Anu: Coolhunt, Before Sunrise, Why I Write, On the Street, Sartorialist, Truisms
Welcome to a new issue of Words That Matter! Each week, we invite a guest curator to share the reading that matters most to them.
Anu Atluru (@anuatluru) is a writer, founder, and investor (and a doctor). She writes Working Theorys, a collection of essays on technology, art, culture, ambition, and life in an age of intelligent machines. She enjoys studying the world through ambitious people, particularly in Silicon Valley and the modern mediasphere. Anu has built consumer products via her studio, Slang, was the first business hire at Clubhouse, and previously was a resident physician at Harvard/Mass General. She enjoys an afternoon coffee.
Please enjoy these works and words that have mattered to Anu!
Anu’s Picks
A few pulls from Anu’s favorites across genres and mediums, some she has revisited recently and some that are all-time greats.
The Coolhunt
Malcolm Gladwell | March 1997 | The New Yorker
My favorite work from Gladwell and still as relevant as ever. All about how “cool” is created and noticed and harvested, and the natural laws that govern it, told through sneakers and street fashion. The three rules of cool have never left me. This is one of the essays I most frequently recommend to anyone who cares about the world of creative business and popular culture.
Before Sunrise
Richard Linklater | 1995 | Film
The first film in one of the all-time great film trilogies. I love it for its near singular focus on great conversation, the most exhilarating thing in life, and so rare. Has infinite great scenes, from Jesse’s opening monologue to coax Celine off the train, to this scene that meanders down an alley while capturing the young-adult tension between chasing ambition and building a life. Worth reading the screenplay.
Don’t Surround Yourself With Smarter People
Venkatesh Rao | November 2014 | Ribbonfarm
There’s a cliché that says “never be the smartest guy in the room.” VGR points out the logical flaw: “If the smarter people are dumb enough to surround themselves with the likes of you, they are dumber than you, which means they’re smart and you’re dumb?” His advice is much better. The first time I read this piece, it instantly explained why I appreciate the company of those I do.
Why I Write
George Orwell | 1946 | The Orwell Foundation
Orwell has long been one of my favorite authors and satirists; Animal Farm and 1984 are two of my favorite books, and well worth re-reading periodically (and I wish the long-form satire genre were more popular today). This essay strikingly articulates his four motivations for writing. A bonus recommendation in the modern satire genre is Colin Nissan’s The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do.
How Did They Ever Make a Movie of Facebook?
David Prior | 2011 | Documentary
A raw-footage style documentary about the making of The Social Network, in my estimation a perfect film about ambition (though, yes, it seems to have been heavily fictionalized). The impact this movie had on the last two decades of Zillennial entrepreneurial aspiration is still gravely understudied. Bonus link to an all-time great trailer for the original film. (I’m not thrilled about the forthcoming “companion” film The Social Reckoning, to say the least.)
On The Street
Vivian Gornick | September 1996 | The New Yorker
“On the street nobody watches; everyone performs.” A common thread in so much of what I like is the art of paying attention to what people say and do and how and why and the debrief after. Also one of the best windows into what daily NYC immersion feels like (a ’90s New York, so a bit dated but in a good way) and the narrative significance of strangers.
The Sartorialist
Scott Schuman | 2005-2026 | The Sartorialist
The first blog I was truly inspired by, perusing the whole archive, and ironically one with very few words. Schuman pioneered the high-taste, one-person, street-fashion-and-travel photo blog and was arguably fashion’s original social media master before Instagram. I’m secretly very attentive to clothes as form and function, with deep respect for the art in fashion, niche and mass.
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
Ursula K. Le Guin | 1986 | Essay
At one level this is a gender-frame, but mostly as the entry point that leads into a theory of narrative and technology and science fiction. A commentary on what defines humanity, the pointy spear or sturdy club that can kill or the container that can hold valuable things. Both timeless and timely themes, and utterly satisfying to a theorist like me. Unforgettable observation about heroes if they didn’t have spears and pedestals: if you instead put a hero in a bag, a container, he looks like a rabbit or a potato.
Truisms
Jenny Holzer | 1978-87 | MoMA
I love an aphorism with modern themes and a biting intensity, and these are the best of the form. I’ve always admired Holzer’s one-line truisms that ran as public art, in the form of posters, plaques, projections, and famously LED signs in prominent places. There may be a book of aphorisms in me.
Spotlight on Anu’s work
Make Something Heavy. We’re creating more than ever, but it weighs nothing.
The Aesthetic Is The Art Now. Art requires faith that the creator has something to say.
Status Limbo. To get status, you have to give up status.
Dreams of Stability. The upside used to be upside, but now the upside is stability.
Notes on Not Posting. There’s some self-respect in not being so predictable.
New Media Is Insider Media. A small audience of the right people beats a massive audience of the wrong ones.
You can follow Anu on Substack at @anu and subscribe to her newsletter, Working Theorys (she’s working on a longer-form project too). She’s also active on Twitter/X at @anuatluru.
Brought to you by…
Today’s issue is brought to you by Matter.
Matter is the modern read-later app for serious readers. Since Pocket shut down last fall, tens of thousands of readers have made Matter their new home.
Designed for Apple, Matter has earned multiple App of the Day honors and won MacStories’ 2025 Feature of the Year for its ultra-realistic text to speech. It’s been recommended by Tim Ferriss, Patrick Collison, the Acquired Podcast, and The Wall Street Journal, among others.
 | A guest post by
|
Amazing. I’ve been hoping you’d do one of these, Anu! Thank you for sharing - excited to have such a wonderful reading list for the week!