Riley Keough, our September cover star, has been in the public eye since the year the Berlin Wall came down—as the granddaughter of Priscilla and Elvis Presley, she commanded her first headlines for the mere act of being born. Now she’s charting her own path to success and fulfillment with an Emmy-nominated performance in Daisy Jones & the Six; her directorial debut, War Pony, which won her the Camera d’Or at Cannes last year; and as a new mother. (Her daughter’s name, revealed here for the first time, connects the baby to her family’s roots.) Keough talks to our West Coast editor, Britt Hennemuth, about her life and work, as well as the tumult of the past year—the untimely loss of her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, and the settling of the Graceland estate, of which she is now sole custodian. “To be American royalty is to have the whole world watch you,” Baz Luhrmann, director of last year’s Elvis, observes in Britt’s piece. Keough handles that gaze with grace, even as she commits to her individual artistic vision. And in his suite of portraits, Mario Sorrenti captures the star quality that is all her own.
Tennis fans worldwide are closely watching the Americans these days, seeking the next kings and queens of the court among a very promising generation of rising stars. As Caitlin Thompson, the cofounder and publisher of Racquet, writes about the US Open home-team hopefuls, it’s been a while since an American cohort grabbed the sport’s headlines in such a definitive way. Their backgrounds, styles of play, and temperaments couldn’t be more different from one another, but they’re united by their ability to shake off the baggage of the past—to not worry about living up to legends in favor of becoming legends themselves. Dana Scruggs photographed 13 of these young American players during downtime at Roland Garros earlier this season, where they channeled for her camera the charisma that’s serving them so well on the tour.
What’s the opposite of serendipitous? Whatever that is, it explains how Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and other significant works of cultural criticism, keeps getting mixed up with Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, a significant work of cultural criticism, though more recently Wolf has become better known as a spreader of COVID-related and other misinformation. For this issue, Klein takes her uncomfortable case of mistaken identity and turns it into a riveting exploration of the trope of the doppelganger in contemporary culture. The deeper she goes, the more delightful and disturbing it all becomes, as the two-Naomi problem starts to exemplify all that’s muddled about an era in which divided selves abound.
Radhika Jones
Source link
