The Monday Media Diet with Ben Schott

On Ember mugs, The Skin by Curzio Malaparte, and how to be a temporary local

We’ve been longtime fans of Ben Schott’s writing. Be sure to buy his new book, which is just out: Schott’s Significa: A Miscellany of Secret Languages. -Colin (CJN)

Tell us about yourself.

I’m a writer, designer, photographer, and strategic consultant, best known for creating Schott’s Original Miscellany and its three sequels.

I also published a series of Schott’s Almanacs; a collection of German neologisms, Schottenfreude; and two authorized homages to P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves & The King of Clubs and Jeeves & The Leap of Faith.

I’ve written and photographed for most of the major Anglo-American titles (from The New York Times and The Paris Review to Private Eye and Playboy), and I consult on design and narrative strategy for companies large and small.

Describe your media diet.

Having written an almanac for six years (2005–2010), I can’t shake the habit of skimming the canonical mainstream press. To these titles I add the London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator, How To Spend It, The New Statesman, Private Eye, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and New York magazine. When idling at my club, I take the opportunity to browse its more Rococo titles, including Architectural Digest, Decanter, Tatler, Country Living, and Slightly Foxed.

I subscribe also to two lesser-known British newsstand newcomers: The Critic — a conservative-leaning monthly political and cultural magazine; and The Fence — a satirical, sardonic, and urbane quarterly. Both of which prove that print is kicking with vigour.

I am also an avid reader of British High Court judgments, a selection of which is emailed out on Sundays. This may sound strange, but not only are these documents remarkably well written (cool, brisk, and analytical), they often counter the prevailing social-media analysis of a trial and its sentencing. (Professionally, I use their clarity and structure as the model for my consultancy work.) They can also be darkly comic; the 2008 judgement finalizing Paul McCartney’s £24.3 divorce from Heather Mills is a classic of the genre, and well worth a read.

My true media love, however, is audio. And my ears are seldom unglued from BBC Radio 4 Extra on the BBC Sounds App. The quality of British radio drama is unsurpassed — from one-off plays to adaptations of major works. Indeed the BBC dramatisation of John le Carré’s George Smiley novels, with Simon Russell Beale as our hero, is as impressive as the 1979 TV version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. And, for lovers of Sherlock Holmes, I urge you to listen to “The Abergavenny Murder” — a word-perfect 40-minute radio homage, penned by Bert Coules.

Podcast-wise I subscribe to a slew of US legal shows, including Law and Chaos, Serious Trouble, Lawfare Daily, Talking Feds, UnJustified, and Strict Scrutiny (… seriously, why am I not a lawyer?) — in addition to various Italian conversation pods (sto imparando la lingua!) and a few graphic design shows (InDesign Secrets F.T.W.).

Television involves the usual Russian Roulette of mediocrity — James Poniewozik’s NYT piece on “Mid TV” nailed the dilemma — and I regularly abandon a “hot new show” after 20 minutes of stilted dialogue and clichéd action. (TV Tropes should be a red flag, showrunners, not a cheat sheet: I’m looking at you Untamed, Your Friends & Neighbors, Black Rabbit, and many, many more.) And so, apart from the well-known hits (Succession), I tend to seek refuge in the archives (Between The Lines). Why more bravely idiosyncratic shows like G.B.H. are not made, I will never understand.

What’s the last great book you read?

Strictly speaking, this is a re-re-reading, but I have just paid fresh reverence to Alms for Oblivion, Simon Raven’s ten-novel roman-fleuve (1964–1976) which is a raffish, Rabelaisian soap-opera of post-war Britain with a cast of louche aristocrats, predatory dons, pissed hacks, and vile politicians. As an autopsy of the Establishment — leaden with betrayal, blackmail, and casual sadism — it is a darker and more dangerous work than Anthony Powell’s (equally excellent) 12-volume social survey, A Dance to the Music of Time (1951–1975).

What are you reading now?

Diary of a Man in Despair by Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen (1947)

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (1940)

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt (1963)

Because what’s past is prologue.

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

This is highly publication dependent. For example, with The New Yorker, I first read all the cartoons before turning to the features, but with, say, Private Eye, I gorge on my favourite sections (Street Of Shame, HP Sauce, &c.) before eating my worthier greens.

