The thing that’s easy to forget about the pandemic—especially if you live the sort of life that mostly involves hiding away in your home, typing words into the Terrible Internet Box—is that it’s happening to everybody. It’s definitely happening to author Susan Orlean tonight, with the The Library Book author transforming her Twitter feed into a seemingly alcohol-fueled stream of semi-consciousness exploration of our current living situations. The result is two parts “This is extremely relatable”—including that classic “Fuck this” sentiment, “I would like some candy”—to one part “Hey, should we possibly call somebody?”
And we’d like to be very clear, right up front: Nobody is making fun of Susan Orlean, a writer of pronounced skill, who is nevertheless also possessed of a fine and pointed sense of humor about herself. No one would care if Susan Orlean was just exercising her right to sound off into the void, motivated—as one so often is—by a bit too much wine at a neighborhood get-together to meet a newborn colt. It’s that everything she’s saying is shot through with sentiments that we’re all feeling at the moment. To wit:
And:
And also:
(Okay, maybe that last one a little less.)
Yeah, there we go.
We would sincerely like to wish Susan Orlean the best (and a decently hydrated rest of her night, in service of a non-hungover morning tomorrow.) Also, we’re now extremely invested in figuring out whether she ever finds any fucking candy.