Issue No. 14
GRACE WALES BONNER is a 28 year old fashion designer from south-east London. She has been feted by the worlds of both serious culture and high glamour, but here’s the unusual part: her clothes come with reading lists. Interviewed by Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri for this Happy Reader cover story, Grace explains how she sees herself on some level as a researcher. She visits libraries, digests acres of complex ideas about politics and identity, and expresses them, among other things, via the realm of clothes.
The Book of the Season this winter is Joris-Karl Huysmans’ AGAINST NATURE (1884), perhaps the most decadent novel ever written. Its relentless inventory-keeping thrills and inspires some readers and baffles others, and is highly relevant to this season of non-stop accumulation. Contributors include Jarvis Cocker, Lydia Davis, Rob Doyle and Jeanette Winterson.
CONTENTS
PART 1
On the cover, fashion designer GRACE WALES BONNER, photographed at the library by Alasdair McLellan
Ripped Up
Snippets
The Interview: GRACE WALES BONNER by Ben Okri – ‘I’ll read things and then it might be one, two or five years later when they become very relevant and necessary.’
Read my outfit
PART 2
On the second cover, Joris-Karl Huysmans’ 1884 masterpiece AGAINST NATURE, originally published in French as À REBOURS, a title also sometimes translated as AGAINST THE GRAIN.
Introduction: The strangest book I ever read by Andy Miller
Nightmare by Jarvis Cocker
Home: Chez Gainsbourg by Jeremy Allen – Voulez-vouz coucher in my obsessively curated Paris residence?
Nightmare by Lydia Davis
Review: To sing a book by Gert Jonkers – Marc Almond: divinely decadent or seriously self-indulgent?
Nightmare by Seb Emina
Politics: A harmful source of fun by Tara Isabella Burton – The far right as the far too arty
The only poets worth reading
Nightmare by Jeanette Winterson
Elagabalus by Nina Martyris – Notes on an unusual emperor
Nightmare by Rob Doyle
Food & Drink: Let’s get hammered by Richard Godwin – A fun but important experiment
Nightmare by Yelena Moskovich
Letters
The next book