Streaming Now: Postcards from the Thing That Is Happening

Longtime Village Voice contributor Stone (Everything Is Personal) chronicles the pandemic experience—in her life and the world at large— in this closely observed collection. Most of Stone’s entries come in diary format and were written from March 2020 to August 2021. She moves easily between the mundane (details of things she’s planted, shows she’s watching) and the philosophical (one day, she regrouts tile and watches Nomadland on Netflix, reflecting on “the way life ineluctably dwindles to lessness and bewilderment, no matter what you plan or don’t plan”). Later essays capture the tenuousness of connection and the allure of voyeurism: “Everyone’s life is a TV show you forget other people are watching,” she writes in “Catering,” while in “Friend” she declares herself bored by morality. There’s also “Kathy Acker and Chris Kraus, or How to Write in a Way That Will Be Reviled Until Everyone Will Read You as Necessary,” a review of Kraus’s biography of Acker, which in its sharp takes shows Stone’s gifts as a critic. As a collection of moments and observations, there are highs and lows: some entries are less enlightening while others bristle with insight. Fans of creative nonfiction will find Stone an animated guide to these disjointed times. (May)