The pop star, the enigmatic author, the potty-mouthed humorist and Paddington: what magical combination will be next?
Do things really happen in threes? Two unexpected and magical things happened in May. If I were superstitious, I’d say the third is now overdue.
The first great thing was that Dua Lipa chose Claire Keegan’s 2022 novella So Late in the Day for her monthly book club. I’m a long-time fan of Dua Lipa for many obvious reasons. Her music is fun and catchy, and apart from being a pop icon, she’s also a travel influencer, literary taste-maker, fashion icon, activist and key-holder to the city of Pristina, Kosovo.
All this energy and activity would be annoying if she didn’t have consistently good taste. (The Bianca Jagger bridal suit homage at her recent wedding to Callum Turner is a case in point).
Plus, she seems like she’d be a genuinely good hang. In August last year, a clip of Lipa effortlessly dancing in Ibiza with a wine glass balanced on her head went viral. One fan’s caption for the clip, “she really is good at everything”, summed up Lipa’s stature as a seemingly superhuman figure.
Claire Keegan, by contrast, is famously excellent at one highly specific thing, short-form fiction. She’s a reluctant public figure and has described herself as “about as solitary as you get without being a complete recluse”. Critics and readers admire the elegance and brevity of her prose. (She has said, “I don’t mind doing less and doing it well”.) So Late in the Day is one of my all-time favourite works of fiction. I’ve read it at least twice and listened to the audiobook.
So, I love both Dua Lipa and Claire Keegan but they are a surprising combination of characters. Lipa is endlessly energetic and omnipresent. Keegan is quiet, reticent and enigmatic.
I was nervous to listen to the interview, wanting them both to shine, and they did.
So Late in the Day is a story about a failed relationship, and about misogyny in modern Ireland. One thing I love about the story is the way Keegan treats misogyny as a dreary mental affliction. It’s not a dramatic story about any egregious cruelty; it’s a story about banal entitlement and miserly failures of imagination.
I was delighted to find that Lipa appreciated the story for some of these same reasons I did. In her introduction to Keegan, she noted the contrast between So Late in the Day and the sensational horror of “manosphere” misogyny. The pair spoke about Keegan’s love of tension, as opposed to drama, and it was wonderful to see Lipa, who plays stadiums, take such a strong interest in Keegan’s solitary creative process.
The second great thing to happen was the announcement that Armando Iannucci (writer of The Thick of It, Veep and The Death of Stalin) has signed on to co-write Paddington 4. Another one of my favourite writers teaming up with my all-time favourite bear!
Again, it’s a surprising combination of characters. Paddington is famous for his courtesy and for delivering his “hard stares” to people who have “forgotten their manners”. Iannucci is famous for penning lines of ingenious profanity (e.g. “He’s about as much use as a marzipan dildo” and “You’re Frankenstein’s monster, if his monster was made entirely of dead dicks.“) That’s not the only thing Iannucci is celebrated for, of course. He’s brilliant at writing farce, physical comedy and sparkling dialogue – and these were important elements of the previous three (purely perfect) Paddington movies.
If things come in threes, what’s next? What miraculous combination of beloved celebrities and culture do I dare to dream of? I started Googling it after the Paddington announcement, in hopes of discovering a third magical collaboration already in the works. It’s not really the kind of thing you can Google.
Then I remembered an earlier pop-icon-meets-literary-giant moment that happened in March, when Harry Styles spoke to Haruki Murakami for Runners World magazine. It’s an unusual pairing, proposed apparently by Styles, who ran the Berlin Marathon last year, and who has been inspired by Murakami’s memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. The pair discussed creativity, vitality and “tortured artist” tropes. It’s an interesting read, but in the end, I had to discount it because I hate running, because the interview happened way back in March, because I don’t love Styles or Murakami as much as the others and because it’s weird to retrofit a superstition.
This leaves the field wide open for a third miraculous combo. What if Jordan Peele wrote a new Muppet movie? What if Cher interviewed Tessa Hadley? I’m just spitballing here. I’ll wait and see.
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