2026 reads

This is a story based on a premise but it’s not really a premise— it’s a thesis, a declaration. I wrote the works of Charles Baudelaire. I woke up one day and suddenly I have the works of this 19th century poet, this scandalized, tortured poet within me. But also I never really read it at all. In fact, all reading and writing is a retransformation of the past absorbing the present into the future. That is how we cope with time. This is a thesis that reminds me why I choose to write. Why I write as a woman ‘dandy’ why I write as a Baudelariean, why I write period. This book for me had the same emotional impact as when I first read Lispector’s Breath of Life many months ago. This is the raison d’être of why art exists and why we need it so (especially as women who often find themselves relegated to the margins. The sentence is a blade; tear open the whole word with it) I loved this book