The [Tuesday] Media Diet with David Michon

On Steinbeck, Yukio Mishima, and "Buyer & Cellar"

I first met David Michon during his tenure at Monocle. Now, he is writing a new Substack (go subscribe) on interiors. I appreciate the time and thought that went into this MMD, including the custom bio photo! Enjoy and have a great week. -Colin (CJN)

Tell us about yourself.

I author FOR SCALE, a Substack on interiors that is mostly a response to the formality and seriousness of an Architectural Digest, let’s say. Also, we focus mainly on design of the past, and some great people who source and sell the best of bygone stuff. 

Aside from that, I write a lot – most often, these days, for brands but also for magazines. And, I’m very grateful to live in Los Angeles, a city that has no real center, no discernible architectural vernacular, and where generations of people have come to reinvent themselves. It’s a melty-blurry mirage of a place – perfect for Big Dreams.

(I’m originally from what I consider Canada’s cultural capital, the prairie city of Winnipeg. Here is a 4-minute compilation of “Winnipeg” being used in film and TV, because its name is known enough to be Known, but the city is unknown enough to be Whatever You Want. I’ll add to that list a Winnipeg mention in the first moments of one of my favorite Elizabeth Taylor films: “The V.I.P.s”)

Describe your media diet. 

I spend a lot of time on the 2nd floor of the Los Angeles Central Library where, in the Art, Music & Recreation department, I find all the best source books for FOR SCALE writing. Current top hits: “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” (1972), “Underground Interiors: Decorating for Alternate Life Styles” (also 1972), “Living for Today” (you guessed it: 1972). I wish I didn’t have to say this, but, “they don’t make ‘em like they used to”. 

For example, here is the opening line from another great, 1965’s “Decoration U.S.A.”, on color: “Like the course of true love, the course of color in decorating is notoriously erratic.” I mean, that’s quite gripping for a book on décor.

Otherwise:

In what is surely “doing things the wrong way,” the most nourishing media is consumed in the smallest portions, with the vast majority of my time being spend trolling Instagram for “inspiration” (admittedly, that does come). Then comes movies, for which I advocate maintaining broad taste – I watch something almost daily, while I cook. (For design and furniture fans, may I suggest “Playtime” by Jacques Tati.) Finally, at the peak, is the printed book, which rarely gets my attention but when it does it’s, like, quite exciting. 

My absolute and unquestionable preference in literature is the travelogue: Edmund White’s “States of Desire: Travels in Gay America”; Jan Morris’s “Cities” (a collection of essays introduced to me by Monday Media Diet alumnus Daniel Giacopelli); Hunter S. Thompson’s “Hell’s Angels” (which is a kind of travelogue); the work of Joan Didion (who is a travelogue-ist masquerading as an essayist). And, my latest read, profiled in the response to the next question, below. 

A little aside: despite writing shorter form, almost always for magazines, I shamefully admit I almost never read an article. Anybody care to weigh in on that? 

What’s the last great book you read?

I picked up a deliciously musky first edition of John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley: In Search of America” (1962) at House of Vintage in Portland, Oregon – which is a crudely organized and disturbingly vast vintage clothing shop. Needless to say, I found solace in the fact there were about 30 books and that felt like a more digestible browsing experience. 

The premise: Steinbeck, at the age of 58-ish but knowing his years were limited (though his ill health is not mentioned in the book), embarks on a road trip across the United States with his standard poodle, Charley. He’s looking for an update on what Americans are ‘really’ like, and opts to mostly avoid cities because, as we know, he has a real thing for rural folk (Exhibit A: “The Grapes of Wrath”). 

Why I like it? There are a total of Zero surprises in this book, and any writer than can turn this kind of banality into prose so compelling, life-affirming, and even illuminating at times, is a real hero. The message to me – which I don’t think was the intention of Steinbeck – is that when one’s skills of observation are honed, even a mainly boring road trip can be a story worth telling. And, ipso facto, so too are the many banal moments of everyday life also part of a bigger, more exciting story.

