In our prevalent age of narcissism, championed by social media and increasingly finding a foothold everywhere from offices to drunken 3AM sing-alongs of Mr. Brightside, social status is everything. orangesaint. condones such behaviour, as long as it is practised stylishly.
Don’t be like the walking fashion blunder of a frat lad in a Good Will Hunting bar. Don’t quote an aphorism penned by the forever-stylish Mr. Oscar Wilde at dinner with your partner’s co-workers in the belief that their reading standards haven’t progressed past The BFG. You’ll reek of pretentious intellectualism. More importantly *Tom shudders* you’ll be such a terrible bore, darling.
Here, therefore, in all its Stephen Fry eloquence, is the orangesaint. reading list, engineered to help you appear subtly esoteric, genuinely erudite, infinitely interesting and, most importantly, wicked smaaht:
THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED — F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
The work that cemented Fitzgerald’s social status (and considerably enlarged his bar tab), it is aspirational, poignant, sad, tragic and hugely relevant in its commentary on a timeless human situation. But the prose is some of the most exquisite ever written in the English language. Or any language. It starts by applauding the importance of being idle and ends by harshly cautioning against it. All while taking the time to generously criticise Fitzgerald’s own This Side of Paradise. Jazz dives with the irreverent abandon of the inter-war period straight into a vat of gin and tonic, emerging just stylishly drunk enough to speak its truest truth. This is it.
RIPLEY UNDER GROUND — PATRICIA HIGHSMITH
Every body and their grandmother is supposed to love Mr. Matt Damon’s Tom Ripley, although arguably it is Mr. Jude Law’s Dickie Greenleaf stands the test of our Instagram-obsessed aesthetic time. Ripley Under Ground, though, is just better. Better style. Better crime. Better dilemma. Tom impersonating Dickie impersonating a dead artist would make Mr. Christopher Nolan intellectual auteur of a heart wild with envy, while murdering an art collector with a vintage wine bottle reeks of style. You can almost imagine Mr. Alain Delon (definitely too dashing to play Tom Ripley but who cares? It’s Alain Delon) brushing his hair back into place as buries the corpse of his favourite forger. Style makes everything better. Even murder.
SHAKUNTALA — KALIDASA
A product of (arguably) India’s most poetic of sons and worthy of a mention in the Indian epic Mahabharata, tragedy, romance, family, war, mistaken identity and India being bestowed the name of the eponymous lady’s son intertwine to produce a startling commentary on how pure chance can dictate entire lives. And any work that was “marked with the greatest immorality and impurity” for colonialists is just immoral and impure enough for orangesaint.
REBECCA — DAPHNE DU MAURIER
The chemistry between Ms. Lily James and Mr. Armie Hammer ensure the most recent Netflix adaptation will always remain at the vanguard of Hollywood’s Jazz Age glamour. But it fails to capture the downright strange but alluring, terrifying but ethereal creepiness of the original novel. Perhaps without Du Maurier intending for it to happen, orangesaint. routinely gets the sinking feeling after every read that if last night I dreamt I went to Manderley, how can I be sure it will ever let me leave?
THE MASTER AND MARGARITA — MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
Talking cats. The Devil. That Rolling Stones song. And the truest of instant, romantic attractions this side of Wuthering Heights. Sit down with a cup of tea, write down a list of all those poor sods who crossed you once (or five times) and transport them to early Soviet Moscow. Remember, though, no one’s crossed you enough to suffer pointed pinkies. orangesaint. is all about politesse.
THE PROPHET — KAHLIL GIBRAN
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orangesaint. doubts any amount of wit would do justice to describing Gibran’s finest prose poetry. The truest measure of art is its timelessness and nothing is more timeless than a call for unified humanity through wisdom on (take a deep breath): love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death. And you thought Normal People was philosophical, didn't you? Pleb.
THE APPLICANT — SYLVIA PLATH
Right: Sylvia Plath invented caustic, sarcastic, snappy, irreverent, sneering, scoffing, cynical, satirical, mocking, highly relevant, social commentating subversion disguised as witty poetry. Are you our sort of person? Who gives a flying…
THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES — CHE GUEVARA
Regardless of what one might think of Guevara (Freedom fighter? Despot? Idealist who couldn’t navigate pragmatism?), this is a classic (perhaps the classic) coming-of-age story – a socialist bildungsroman, if you will. For better or for worse, Guevara continues to be the most complete of human beings, certainly in how wholly he inhabited his chosen identity. Mr. Gael García Bernal portrays him movingly in the movie adaptation. But, most importantly, this is the journey where Guevara and Granado met a certain Mr. Alfredo Di Stefano.