“I grew up going to the cinema at least once a week, and I watched older films at home. That’s not because I was following an independently curious streak; it’s just what my parents did with their time, and I followed. Along the way, a handful of films made an indelible impression: (Douglas Sirk’s) Imitation of Life, Vertigo, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Klute, The Conversation, Alien, Kramer vs Kramer, The Silence of the Lambs, The Ice Storm, Jackie Brown, Eyes Wide Shut, The Insider. It’s an interest I carried into adulthood. This will sound silly, or implausible even, but for me, going to the cinema—to see stories made through image—is partly what makes life meaningful.”
“I recently found myself looking over the first issue of The Happy Reader again. The introductory letter I wrote for that issue drew on a time in which I was working as an office temp in the pharmacy department of a London hospital. Each day I was entitled to a lunch break of precisely one hour, as well as two fifteen-minute tea breaks, and I would spend part of that time pelting down a maze of corridors to an obscure corner of the hospital where I knew I could read a book in peace. Reading this account again, it struck me that these were probably the happiest reading experiences of my life. To have been employed to turn my love of books into a magazine, was, of course, a dream job.”
“I was just in Finland for a month and a half recently and I feel like I was able to create as much as I probably did in a year spent only working in Paris. There is something about this special time you are granted just for your practice, you are taken care of, even offered funding sometimes and you finally feel you can focus on your practice as a priority. These precious periods of time also allow me to discover literature and worlds I wouldn’t have otherwise. I read a lot of Finnish poetry while I was there, I read everything I could find in translation actually. One book stayed quite strongly with me: poems/runoja by Anselm Hollo. He translated some of his own poetry!”
I grew up in Paris, Rive Gauche. Many great writers lived or spent time in the places I would often visit. [As a kid] I saw commemorative plaques [on the walls of buildings] so I was [aware of] historic French writers at a very young age. I read their books at school since they were part of the curriculum, but I don’t recall being sensitive to them. I think my strong interest in literature started with reading Just Kids by Patti Smith. I was in awe of her. I was amazed by how she lived her life by being such a wild card. Reading her felt like, suddenly, everything was possible, achievable.
“I grew up with my mom in a little Greenwich Village apartment. She was always blasting Bob Dylan and Neil Young and dressing up and putting on lipstick and rehearsing lines. We were surrounded by her books and plays, many of which, by chance, I have in my apartment now. We’re very different people, but it’s amazing how much our interests overlap. More than once, I’ve told her about an old book that I discovered and she’ll pull out the first edition and tell me how much she used to love it.”
Chelsea Mak
“Each segment of my life has had some sort of cross-cultural clash—Western culture vs. Eastern, buttoned-up vs. my rebellious youth, highbrow vs. lowbrow, or at least that’s how I experienced it. That has been a huge influence, as my aesthetic is always some juxtaposition of opposing qualities. I think the swirl of these experiences has cultivated an appreciation and longing for the old world, so I’m always interested in reading books, watching films, or listening to music that might take me back to another time.”