A Year in Reading: Kyle Lucia Wu
My 2022 began with Edith Wharton. A couple months prior I launched my debut novel Win Me Something into the world, and it was a joyous whirlwind of an experience that nonetheless left me overstimulated and mentally depleted. Whenever I have to be too online, I long for worlds where online doesn’t exist. So as the new year began, I deleted social media from my phone and took refuge in The Age of Innocence, then , then I hadn’t read Wharton in a while, and it was a balm to rediscover her devastating, exhilaratingly acerbic world, one that at times feels blisteringly contemporary. Of course, in my Wharton-addled state I also watched Scorsese’s adaptation of . Next I read by , because I wanted to then see the movie and read the screenplay—this kind of binge behavior is so soothing to me—and I was quite taken by its haunting, interior complexity.
