What We're Reading: "Beyond Alt," "The Teen Boy" and more

Internet Explorer: Amanda Hess View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Tuesday, May 2, 2017 [NYTimes.com »]( We’re trying something new: an occasional issue of What We’re Reading focused on recommendations from a single journalist at The Times, along with a selection of other great suggestions at the bottom. Let us know what you think at [wwr@nytimes.com](mailto:wwr@nytimes.com?subject=Newsletter%200106%20Feedback). [Internet Explorer]( [Amanda Hess, hard at work.]Amanda Hess, hard at work. Earl Wilson/The New York Times Hey! I’m Amanda Hess, a David Carr Fellow at The New York Times, and this edition of “What We’re Reading” is more of a “What I’m Reading.” The Times started [the Carr Fellowship]( last year to carry on the spirit of the work by David Carr, the Times media critic and culture writer who died in 2015. I can’t begin to fill David’s shoes, but I’m lucky to have a gig modeled after him, which gives a lot of license for experimentation and surprise. As a writer, I focus on [criticism]( and essays about [internet culture]( [gender]( and [language]( for both the arts section and the Times magazine; and as a reader, I tend to be drawn to stuff that crosses disciplines and bridges the high and the low. Here’s where my browsing has taken me recently. [“Beyond Alt,”]( in New York Magazine. A crew of wonderful writers teamed up for an [exhaustive explainer]( on the cultural and philosophical underpinnings of the far right movement that has recently clawed its way from the fringes and into the center of our politics. Highlights include the internet culture editor Max Read on how [message board culture]( took over the discourse and the sex columnist Maureen O’Connor on the contradictory [politics of the gay alt-right](. [“I Love Dick,”]( by Chris Kraus. When I first read it, I remember thinking: “This is the only book I’ve ever liked.” The 1997 feminist cult novel has a way of feeling like your first. I paged through it again in anticipation of the upcoming Amazon adaptation of the novel from “Transparent” creator Jill Soloway, and I was just as dazzled by its messy mash-up of diary, art criticism and unrequited love letter. It reads like the internet before the internet, a kind of prophetic text for the legions of smart, introspective Tumblr girls and women yet to come. I recently interviewed Ms. Kraus and Ms. Soloway together — pick up next Sunday’s Arts & Leisure section to check it out — and it felt electric to hear two brilliant people puzzling out gender in text and on film. Josh Haner/The New York Times [“Against Retweeting Trump’s Old Tweets,”]( in Slate. Katy Waldman is one of my favorite culture writers. I’d read her review of the phone book. (Free idea, Katy.) Recently she’s taken her talents to interpreting Trump’s texts, eyeing the [grammar]( of his tweets and parsing his team’s [most ingratiating]( argumentative style. Her latest piece is an argument against the latest trend in online liberal outrage — retweeting Trump’s old tweets in an attempt to out him as a hypocritical flip-flopper — but it doubles as an insight into the president’s singular slipperiness and the failure of traditional rhetorical strategies to resist him. [“The Teen Boy in 2017,”]( in Mel. Mel is the rare men’s magazine that has taken upon itself to investigate masculinity, not enforce it. It gets double points for managing to pull off that project with style and charm, not self-seriousness. Mel has smartly identified that while there are seemingly boundless publications dedicated to chronicling the lives of teenage girls — see Seventeen, Teen Vogue, Rookie, et. al — few seem invested in adolescent men beyond their stereotypes, so it’s publishing a yearlong deep dive into the lives of teenage boys. The [first profile]( in the series centers on 17-year-old Emiliano, a dual citizen who was born in Minnesota and now lives in Mexico. [“Terrace House,”]( on Netflix. I am obsessed with this recently transplanted Japanese reality show. I’ve decided it counts as reading because it has subtitles. Like any real American, I’m well versed in the tropes of our nation’s reality television traditions, and it’s their absence that makes “Terrace House” so deliciously destabilizing to view. In this show, six young people are chosen to live in a house, and … that’s it. There is truly no script — the scenes are too mundane to be invented. When conflicts unfold, the unfailingly earnest housemates try to solve them constructively. But then, at regular intervals, the show cuts to a panel of cynical Japanese comedians who viciously roast the participants and bicker over their romantic prospects. The guilty-pleasure narratives that are baked into the structure of so much of American reality TV are instead applied on top by the comedian panel, and the results are equal parts mesmerizing and confounding. I have no idea why it’s called “Terrace House.” _____ Hilary Swift for The New York Times Hot Debate And Anna Dubenko, our senior digital strategist, collected [partisan writing on]( change](. From the right, columnists considered the power of the label of “denier,” and from the left, insisted that it’s perfectly reasonable to be a climate alarmist. _____ Edited by Andrea Kannapell ADVERTISEMENT Make a friend’s day: Forward this email. Get this from a friend? [Sign up here](. 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