Bits and Pieces: Christmas Controversy
Black physicist paints himself into history alongside Isaac Newton; what Indigenous-owned land really looks like; Cormac McCarthy's secret muse was his 17 year old lover (when he was 42)
While I’m finishing the next “Sketch of Spain” (travel writing about my recent sojourn in Andalusia), this week I offer the best of Substack in its stead.
Full disclosure, “Bits and Pieces” is in partial emulation of reader-recommendation newsletters like “The Best of Journalism,” and Substack’s own “Substack Reads,” which compile weekly readings from the platform (in the case of the latter) and from the wider world of journalism (in the case of the former) — two of the pieces herein come from Connor Friedersdorf’s “Best of Journalism,” which I highly recommend (it’s free).
As usual, I tend to gravitate towards nonfiction that does what good fiction does: explode pieties and assumptions, and challenge readers to navigate the good along with the bad.
But first, some Substack boosting and self-promotion-by-association.
It has recently come to my attention, via The Honest Broker and the New York Times, that Elon Musk offered to buy Substack in 2023, and CEO Chris Best quietly declined the offer. This is huge news, both in terms of the platform’s perceived worth, and integrity. Though many writers continue to earn income here as individuals, and the platform now hosts a major media company giving the New York Times a run for its money, Substack itself is not yet profitable — but its CEO surely would be, had he taken Musk up on his offer to merge Substack with the abominably named “X” in 2023. He didn’t, and Substack remains neutrally committed to free expression beyond the reach of mainstream gatekeepers or eccentric billionaires.
In other Substack-related news that shocked the literary world recently, what began as one young writer’s review of Cormac McCarthy’s final two novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, was commented-on by a woman named Augusta Brit.
Brit just happened to be Cormac McCarthy’s erstwhile lover, and confidant of the last 47 years. After sharing Substacker Vincenzo Barney’s review with the novelist shortly before his death, at McCarthy’s suggestion, Brit tapped the writer to tell her story for Vanity Fair — the story of the woman who inspired much of Cormac McCarthy’s oeuvre.
The results have sparked controversy and a complete upending of the way Cormac McCarthy’s body of work will be perceived — his muse, after all, was 25 years his junior and is now understood to be the inspiration behind some of the most memorable characters in his novels.
Most shockingly of all, Vanity Fair published thought-provoking journalism in 2024.
The scoop:
Cormac McCarthy’s Secret Muse Breaks Her Silence After Half a Century: “I Loved Him. He Was My Safety.”
Vinczenzo Barney, Vanity Fair
The book review that started it all:
Cormac McCarthy Stumps in Florida: The Quantum Mechanics of Last Novels
Vincenzo Barney, “Barney’s Rubble,” Substack
And some follow-up from the journalist, in the fallout this week:
Cormac McCarthy’s secret muse, the internet, and me: Vincenzo Barney on making a life-changing connection in the comments section
Vincenzo Barney, Substack Reads
Francis Williams gets his due:
A Man of Parts and Learning: Fara Dabhoiwala on the portrait of Francis Williams
Fara Dabhoiwal, London Review of Books
The Enlightenment-era portrait above, of one Francis Williams, was long considered to be a racist caricature. When it was rediscovered by scholars in the 1990s, Chinua Achebe (author of Things Fall Apart) declared, “It was clearly an exercise in mockery, intended to put [Williams] in his place.”
The caricature allegation was most duly to the fact that the portrait is a disproportionate rendering of a wealthy black man in 1750s Jamaica; as the author of this article, art historian Fara Dabhoiwal explains, it was painted by a portraitist who had yet to master the art of painting legs.
In reality, as Dabhoiwal recently discovered, the portrait was commissioned by Francis Williams himself, and turns out to be a masterpiece of much-deserved self-glorification — by an underdeveloped painter he hired for the task.
To be sure, the portrait, like its subject, has been subjected to racism over the years. Until now, the only person to write a ‘history’ of Francis Williams was an envious neighbor who intended to slander Williams, in order to prove the mental inferiority of his race. The only reason the painting was preserved at all — in the furniture gallery, of the Victoria and Albert Museum — was because it was considered a fine depiction of an 18th-century mahogany table and chair.
But the portrait depicts much more than that; it reveals “a man of parts and learning” who stood alongside the greatest physicists of the Enlightenment.
