The Pleasure Lists Q&A: Elisa Gabbert
Pleasures, Curated by Writer Elisa Gabbert
We’re back with another installment of
: Pleasures, Curated.I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoy getting to know members of the Pleasure Lists community and what makes their Pleasures tick.
Pleasures, Curated by Writer Elisa Gabbert
I was first drawn to Elisa’s work by way of one of my favorite essays, On Classic Party Fiction in the Paris Review. I return to this essay often, as well as others in her Mess With a Classic column, for lines that incite the pleasures of earthly delights like the following:
Classic party fiction is often, if not always, a kind of wealth porn. When Emma Bovary arrives at La Vaubyessard, the chateau of the marquis, for dinner and a ball, the opulence blows her bourgeois mind: “The red claws of the lobsters overhung the edges of the platters; large fruits were piled on moss in openwork baskets; the quails wore their feathers; coils of steam rose into the air; and, grave as a judge in his silk stockings, knee breeches, white tie, and jabot, the butler conveyed the platters.” Party scenes are full of these lists of foods and drinks and flowers, overloaded sentences that embody abundance, the fulsome displays of affluence.
Elisa Gabbert is the author of seven collections of poetry, essays, and criticism, most recently Any Person Is the Only Self. She writes the On Poetry column for the New York Times, and her work has appeared in Harper’s, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Believer, and elsewhere.
Instagram: @elisa_gabbert
Twitter: @egabbert
Location: Providence, RI
Pleasures
First snows
Last week I had dinner with a friend in a cozy Italian restaurant and when we left around 9 it was snowing, a lucky surprise, so lush and cinematic with the streetlights and the Christmas decorations all over the very Italian street, falling gently during my twenty-minute walk back home and then stopping just as I arrived at my door.
Vintage perfume
I have a recurring dream about finding a stash of rare perfumes I’ve forgotten I own. It kind of came true when I moved across the country and left most of my perfume collection packed and in storage for over a year. When I finally opened all the boxes, it was a glorious reunion. I especially missed the baroque too-muchness of my vintage perfumes, and by “vintage” I mean anything made in the nineteen-hundreds. I think some of them are giving me rashes but I don’t care.
Old anthologies & reference books
Independently and without ever discussing it, my husband and I have both hung on to dozens of reference texts mostly acquired during our college and graduate school years, before we knew each other, and this combined part of our library is a continuous source of enlightenment, and re-enlightenment, which is to say joy. I can’t count the number of times I’ve decided to write about some author or subject and found just the source I needed at that moment on our shelves. I love reading poems I know I must have read in my early twenties and finding I like them much more now. I love John’s New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (the 1993 edition), which has the most adorable convention of referring, in its entries, to the subject in question by its first initial, like a nickname. So, for example, the entry on ambiguity includes the sentences: “The popularity of a. began in 1930 with the publication of William Empson’s Seven Types of A. His detailed explications of the as. he found in poems became a model for the methods of ‘close reading’ advocated esp. by the New Criticism (q.v.).”
Music nerd podcasts & videos
Lately one of my favorite things is listening to experts talk about some technical aspect of their field. I love all that jargon washing over me. A couple of months ago I watched a group of producers and session musicians discuss a list of the all-time best “guitar tones.” They went around in a circle, each playing a tiny clip from a song, getting emotional, trying to guess the gear, for almost an hour … I think about it often. I don’t play guitar, I didn’t understand at least half of it. The less I understand the better.
Museums & graveyards
It shouldn’t be shocking at all, but every time, it is—a Klimt or Picasso looks better in person. Commune with your dead!
Condiments
Condiments are meta-food, the foods you only eat on other foods, and there are foods we rarely eat without a condiment, like fries: foods in symbiotic relationships. I like to have a lot of different condiments on hand, to make my fridge into a version of the salsa bars common at taco joints in my home state of Texas. I make fresh salsa and pickled onions almost weekly, and always have jars of olives, pickled jalapenos, a range of hot sauces (currently, a fermented habanero sauce made locally, the Green Dragon sauce from TJ’s, chipotle Cholula, Ninja Squirrel sriracha, and both classic and green Tabasco), sour cream, various mustards and some kind of fancy jam for cheese plates, et cetera. A bowl of soup, I feel, always needs some kind of topping, preferably three or more, shredded cheese, crushed tortilla chips, scallions…. For verticality!
Not posting
I was on Twitter for well over ten years, but have used it much less in the Musk years and not at all since Election Day. I’ve resisted signing up for any of the Twitter replacement apps. I find I’m less interested in the concept, the stream of thoughts put out for reactions. I’ve seen all the joke formats. It wasn’t giving me much pleasure anymore, hence, removing it from my life has been a pleasure by double negative, an act of anti-anti-pleasure.
What does pleasure mean to you?
Being glad to be alive.
Who do you want to see next? Send me suggestions for who to feature in the next Q&A!
What Is “Pleasures, Curated”?
Each week, a new Pleasure-seeker will document their personal Pleasures and ruminate a bit on what Pleasure means to them. True to
style, I keep the list-maker’s je ne sais quoi in as much as I can — only minor editorial changes are made when necessary. I do this intentionally so that the writer’s inner world really comes through. The style of the list says as much about the writer as the list itself.Read Previous Q&A’s:
The Pleasure Lists Q&A: Kerrilynn Pamer
We’re back with another installment of The Pleasure Lists: Pleasures, Curated.
The Pleasure Lists Q&A: Molly Young
We’re back with another installment of The Pleasure Lists: Pleasures, Curated.
Why submit a list?
Pleasure Lists are a summary of what you need, want, or have, or see at a particular moment in time. They are a survey, an overview, a summary of the crucial facts of the state of one aspect of your life. It’s a kind of blueprint that can be a guide to the future.
Mull it over and if you’re moved to, send me a list.
Questions? Comments? Send any recommendations or suggestions for what you’d like to see in these newsletters my way. I’d love to hear more about what you’re currently finding pleasure in.
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