You get into this book for the writing, which is – in my amateur judgment – perfectly constructed and deeply charming.

What are you reading now?

I’m writing this in June, which is both Pride Month and the inauguration of “summer reading” season, and so to honor both I’ve picked up the page-turner “Queer” by William S. Burroughs. (My edition features a great painting by Georg Baselitz, a German artist who at some point in his life changed his surname to the name of his hometown – clearly a very sentimental guy!). 

It is set in 1940s Mexico City, and we meet Lee who, you might be shocked to learn, is queer, and kind of that’s all I know so far. It is apparently semi-biographical – and Boroughs’ life was, by all accounts, insane. So I’m expecting this book to be grim. I mean, he wrote Queer while awaiting trial for the (accidental?) killing of his common-law wife Joan, in a botched, drunken William Tell act with a handgun.

It should be a great balance for the bliss of the Ligurian coast, where I’ll read the majority of it come July.

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

For magazines, it’s a three-step process:

First: a back-to-front flick through (because I’m left-handed, and that’s just how we do it)

Second: a careful study of its table of contents 

Third: always start with the article that I feel will make for the best Dinner Party Conversation in future

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

I’m not really deep on “Obscure Authors” but I would certainly say I see many interesting people I know picking up Yukio Mishima, a kind of tragic-babe figure of post-War Japanese literature (his cause of death: ritualistic suicide). I’ve only read “Confessions of a Mask” and it was exceptional.  

(After I finished it, this book lived for a while as a coaster.)

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

They are all famous, but perhaps the least-famous-most-useful is AllTrails. One of the distinct advantages of Los Angeles over London, where I used to live (N.B. I am, however, Canadian), is immediate access to non-city nature.

Plane or train?

Trains. They are far more comfortable, with much better coffee. (If it’s a good train.) Also: much better for the planet. 

What is one place everyone should visit? 

Their local library. I absolutely love a great little independent bookshop (especially for used books) as much as the next Monday Media Diet guest author, but so often we neglect the d*mn library which is an incredible resource – and if you’re lucky (like the folks of Huntington Beach, et al.) also architecturally quite pleasing. You can take out a billion books and hate them all without spending a dime (remember dimes?). 

In other words: libraries are a great place to make more experimental reading choices. 

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

It has to do with Barbra Streisand, Oprah Winfrey, Deepak Chopra and some mums (as in the flower). 

I once saw a play called “Buyer & Cellar” in London, a one-man show written by Jonathan Tolins and performed by Michael Urie. The play is from the perspective of a out-of-work actor who gets a job as a “shopkeeper” at Barbra Streisand’s Malibu home. That’s because – and this part is true – Barbra Streisand stores all of her collections in faux-”shops” in a cobbled faux-”shopping street” in her basement. (Like a “Doll Shop” with her doll collection, and a “Sweet Shoppe” which actually serves as a kind of concession stand for the at-home cinema room, kept stocked with frozen yogurt and with its own popcorn machine.) 

Tolins learned of this shopping street via Streisand’s book “My Passion for Design”, for which Barbra is the principal photographer – lots of pixelated construction pics with an assistant standing in shot; lots of roses; lots of dog.

And, anyway, that’s where we start – but, after a zillion hours of Streisand content consumption, I landed on a 2003 televised interview between Babs and Oprah Winfrey – which really sold me on Barbra as a person. I’ll be brief:

• Barbra has a design rule that the flowers outside should vibe with the room they are to be viewed from, i.e. if the room is blue, maybe you’d opt for white flowers outside the window, not orange ones

• Well, once upon a time she was confronted with exactly that – rust- and yellow-colored mums outside what I recall as a blue room – she was of course offended and disturbed. But, much to her delight, she woke up one morning to find the mums were light pink and white – magically transformed 

• Assured by her assistant that nobody had replaced them, she was convinced by Deepak Chopra (a friend of hers) that she had WILLED the flowers to change color 

And that is a very aspirational sense of personal agency. (DM)