Francis Williams was born a slave in 1690s Jamaica. His parents gained their freedom when he was a boy, and earned enough as merchants and landowners to send their son to study in England. But as Dabhoiwal explains, this history is complicated.
Like most wealthy free people of colour in slave societies, they themselves bought and sold enslaved people. When Williams returned to Jamaica in 1724, after spending almost fifteen years in England, he inherited their wealth, their lands – and their slaves.
What happened to Williams intellectually while he was in England, and after he returned to sit for this portrait, is even more remarkable.
In “the most exciting series of intellectual discoveries I have ever made,” Dabhoiwal writes, this painting turns out to contain the only known depiction of Halley’s comet after its return to earth was first predicted, by its namesake, in 1759.
Williams was one of a handful of Cambridge scientists talented enough to compute the devilish mathematics of Newtonian physics in the years after Isaac Newton first described them in the Principia. At 21, he was nominated to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Cambridge, where he was scandalously — even for the early-eighteenth century — rejected on the basis of race.
The Royal Society’s rejection of Williams on racial grounds happened in the autumn of 1716. It was a scandal. It was still being talked about as a scandal in the 1720s. It was still remembered in the 1770s. It’s a significant fact. But there’s a more fundamental fact: Williams’s abilities were such that he was considered worthy of election. And that meant he had serious support among senior members of the society.
The senior members of the Royal Society in 1716, present at the meeting where Francis Williams was formerly proposed, included Isaac Newton himself and his protege, Edmond Halley. Williams was one of the few people in the world who could understand calculus and physics at the time, in his early twenties.
Through x-ray analysis, archival research, and close reading, Dabhoiwal realized that in this portrait Williams is pointing to the exact page number of an edition of Newton’s Prinicipia Mathematica concerning the calculation of planetary orbits, such as comets. The glow depicted outside of Williams’ office window in the portrait, precisely located beneath a telling constellation in the painting, turns out to be the only visual representation of Halley’s comet after it was accurately predicted to return by Williams’ colleague, the editor of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, Edmond Halley.
Rather than being a racist caricature, this is Francis Williams’ carefully-styled, symbolic representation of how he wanted to be remembered, which has finally come to pass.
Ars longa, vita brevis.
Hot take on a touchy subject, published just after Thanksgiving:
No, you are not on Indigenous land: Pieces of territory belong to institutions, not to racial groups.
Noah Smith, Noahpinion
I realize this sounds controversial, but I have to think the most famous Indigenous author (in the world, and on Substack), who despises the word “Indigeneity” — Sherman Alexie — would agree with the gist of this article.
Basically, that if you follow the popular premise that land belongs to a single, primordial racial category to its logical conclusion, at some point it would require ethnic cleansing — and that’s bad.
And by extension (my two cents), if we dispense with this blood-and-soil rhetoric, we could also dispense with performative moral grandstanding by middle-aged white ladies before every theater performance in Portland, Oregon, and forgo land acknowledgements that make single email signatures read like Biblical genealogies — and that’s good.
I know Alexie would relish the irony of this high-rise development described in the article, overseen by the Squamish Nation, on land it controls in downtown Vancouver, B.C.
Because this Squamish Nation project is on First Nations land, the tribe is exempt from prohibitive zoning laws, and it’s used this loophole to build higher and denser than anywhere else in Vancouver, making housing affordable for those priced out of downtown by some of Canada’s highest real estate and lowest vacancy rates. An even larger development, to be called Jericho Lands, is slated for future development on First Nations land. Which is where the irony really hits home:
Hilariously, Vancouver’s NIMBYs [“Not In My Back Yard” types] are complaining, claiming that the developments are not in keeping with Indigenous tradition. But Canada’s First Nations seem to have little interest in hewing closely to other people’s view of what their traditions are. Modern people do not want to live like premodern farmers. They are not mystical Tolkien elves. They would like to have shiny new apartment buildings and walkable neighborhoods.
Perhaps.
I can think of a few modern people who would like to live like premodern farmers, at least on Instagram — paleo dieters, cottage-core influencers, plastic shamans, doomsday-preppers, and Portland Mercury editors mooning over the golden age when Portland wasn’t so “shiny.” But these are probably the same people lecturing the First Nations about tradition.
Have a shiny Christmas.
