the radio. It’s partly due to this that by the time the paratroopers surrender to RAL1, the area outside the artillery compound is surrounded by vocal members of the population, chanting ‘The people are not with you’ and convincing the soldiers that they’re on the wrong side. And just like the last coup attempt, barricades go up on the outskirts of Lisbon, set up by civilians hoping to stop any units that might be on their way to the capital. In Tancos, Spínola realises, as late afternoon rolls around, that his knowledge of what forces he had on the ground was mistaken–his coup has failed. The general, defeated, bundles his family and numerous officers into helicopters and makes a swift escape to Spain. Other conspirators make their way to the Spanish border by car, or are otherwise detained by COPCON forces, or hand themselves in. In the latter case, Major Mensurado, commander of the paratrooper units that laid siege to RAL1, leaves his men licking their wounds after their surrender and travels to COPCON. It’s abundantly clear that the paratrooper regiments were tricked–they had been sent to RAL1 on the false information that the unit was involved in a vast conspiracy of left-wing slaughter, and did so believing the orders were being sent through the proper channels, through the chiefs of staff and even General Costa Gomes himself.

the last book I ever read (The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell, excerpt twelve)

from The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell by Alex Fernandes:

In the chaos of the day, the exact timeline of events is murky. There are conflicting reports on exactly when the population surged on the PIDE headquarters, and reports of gunfire throughout the day and of emergency cars driving wounded civilians away from the action in the mid-afternoon, likely the result of various failed popular incursions on the building, pushed away by the violent response. It’s generally accepted, however, that at around 20: 00, a group of around six hundred civilians from Terreiro do Paço congregate once again in front of number 20 António Maria Cardoso, baying for the heads of those inside, with shouts of ‘Assassins!’ and ‘Death to PIDE’. PIDE’s first response is to set loose an attack dog, which the crowd manages to scare off with sticks and rocks. Then, paving stones are prised from the ground, the mob putting their hands to anything they can hurl at the building, lashing out in hatred. And then–at around 20: 10–agents of the political police open fire from the upper windows and balconies, into the centre of the crowd, following a direct order from Fernando Silva Pais. The bullets meet bodies, dozens of them, as the civilians scatter and dive. They kill Fernando Carvalho Guesteira, seventeen years old, a waiter. They kill José James Hartley Barneto, thirty-eight, father of four, a clerk at the National Confectioners’ Guild. They kill João Guilherme Rego Arruda,* twenty, a second-year philosophy student. And they kill Fernando Luís Barreiros dos Reis, a 23-year-old off-duty soldier who happened to be taking a holiday in Lisbon on the day of the coup, and who, joining his voice with the civilians around him, becomes the first and only military death of 25 April. The hail of PIDE bullets doesn’t discriminate–the lucky ones are the men and women who dive behind parked cars or into alleys, taking grazes or even a few bullets in the back or even coming out unscathed altogether. In addition to the four dead, the PIDE bullets injure upwards of forty-five more–the vast majority in their late teens and early twenties.

the last book I ever read (The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell, excerpt eleven)

from The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell by Alex Fernandes:

In her song ‘Cheira a Lisboa’, Amália Rodrigues, Portugal’s undisputed queen of Fado, sings that Lisbon smells of the coffee shops of Rossio. This early afternoon, just gone noon, Rossio smells of gasoline and blistered asphalt as Maia’s convoy enters the square and begins to veer left, trying to fit its enormous frames into the narrow Rua do Carmo. The square seems to vibrate with the rumble of the M47 tanks. Maia spots a column of infantrymen from the 1st Infantry Regiment, packed into the backs of transport trucks, rolling into the square from the other end. He exits his jeep to speak with the commander. It’s another push from the government–they’ve been sent to stop Maia’s column, but the commander says they’re with the revolutionaries. Maia orders them to follow along, and the convoy gains several dozen more heavily armed soldiers. Celeste Caeiro is here now, among the crowd, clutching her bunch of carnations in her hands, her eyes wide as she watches her city taken over by machines of war she’s only ever seen on grainy footage of military parades. One of the M47 tanks passes a few feet in front of her, and the man atop it looks down, smiling.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asks the man, with a sudden surge of courage.

‘A revolution!’ he replies.

the last book I ever read (The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell, excerpt ten)

from The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell by Alex Fernandes:

On the morning of 25 April 1974, Celeste Caeiro is on her way to work. Celeste is forty years old–short, with a tight mop of greying hair and thick round glasses, she heads from her tiny downtown apartment to the self-service restaurant Sir on the ground floor of the Franjinhas, where she works as a cleaner. Celeste knows the owner is preparing a celebration of sorts–the restaurant first opened exactly one year ago. The cunning marketing strategy for today, she’s heard, is to offer gentlemen customers a free glass of port, and give ladies a carnation. The flowers arrived yesterday, dozens of large bunches in anticipation of the lunch rush. As she arrives, Celeste is surprised that the restaurant is dark, the door closed, with no sign of the cheerful decorations she was expecting. She pokes her head in and sees the owner hunched by the radio, which is tuned to Rádio Clube Português, the room strewn with large unopened bunches of red and white carnations. His expression is grim. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asks.

‘We won’t be opening today, Celeste.’ He gestures at the radio. ‘Something’s happening in the centre, some sort of military operation. They’re telling people to stay home.’ They stand for a few moments in the dark restaurant, listening as the radio plays the military tunes the MFA has lined up for the gaps between their missives. ‘You’d better go home too, Celeste,’ the owner says. ‘Here–take some of these with you.’ He gestures at one of the large piles of flowers strewn around him. Celeste grabs a bunch and leaves, facing the notion of an unexpected day off, curious about the events that have caused it. She walks to the metro station at Marquês de Pombal and travels two stops down, to Restauradores.

the last book I ever read (The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell, excerpt nine)

from The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell by Alex Fernandes:

Dina holds it together enough to crack a joke. ‘You mean we’re not going to the opera tomorrow?’ He’d forgotten. They have tickets to La Traviata. It’ll have to be for another time.

Otelo kisses his sleeping eight-year-old son on the head, and embraces his wife one final time. ‘Until Friday, my love. I’ll be here to have lunch with you.’ He exits the house with his uniform in a bag. He remembers, too late, he’s left his pistol behind. Walking back into the house, he sees his wife on their bed, arms wrapped around her knees, sobbing heavily.

the last book I ever read (The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell, excerpt eight)

from The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell by Alex Fernandes:

Portugal and the Future (Portugal e o Futuro) hits the shelves on 22 February, and it’s an immediate bestseller. Costa Gomes’ review turns out to have been burying the lede. Spínola reaffirms his statements on the solution to the colonial problem being political and explicitly not military, and goes one step further, stating that that political solution must base itself on the self-determination rights of the respective African peoples. He doesn’t advocate for full independence, but rather a federated system with each of the nations governed by representatives of the black majority–avoiding by all means the creation of ‘new Rhodesias’. Spínola also acknowledges that, given the nature and development of the conflict, it might already be too late. The PAIGC, for example, had declared formal Guinean independence in late September of 1973, a claim already recognised by a plurality of world nations that flipped the framing of the Portuguese presence from territorial defenders to unwanted invaders. Even Spínola’s intermediate solution might be unachievable. Among the staff officers, Spínola’s book unlocks an avenue of thought and furious discussion that many at that point still consider treasonous–decolonisation. Regardless of the viability of his plan or conclusions, having a prestigious senior officer make a compelling case for national self-determination, in a book published on Portuguese soil, sends shock waves through the military establishment. It seems, for the first time in decades, possible to discuss the Homeland and its History.