Posts Tagged ‘Kanye West’
What We’re Loving: Saintly Comics, High Relief
January 11, 2013 | by Sadie Stein
In 1974, David Esterly was pursuing a career as an academic when he encountered a limewood carving by the seventeenth-century master Grinling Gibbons. He gave up English literature, devoted himself to the art of high-relief carving, and in the process became not merely the foremost Gribbons expert, but a master carver himself. The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making details Esterly’s restoration of a Gribbons drop at Hampton Court, but it is more than this. “I was apprenticed to a phantom, and lived among mysteries,” he writes of that time, and the memoir is indeed as much about engagement with the past, and the preservation of ancient arts, as it is one man’s journey. If you are in New York, through January 18, you can see Esterly’s intricate and beautiful work on display at W. M. Brady and Co. —Sadie Stein
No matter how hard you try, you can’t help but stare at a train wreck, and Stephen Rodrick’s behind-the-scenes New York Times Magazine profile of Paul Schrader’s film The Canyons fills the guilty-pleasure, sweet-tooth fix quite nicely. A director desperate for a hit; a screenwriter (Bret Easton Ellis) more concerned with waging social-media jihads than actually writing; a porn star (James Deen) with a sensitive side; a budget that wouldn’t cover Kanye West’s ego; and, of course, Hollywood’s favorite child-star-turned-TMZ-punchline Lindsay Lohan: while this equation might not add up to a box office hit, it’s a fascinating look at the absurdity of Hollywood filmmaking. To see what’s become of the film so far, check out the trailer. —Justin Alvarez
The Tyranny of Footnotes
February 21, 2012 | by Paul Wachter
Although V. S. Naipaul is my favorite living writer, I resisted reading Patrick French’s critically acclaimed biography of Sir Vidia, published in 2008, until last month. The reviews alone presented a deeply unflattering picture: Naipaul as misogynist, racist, skinflint, serial adulterer, and Hindu nationalist. (And to think the biography was authorized!)
But I had read nearly all of Naipaul’s work and some of it, including his best novel, A Bend in the River (from whose opening line, “The world is what it is,” French takes his title), many times. So when I happened across the biography at my local library, I picked it up thinking it was as close to a new work of Naipaul’s as I was likely to see.
It’s a masterful effort, a nimble admixture of critical appreciation and salacious gossip. But there were no real surprises in the text; the reviews had limned the most revealing and unsettling episodes of Naipaul’s life.
There was, however, a surprise buried in French’s acknowledgments. Among the hundred-odd names, sandwiched between Derek Walcott (Naipaul’s fellow Trinidadian and rival of sorts) and Andrew Wylie (Naipaul’s agent), was one Kanye West.
Kanye West?
Now it’s true that the rapper-producer’s father is a former Black Panther, and Naipaul wrote an essay “Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad.” And West’s late mother was an English professor. Was it possible that Naipaul and West shared a connection beyond their inflated egos?
I e-mailed French. Read More »
A Week in Culture: Amanda Hesser, Food Writer
December 8, 2010 | by Amanda Hesser
Photograph by Sarah Shatz.
DAY ONE
11:00 A.M. Paris Reviewers: You may want to sit down for this, or drink a few stockpiled Four Lokos. I am about to rock your world with a schizophrenic, middlebrow, totally aimless, and mostly pointless cultural hodgepodge. And the jittery attention span of youth is no excuse—I’m well over thirty.
An early morning of kitchen prep, latte guzzling, and e-mail scouring (Techcrunch is my daily must-read e-mail; I’m too busy for other newsletters, though I dearly miss VSL). Then six of us begin our weekly photo shoot for food52. A former food52 editor taught us oldsters the terms “douche-b” and “d-bag.” In her honor, I play for everyone Kanye West’s new song “Runaway,” whose chorus is “Let’s have a toast for the douchebags. Let’s have a toast for the assholes. Let’s have a toast for the scumbags. Everyone of them that I know.”
1:30 P.M. Eat the fruits of our morning labor: two kinds of latkes and a brief break to watch “Don Draper Says What?” He says “What?” and looks handsome in at least forty-three different ways. Back to work, girls!
8:30 P.M. My husband, Tad, and I heap some leftovers—roasted salmon, more latkes, and arugula salad from Fishkill Farms—onto our dinner plates, then sit on the bedroom floor (reminder: must get TV tables!) and veg in front of It’s Complicated. The Nancy Meyers movie is particularly enjoyable because we’re not in the aging-boomer demographic it aims for, and thus are freed up to appreciate the calculated shrewdness—and lifestyle porn (the spas and island kitchens!)—of the seventy-five-million-dollar mom-com.
1:00 A.M. Culture mulching in my new Internet-y lifestyle happens late at night. As I dig myself out of the daily e-mail blizzard, I flip back and forth between Twitter and NYTimes.com. NYTimes is like my wise parents; Twitter, my smartest pals. From Twitter, I link through to Kottke.org to read about extraterrestrial life. Guiltily, I creep on over to the Washington Post to catch up on Jane Black and Brent Cunningham’s op-ed on the food culture wars. This is the topic foodniks have long been avoiding; I love stories that call out the elephant in the room.
New Yorker writer Susan Orlean wrote a cookbook review for food52’s Tournament of Cookbooks. It ran today and was such a gem in structure and tone, I read it once more, just for fun.
Late, late: Realized that I fell so far behind on the Wikileaks hullabaloo that I have no idea where to begin: Analysis? Original breaking story? Instead, look at photos of Brad Pitt’s leather pants on HuffPo. He really should not wear leather pants.
