Artless: Stories 2019-2023 (Semiotext

by Natasha Stagg

A document of New York from an author too close to the story to be a trustworthy eyewitness.

Composed of stories, fragmentary essays, and even press releases Stagg has been commissioned to write, Artless captures the media landscape lived and generated in New York during the past half decade. Since the 2016 publication of her debut novel Surveys , Stagg has positioned herself as an in-demand expert on—and critic of—the psychic experience of self-mythology within the cruelly optimistic metaverse of infinite branding. Part voyeur and part participant, Stagg continues her exploration of the branded identity and its elusive, bottomless desire for authenticity.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, New York, Art, Short Stories

192 pages, Paperback

Published October 24, 2023

Reviews

[helene]

Took me so long to finish, i read three other books inbetween. i kind of lost track a lot but maybe it’s also my lack of vocabulary but I didn’t like the feeling sometimes that she might not care if you can keep Up. I was curious about it because I liked her online writings and expected kind of contemporary new journalism which I would say it is but then also in its annoying ways, endlessly dropping names and references. Expanding situations forever but on this informational Spezial-Allgemeinwissen way which doesn’t actually make you understand more what’s going on.
I liked the very last two texts. They are shorter than most of the others and felt somehow more „engaged“ and „attached“, not that disaffected maybe, and more hopeful(??) even though they also had this sadness/cynicality/dryness but there at least it felt like she was writing with someone in mind reading it.

[Chase Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

smash hit!! books of essays dont always work; this most certainly does—very well balanced, good genre bending. vincent gallo mentioned.

[Jack Skelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

From my Los Angeles Review of Books coverage of book launch, Poetic Research Bureau, Los Angeles, November 28, 2023:

Stagg read from the foreword and the final story, which both dive into the shimmering waters of art, advertising, and fashion to reflect on identity. “[T]he psychic experience of self-mythology within the cruelly optimistic metaverse of infinite branding” is how the jacket copy frames this paradox.

The foreword relates her interviewing a big-name model during a Paris photo shoot. It turns out Stagg’s work was pointless: “That we had failed to produce any bonus content and wasted so much time was terrifying, and so it was also exhilarating.” The ending story, “Wrong Turn,” relates being stuck in an Uber Pool with a driver who gets ridiculously lost in Manhattan because he’s distracted by a gossip website on his phone. What emerges is a philosophy of mishaps. Archly, ironically, without bitterness, Stagg plumbs the depths of marketing absurdities.

I googled Stagg and learned, amazingly, that despite immersing herself in the quotidian flotsam where we all swim, she is not on social media. I also found this quote: “Now, brands are people and people are brands. The way it keeps morphing and the way we use the word brand … it’s such a large word. In this kind of basic, dumb way, I've always loved it.”

[Maya Hartman · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Nearing the end, I silently cried because I was in bed with a man who didn’t love me, but also because I loved New York—the city, and the way it is depicted in movies, and the memories of the first time I saw each.”

[Satyam Mistry · Rating 2 out of 5]

kind of cringe tbh

[Rachael Wehrle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love how this wanders. I thought I’d possibly struggle through a book of essays, but this wasn’t the case. I looked forward to picking it up.

[Clara Martin]

not really my jam tbh.

[Ally · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this right after finishing Sleeveless-the start of my Natasha Stagg obsession. I highlight my favorite sentences of hers in hopes that my writing might one day offer a reader the same, intoxicating effect.
I didn't like it as much as Sleeveless, but that's probably because she didn't discuss fashion as much in Artless.
Gonna read Surveys next!

[Emi Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a voice.

[JJ]

I like Natasha Stagg. I wonder how she has the time to write inbetween socialising and whatever sort of advertising/fashion work she does. She seems very busy & it sounds exhausting. Anyway wasn't sure what the point of this collection was other than to collect pieces published elsewhere. I didn't really sense a theme and it didn't really grab me. I liked some of the short fiction. I like the one about Paris Hilton. However, all waaayyyyy too short! Da fuq. I get some are short texts from the context they were published in but again it just made me go like what is the point—I know where she gets published, I can just go & read them in those publications. Otherwise, I have nothing really to say in favour or against.

[olive parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

will find my favourite essays (some much more successful than others) and list.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

In an essay about the Chelsea Hotel, Natasha Stagg writes "The more I read, the more the place doesn't seem real, until I walk into it, and it is."

That's the feeling I had reading this collection of essays and stories about culture, art, and celebrity mainly in New York, between 2019 and 2023.

Stagg's descriptions about people, places, parties, and scenes are fantastical. I kept thinking she was making things up, until I'd Google something she'd referred to and it was 100% true.

Stagg gets what's going on, and she lets you in on the joke, but it's not really ironic...is it? She's an outsider on the inside, a little bit cynical, and a little bit starry eyed, taking us along to all the places we never knew we wanted to go to meet the famous people we've never heard of.

Artless is a bizarre and fun look into art and culture, and how they feed on each other, and on all of us, with our insatiable hunger for the next new thing, even if it's not really new at all.

[Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Def a step up from sleeveless, I really like the way she inserted herself more into the stories in this one rather than looking at something from afar. Fav: Nowhere to Sit

[Pria · Rating 2 out of 5]

generally FINE mostly DULL

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

pitched by Ryla as a modern Didion, I think the book held up to that expectation.

not much else to say other than the fact that it is incredibly hard to recognize patterns when we are living them (as Stagg notes in “The World”)

“a time when carelessness seems increasingly inexcusable”

“If privacy is already dead, the idea of writing a tell-all is logically easier to stomach”

“But perhaps no trend defined the ‘10s as well as the magic trick people can perform by holding two truths to be self-evident simultaneously”

“conflating romance with consumerism”


most of these are from the same essay “The Wheel”, maybe just find a way to read that instead

[Alec Sottosanti · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite essays provide a way of looking or understanding that had otherwise evaded me. Stagg has a few of those moments but often loses the thread, leaning too heavily on circular references as a way of tying it all together. Her talent as a writer is apparent on every page and this collection may simply be more interested in a more poetic stream of consciousness than I’m accustomed to.

[Aleksander Prus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as good as Sleeveless but maybe it's just more depressing because the pandemic and post-pandemic life has delivered a sort of malaise and super-abundance of distraction.

Highlights include:
The planet
The wheel
Social suicide
Above and below (an incredibly powerful story that takes up just 2/3rds of a single page)
Trends 2021
Nowhere to sit page 2

[Emma Santucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

i loved this. i loved her voice, the subject matter, and how recent it all feels. i remember i almost bought this book before going away, and ultimately decided to come back to it when i was next in new york. im glad i did.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

Some essays were hits, others were misses. It definitely made me productive, so that's good. Writing is cool. A lot of name-dropping in this book, I guess that's just how New Yorkers are? Kewl

[Elise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last minute 4 star… could re read and cringe but I enjoyed!

[tasharce · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. There were some good ones in here. Favorite was the one about the cult (characteristically)

[Juliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

sincere

[Valentina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Should've known what I was in for when in the intro she writes that the book was almost titled Namedropping

[Severin M · Rating 1 out of 5]

"It's all a joke, isn't it, that we're even here?"

[Ann Niemann · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The landscapes that roll by from a car window caress that part of my brain desperate for lousy green stillness. Before I can open a book to read, I look up and the day is almost over, nothing accomplished other than getting ready for it.” <3