Negronis. Martinis. Cigarettes. Oysters. These are totems of sophisticated indulgence; you could, even, call them the “fantastic four” of grown-up treats. And so it’s a happy coincidence that, during a break from filming Marvel’s upcoming film The Fantastic Four, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach enjoyed the totality of this hallowed quartet on an outside table in Soho, London. The martini for Moss-Bachrach, the negroni for Quinn, and cigs and shellfish all around—what more could you ask of an August afternoon?
Well, the pair were also helpful enough to inject a new bounce into what’s been one of the internet’s favorite things to argue about lately: do men read novels? After enjoying their bitter, briny, tobacco-y refreshments, they went on their way, Moss-Bachrach with a London Review of Books tote bag over his shoulder, and Quinn with a paperback poking from the back pocket of his jeans.
For literary types, these are signifiers as heavy as an Olympic barbell. The London Review of Books, or LRB, is a literary magazine that serves as the control room for Britain’s (and the Anglosphere’s) book culture. The tote bags it sells are a kind of secret handshake: if you’ve got one, you’ve also got opinions on Annie Ernaux and Rachel Cusk. (Or you’re just pretending you do, and you travel around in a creeping fear that someone might ask for your take on the latest issue’s lead book review.)
The book that Quinn was carrying was Weird Fucks, a novella by the writer Lynne Tillman. And if you think the title is vibe-y, here’s the description of it from the LRB’s bookshop: “A young woman drifts through dimly lit bars and rented rooms, reporting from the erogenous zones of New York and Europe. Encountering increasingly bizarre sexual situations, she turns her curious, comic, and fierce eye onto the contemporary world of sex and desire.” So, very much the kind of thing in which negronis, martinis, cigarettes and/or oysters might turn up.
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