The Monday Media Diet with Chris Wallace

On rewatching, Lawrence Osborne, and Manuel Vazquez Montalban

Chris Wallace (CW) is a friend of WITI. He’s currently on the road and working on a book about Peter Beard. -Colin (CJN) 

Tell us about yourself.

I’m a writer and a photographer — though I am still a bit suspicious of that latter title. During the pandemic, I quit my job as a magazine editor to write a book about the late Peter Beard, and went on the road to do research, etc. When I turned the book in, I sort of made a concerted effort to take photographs more seriously, maybe professionally. And maybe because no one else wanted to or could travel at the time I got fortunate in placing stories as a writer and photographer. Every day I expect everyone to say stop, thanks, we were just kidding. But I guess I’ll keep going until then, ha.

Describe your media diet. 

Messy? I’m a binge reader, viewer, and scroller. Maybe like everyone. A few years ago the NY library started letting people check out books on their app so I started reading on my phone (which is easier than toting books along on all my trips). But not great for focus. And since the pandemic started I have really turned my reading diet into self-medication. I basically only reread now and prescribe books to suit a mood. Lots of detective novels and spy stuff to calm my nerves (I have to read to fall asleep). Just trash. Streaming is not much better. I just rewatched (for the third, fourth time?) The Hour, which has to be one of the best shows ever made. I wanted to find the State of Play series but couldn’t find it. I loved the Belascoran adaptation on Netflix. But, as I write this I am about to board a plane and so probably rewatch a Bond or Marvel movie for the thousand billionth time.

What’s the last great book you read?

I was just looking at Adam Phillips’s Missing Out (about our fantasy lives and our inability to live within our real life) this morning and thinking about how that book, and all his books, really, have just blasted my brain open. His sentences are just delicious and the way he thinks is enormously inspiring.

What are you reading now?

I have a Manchette, a Le Carre, and Lawrence Osborne’s Marlowe novel (all of which I’ve read more than once) in the queue.

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

Probably subject matter first… but I definitely scroll the table of contents to see if my favorite writers have a piece in the issue, if it is a New Yorker, say.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

Manuel Vazquez Montalban.

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

Does the NYT Crossword count?

Plane or train?

I was joking recently with a mutual friend that some people spend like hundreds of dollars to go to a party at a hotel in Nomad on New Year's — but I had my personal party on a plane hahaha. I’m slightly obsessed with flying. But trains, forget it. Nothing can touch them for glamour, romance…. Phew. I love them.

What is one place everyone should visit?

Vietnam.

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

Hm. Well it was sort of obliquely related to the book, but I went overly hard in my research into the so-called great white hunters in Kenya… and then into the pivot from hunting to photography safaris. And then on into the explorers, again so-called, most of whom were in search of the source of the Nile or whatever but were effectively scouts for Empire, and, funded by geographical societies or newspapers became the biggest celebrities of their day. I guess I wanted to have really sure footing when I was writing about what Peter Beard setting himself up in Kenya ~meant~, and what the historical foundation of that did to color his ideas. But in the end, it has kind of set me off on what I guess I’m doing now, which is writing about the stories travelers tell themselves about who they are, and (usually in a colonialist and often racist way) other the people and places they — we — encounter on the way, where our ideas about the global north and south come from and what it means for us to travel now. 

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Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Chris (CW)

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