KLMNO
Style
thursday, february 20 , 2020. washingtonpost.com/style eZ su C
lIBrary oF ConGrESS
the federal institution has
acquired the archives of
black photographer
shawn Walker. C3
MUSIC rEVIEW
at the Kennedy center,
pianists display precise
touch and perpetual
attentiveness. C3kIdSPoST
the lakers’ lebron James
may have met his equal in
the Bucks’ giannis
antetokounmpo. C8Carolyn Hax
she’s in a new state, has
two kids and is pregnant,
and her husband left her.
But she’s not alone. C8The tidying-up of people’s personal lives has a
singular appeal to Lavery. each letter is a story in
need of a resolution. Yes, there are real people and
real complexities on the other side of the Dear
Prudence letters, but the format makes each advice-
seeker’s mess seem manageable. “it feels like just
great, brief plots that are submitted to, like, a person
— kind of at random,” he says, “who then submits,
‘Here’s h ow i think y ou should end the story.’ ”
Lavery, 33, is not just a random person. over the
past few years, the story of his life has resembled a
series of Dear Prudence letters that L avery has had to
resolve for himself, culminating in a new memoir,
“something That May s hock a nd Discredit You.” The
book is an account of his gender transition, inter-
spersed with the types of satirical essays about
see lavery on c2BY MAURA JUDKIS in new YorkDear Prudence greets
the brand-new day
Advice columnist Daniel Lavery had all the answers. Then he faced his own big questions.
JacKie molloy for the Washington PostBY PAUL FARHIin a lengthy and damning re-
view of former columnist John
solomon, the Hill newspaper
ripped solomon — and itself — for
publishing misleading and poorly
attributed articles last year that
asserted corruption by Joe Biden
in his dealings with Ukraine dur-
ing his time as vice president.
The columns, published in ear-
ly 2019, set in motion President
Trump’s demand that Ukrainian
officials announce an investiga-
tion of Biden and his son, Hunter,
who served on the board of a
Ukrainian energy company.
Trump’s demand, and his with-
holding of military aid to
Ukraine, led to the House’s im-
peachment of Trump and his sub-
sequent acquittal in the senate.
Trump and his allies, including
his personal lawyer rudolph w.
Giuliani and his son Donald
Trump Jr., promoted solomon’s
Hill columns via Twitter, and sol-
omon made several appearances
on sean Hannity’s Fox news pro-
gram to promote his conclusions,
which were that Biden, then con-
sidered Trump’s top 2020 chal-
lenger, had ousted Ukraine’s top
prosecutor to head off an investi-
gation into the company that had
hired his son.
That allegation has never been
proved; indeed, the former Ukrai-
nian prosecutor has recanted it.
in effect, the Hill said solomon
amplified an inaccurate and one-
sided narrative about the Bidens
and Ukraine that was fed to him
by Giuliani, “facilitated” by busi-
nessman Lev Parnas, who was
working with Giuliani at t he time,
and reinforced by solomon’s own
see solomon on c2The Hill
rebukes
Solomon’s
columns
BY CHRIS RICHARDSPop smoke’s “welcome to the
Party” had already been oozing
out of cracked car windows in
the rapper’s native Brooklyn for
an entire summer, and by sep-
tember the song had drifted all
the way to wisconsin, where a
friend of mine who lives near a
grain silo sent me a breathless
text message: “i just heard Pop
smoke for the first time... he
sounds like an entire planet
rapping.”
what a perfect description.
Pop smoke’s voice was a massive,
curvy, cosmic thing, cooler than
50 Cent’s and deeper than God’s.
with his heaviest syllables deliv-
ered in an exquisite rasp, the
friction in Pop smoke’s throat
sounded low and inevitable, like
two plates fulfilling their tectonic
destiny in a subterranean grind.
it’s the kind of sound you feel
beneath your feet, but also with
your entire body, as if its gravity
were connecting you to reality.
so when news spread online
wednesday that this incredible
voice had been silenced forever,
everything felt suddenly out of
balance. Pop smoke — the 20-
year-old rapper born Bashar Ba-
rakah Jackson — was fatally shot
during a home invasion in Los
Angeles, mere days after news
that his latest album would de-
but in the Billboard top 10 and
less than two weeks before he
was scheduled to embark on a
national headlining tour.
see appreciation on c4aPPrECIaTIon
A promising future is
tragically extinguished
BY MICHAEL DIRDAsome time ago, i wrote a long
essay on my favorite modern
literary journalist, the feckless,
self-centered, self-pitying, vacil-
lating, indolent and brilliant Cyr-
il Connolly, editor of the 1940 s
British literary magazine Hori-
zon and the
20 th century’s
finest writer of
classic english
prose, with the
possible excep-
tion of his
friend evelyn
waugh. in ap-
pearance, Con-
nolly resem-
bled an excep-
tionally deca-
dent roman
emperor and
was so famous-
ly sybaritic
that, according
to e.M. Forster,
he gave plea-
sure a bad
name. not only charming but
also amazingly persuasive, he
could regularly sweet-talk pub-
lishers or newspapers into un-
derwriting his extravagances. in
particular, Connolly loved good
food, expensive wine, first-class
travel, inscribed first editions,
the south of France and, not
least, comely young women.
These last, it should be quickly
added, nearly always loved him
back and usually continued to
love him even after the relation-
ship was over.
D.J. Taylor’s enthralling “The
Lost G irls: Love and Literature in
wartime London” t racks t he lives
see book world on c3Book WorldRiveting
chapters
in literary
love lives
THE loST
GIrlS
love and
literature in
Wartime
london
By d. J. taylor
Pegasus. 388
pp. $28.95scott dudelson/getty images
pop smoke, above at a music festival in los angeles last year, was killed during a home invasion.D
ear Prudence is sitting in one of those
Brooklyn coffee shops where the only two
choices for milk are coconut and cashew,
talking about what it’s like to take on the
weight of people’s problems in a world
that increasingly f eels l ike garbage.
“it feels like a small act of neatening that i really
appreciate,” says Daniel Lavery, the author of slate’s
Dear Prudence advice column. “in this limited
amount o f time e very week, in this i ncredibly l imited
scope, you are going to, t o the best o f your a bility, t end
to problems.”
sometimes they’re huge problems that touch on
racism or trauma or abuse. sometimes they’re frivo-
lous problems, about weddings or gifts, that present
windows to deeper ones: codependency, boundaries
and s o on.daniel lavery, the author of slate’s dear prudence column, recounts his gender transition
and other subjects in a new memoir, “something that may shock and discredit you.”