I have never read a magazine or newspaper in strict paginate order, and wouldn’t trust anyone who did.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

In my case, fewer screens and more books. In pursuit of which I have, for some years, undertaken a small experiment — namely, purchasing at random “classics” published by the New York Review of Books, and reading them cold. It’s akin to plucking unknown books from the shelf of a trusted friend, and it has introduced me to a dazzling array of literary gems – from The Skin by Curzio Malaparte and Castle Gripsholm by Kurt Tucholsky to the strange and Orwellian Paris Vagabond by Jean-Paul Clébert. When I stumble upon a writer I especially admire (Mavis Gallant, Elizabeth Taylor) I will dive deeper into their oeuvre.

In recent years, I have expanded this Dada-esque colphonic approach via the navy blue bibliography of Fitzcarraldo Editions. (I can highly recommend the stark and unsettling Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk.)

Plane or train?

Though I’m far from qualifying as a transport anorak, I do have an affection for location-specific transport modes — from trams (Milan, Lisbon) and funiculars (Capri, Hong Kong) to cable cars (Porto, Interlaken) and gondolas (Venice, Las Vegas).

Even the ubiquitous taxi is notable when its driver is absurdly qualified (London), its chassis heroically ancient (Havana), its speed mind-bendingly reckless (Naples), or its passage as fluid as water (Mumbai). Without doubt, though, my favourite means of transport is helicopter, ideally over some remarkable landmark (Manhattan, the Grand Canyon, the Knik Glacier) and, whenever possible, with the doors off.

But, to answer the question directly, as one who lives on an island: train to and from the plane (unless the train is the Eurostar).

What is one place everyone should visit?

Some years ago I was given a life-changing nugget of travel advice: if you visit the same café, bar, or restaurant, at the same time of day, for three days in a row, you are (more often than not) magically transmuted from tourist to temporary local.

And, amazingly, the trick works at every scale. In the aftermath of Covid, I took coffee and tramezzini every day for ten days at Bar Mio di Teso Mauro, just off Piazza San Marco in Venice. By day three they not only knew my order, they welcomed me by name.

So fixated is Instagram-obsessed travel with ticking off best-of listicles, we forget how easily domestic bonds can be forged by such an elementary act of loyalty.

(The same friend also suggested I get a haircut in every new city I visit; I have yet to test this travel hypothesis.)

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone?

I obtain the greatest pleasure-to-expenditure ratio from two tech products. First, and obviously, my Apple AirPods — which justified their expense in the first hour, and have not stopped repaying. Second, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, my Ember mug — which by keeping my coffee at exactly 57.5ºC allows me to work from bed for many hours each morning. The mug is linked to my iPhone by bluetooth, and its temperature is controlled by the Ember app … which I hide in a folder, for shame.

Less shameful is the Radiooooo app — a collaborative music site that allows me to listen to (“slow” “fast” or “weird”) music from countries across the world, categorised by decade. It’s a splendidly anti-algo way to discover unexpected music across space and time. Check out the “fast” music from 1960’s Senegal.

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

Speaking as a professional Alice traversing a boundless Wonderland, rabbit-holes are an ever-present trip hazard. Indeed, my latest book is essentially a treasure map of these intriguing, distracting trapdoors.

Schott’s Significa dives down linguistic rabbit holes exploring the jargon and gesture of 53 subcultures, including New York diamond dealers, Savile Row tailors, Cresta Run riders, paparazzi snappers, graffiti writers, Starbucks baristas, fox hunters … and hunt saboteurs.

I was inspired, in part, by a 1959 book called The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, for which Peter and Iona Opie (a husband and wife team of folklorists) traversed Britain to collect the playground games, counting rhymes, and secret ciphers of kids. The genius of this profoundly Carrollian undertaking is twofold: It takes seriously something dismissed as trivial, and records for posterity something regarded as fleeting.

This, to me, is the essence of “significa”, and it guided me as I quizzed Venetian gondoliers, reality television editors, art auctioneers, stunt performers, professional Fathers Christmas, and dozens more niche professionals who inhabit rabbit holes of deep fascination. (-Ben Schott)