The Monday Media Diet with Naomi Xu Elegant
On Pekingnology, Raisin, and Timgad
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I know Naomi from her many great Monocle bylines, and she just released her first novel, Gingko Season. -Colin (CJN)
Tell us about yourself.
I’m a writer! My first novel, Gingko Season, was published this year; it follows a young museum archivist in Philadelphia as she obsesses over a new crush and nurses an old heartbreak and thinks a lot about Napoleon Bonaparte for some reason. The New York Times called it “superb”!
I also write a newsletter called Luanqibazao on art, literature and culture and serve as co-editor of Gully, an independent literary magazine. I moved to New York earlier this year with my husband after spending six years as a journalist for Monocle and Fortune magazines in Singapore and Hong Kong.
Describe your media diet.
Since deleting social media from my phone (won’t last long) I read the New York Times via its app whenever I need to thumb and paw at a beautiful bright screen. I love their little history quiz! I’ve noticed of late an uptick in short-form video in their articles, which is an interesting development. On the computer and sometimes in physical form I read the New Yorker, the Financial Times, New York magazine, the Economist (favorite sections: obituaries and finance), and the Washington Post for its excellent Southeast Asia coverage; the New York Post when something crazy happens locally; also GQ, Curbed, Nikkei Asia, The Drift, the London Review of Books, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Harpers. And of course the gorgeous glossy siblings Monocle and Konfekt, in print as God intended.
I like the newsletters from the Dial, Bloomberg Weekend, Rest of World, and Works in Progress; Substacks like Art Forecast, Anne Parke Art Advisory, Deez Links, Scremes Report, and Reading the City (all great art/culture/event/discourse roundups); Dari Mulut Ke Mulut for Southeast Asia news, Pekingnology and Sinocism for China news, Stories from a Burning House Ming dynasty news, Tang Poetry for Tang poetry, and this one! I’m also intrigued by Substack-based literary projects like The Metropolitan Review and The Republic of Letters (book reviews and skepticism of Big Publishing) and The New Critic (longform essays by hyperliterate Gen Zs defying their generational stereotype).
I still go to Twitter/X whenever something big happens like a war being declared or a Taylor Swift album drop/marriage proposal. And I listen to the Economist’s finance podcast, Money Talks (not just because my husband is a co-host).
What’s the last great book you read?
The Path to Power, the first volume of Robert Caro’s ongoing Lyndon Johnson biography. Several times while reading I thought: this is one of the best books I have ever read. One chapter might read like a Western epic, the next a political thriller, or a geological survey (complimentary), a picaresque, a sports drama, a love story…and the prose, on a sentence level, is fantastic. Mr. Caro is a national treasure. I look forward to volume five.
What are you reading now?
I like to have a mix of fiction and nonfiction, a mix of short and long books, and a mix of physical books and e-books on hand to ensure I’m never without something to read. Right now I’m reading Vivian Gornick’s memoir Fierce Attachments (fits in my purse for the subway), the second volume of Caro’s Johnson biography (does not fit in my purse), Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard, and The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith. He’s kind of my comfort character of the moment…I also just embarked on my third or fourth reread of Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, because a new translation came out this year and because I’m hoping it will help me think about the structure and tone of my second novel, at which I am currently chipping away.
What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?
I skim the headlines and flip through to all the pretty pictures and ads. Just kidding! If it’s the New Yorker I will also look at the cartoons.
Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?
Proust, In Search of Lost Time. It has everything you need.
What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone?
Raisin, a crowdsourced inventory of natural wine purveyors around the world. It’s a useful way for me to find cool restaurants, especially in Europe, because while I don’t actually like natural wine I do reliably enjoy the food and ambience at the places that serve it.
Plane or train?
I live in New York and my family lives in Malaysia and Australia, so I should really say plane, but of course the answer is train. Something about their form and motion is very conducive to creative epiphany. And to be honest I have a bit of a foamer thing going on. A railfan lies dormant within me, a sleeping giant that will one day wake, and shake the world.
What is one place everyone should visit?
Malaysia! Best food on the planet. Plus some other wonderful things like orangutans, tapirs, sun bears, and a harmonious multiracial democracy.
Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.
The other day I saw a photo of Timgad, a Roman city founded by Trajan in present-day Algeria. It’s insanely well-preserved — you can walk the streets and see the public library, the theatre, the triumphal arch, temples, people’s houses, etc., all laid out on a perfect grid. I would love to go some day. But anyway this led me to land surveying and grid plans and deep into the urban planning history of Adelaide, which was the first free settlement (i.e. not populated by exiled prisoners) in colonial Australia. The surveyor-general, William Light, designed a beautiful figure-eight park system enclosing gridded streets and town squares, now the core of the modern city. I’m planning to write a newsletter about it soon. Light was an interesting man, and also his father, Francis Light, founded George Town in Penang, one of my favorite places in Malaysia, which is sort of wild. Nepo baby colonialism!
And then sometimes my rabbit holes are things like this meticulous account of Brooklyn Beckham’s wedding drama I came across on Substack the other day. Nothing like a dollop of celebrity gossip to take the edge off.
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