Advertisement

The Bard Blazed, and Other News

By

On the Shelf

Shakespeare

Our greatest dramatist, debilitated by the effects of cannabis at some kind of “reefer party.”

  • Shakespeare scholars are reeling from a discovery so major, so irrefutably epochal, that it sets the entire field on its head: four clay pipes found in his Stratford-upon-Avon garden contain cannabis residue. Historians may never know for certain if Shakespeare composed his masterworks among purple plumes of the dankest kush, but for the sake of sensationalism, we of the media have no choice but to assume he did. T-shirts featuring the Bard ripping tubes, smoking bowls, and otherwise enjoying a good old-fashioned toke will be available in novelty shops near you by C.O.B. today. I had nothing to do with them.
  • A 1991 letter from Elena Ferrante to her Italian publisher, Sandra Ozzola, lays out her approach to promotion with the utmost candor: “I’ve already done enough for this long story: I wrote it. If the book is worth anything, that should be sufficient. I won’t participate in discussions and conferences, if I’m invited. I won’t go and accept prizes, if any are awarded to me. I will never promote the book, especially on television, not in Italy or, as the case may be, abroad … I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors. If they have something to say, they will sooner or later find readers; if not, they won’t.”
  • In which Avies Platt, “an art mistress at Wellingborough County High School for Girls in Northamptonshire,” has a stirring encounter with an aging W. B. Yeats: “she met the seventy-two-year-old Yeats at an open meeting of the Sex Education Society, a group headed by controversial sexologist Norman Haire … As the evening progressed it became obvious that the elderly poet’s interest in Platt went further than conversation—she mentions him sitting outside the Athenaeum club in Pall Mall and expressing his regrets at ‘the stupid rule that we may not take ladies in after midnight.’ ”
  • Let’s talk about trolling, and while we’re at it, let’s throw some existentialism in there, too: “If the Internet was predicated on everyone co-existing on a level playing field, able to distribute and share knowledge without the previous gatekeepers of status or affiliation to slow things down (perhaps one of the main benefits of having user names rather than real names), trolling takes that utopian possibility and throws it by the wayside … trolling is a destructive way of addressing the ambivalent state of being that is life online, that is, being connected to millions and even billions of people simultaneously, but being incredibly isolated, separated from the nuance of subtle body language, body odor, touch, taste, et cetera.”
  • Today in new applications for 3-D printing: haute couture. At Paris Fashion Week, Chanel presented a version of its classic two-piece suit: “Using selective laser sintering—a high powered laser fusing together tiny particles—much of the suit vest was sculpted, appearing boxlike, with no sewing necessary … With endless possibilities in shape, texture and transparency, the experimentation of 3-D printing techniques and materials has a worthy place on the cutting edge of couture. But fashion designers must learn how to generate computer files and complex computer-aided drafting techniques for the printing process to work.”