July 26, 2024 The Review’s Review You Are a Muppet By Jane Breakell Photograph courtesy of the author. Sesame Street premiered in 1969, the same year that my eldest sister, Kate, was born. The genre of children’s television was in its infancy; Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood had premiered just the previous year, joining Captain Kangaroo and Howdy Doody on the limited roster of shows meant for the very young, and the idea of using gimmicks from commercial TV—a variety of segments, a sense of humor—to support children’s development (not just to keep them quiet or sell them toys) was revolutionary. In 1969, the Sesame Street universe was inhabited by Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster, and Bert and Ernie—all Muppets—plus the humans Gordon and Susan, who were married to each other; Mr. Hooper, who ran the corner grocery; Bob—apparently, according to Wikipedia, a music teacher; and a rotating cast of kids, who seemed to have happily wandered in from the real world. Read More
July 24, 2024 On Poetry Making of a Poem: Patty Nash on “Metropolitan” By Patty Nash Anton Mauve, The Return to the Fold (1978). Public Domain. For our series Making of a Poem, we’re asking poets to dissect the poems they’ve published in our pages. Patty Nash’s poem “Metropolitan” appears in the new Summer issue of the Review, no. 248. Do you have photos of different drafts of this poem? I do not write in “drafts.” I just continue to write or tinker on the same poem until I can’t anymore. This means that it is hard to see earlier iterations of the poem—the earliest one I have access to is one that I sent to my friends, so it was somewhat presentable already. There are small line differences, however, and sometimes major ones. For example, I changed the gender of the protagonist in this section—here is a screenshot of an earlier version: I also slimmed down the ending, thank goodness. Earlier version here as well: Read More
July 23, 2024 Car Crushes Toyota FJ Cruiser By Thom Sliwowski The author’s brother and the Toyota FJ Cruiser, on Route 23. Photograph by Thom Sliwowski. “I want to wrap / my face tight with a silk scarf and spiral down / a Cinque Terre highway in an Alfa Romeo,” writes Olivia Sokolowski in her poem “Lover of Cars,” which appeared in the Fall 2023 issue of the Review. And who doesn’t, when you put it like that? In celebration of Sokolowski’s poem, we commissioned writers to reflect briefly on cars they’ve loved, struggled with, coveted, and crushed on. This car was an unwieldy inheritance. It wasn’t needed, wasn’t wanted, and wasn’t even paid off. The FJ Cruiser had been the prized possession and long-standing project of my uncle Andrzej: an elevator repairman who lived in Passaic, New Jersey, until he died suddenly of an air embolism. It was a freak accident: a minuscule air bubble traveled from his IV to his lungs while he was lying in the hospital with a stomach ulcer. This uncommonly gentle man died a uniquely terrifying death: gasping for air that filled his lungs but couldn’t reach his bloodstream. A nurse found him crumpled on the bathroom floor, purple in the face, eyes wide open. This car had been his desideratum incarnate. Before he even purchased it, he got a scale model the size of a kitten, with functional doors, windows, headlights. Boyishly he showed it to us, his teenage nephews, when he came over to our house. Once he bought the car he drove it mostly shirtless, wearing sunglasses, drinking Red Bull. He affixed the metal company sticker of his employer—Standard Elevator—to a spot on the central console. Long after he died, the pleasant, neutral scent of his body odor remained in the car, despite my brother’s attempts to dispel it with various kinds of air fresheners. I always thought this smell matched the car’s aesthetic: a campy machismo, cartoonishly buff, dense without being hefty or overbearing. This was a car that knew what a silly shape it cut on the highway—and liked it. Driving it, you would wave to other drivers of other FJ Cruisers, some of whom would even wave back. Read More
July 22, 2024 On Language Anthe: On Translating Kannada By Deepa Bhasthi Drawing by Deepa Bhasthi. Anthe (ಅಂತೆ) is one of my favorite words in the Kannada language. Somewhat meaningless by itself, it adds so much nuance and emotion when appended to a sentence that we Kannadigas cannot carry on a conversation without using it. Depending on the context and the speaker’s tone, anthe can convey an expression of surprise or the understanding that gossip is being shared. It could mean “so it happened,” “that’s how it is,” “apparently,” or “it seems.” The latter comes closest to a direct translation, but is a frustratingly simple choice. Anthe will only ever half-heartedly migrate to English. Banu Mushtaq, whose short stories I have been translating recently, and whose “Red Lungi” appears in the Summer 2024 issue of The Paris Review, employs anthe generously. Mushtaq’s characters use anthe when reporting something someone said verbatim or when guessing how something might have happened. In another instance, she uses echo words with anthe, another common characteristic of the Kannada language: one character utters anthe-kanthe to refer to hearsay. There are also a whole lot of ellipses in Mushtaq’s stories … her sentences often trail off … like so … She mixes up her tenses here and there. It is always deliberate, this nod to the idea that time is not linear. The awareness that we inhabit different time zones and dimensions and live in stories within stories is commonplace in India. These narrative tools give Mushtaq’s work a sense of orality, as if she is sitting across from you and telling you the story. Read More
July 19, 2024 First Person Driving with O. J. Simpson By Harmony Holiday O. J. Simpson, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Sydney Simpson at the Kahala Hilton Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii, February 1986. Photograph by Alan Light. Via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC0 2.0. My father and O. J. Simpson were passing ships in red Corvettes in Brentwood, Los Angeles. Circa 1977, the sunroofs of their nearly identical luxury cars open for maximum exposure, they would wave to one another like carnival jesters, my sister in the back seat squeamish at the irony, their white wives occupying the front seats in a Siamese dream, twin stars in the fantasy no one is aware of until it arrives in images. Such gestures were the requisite scenic signifiers for that era of post–New Negro black entertainers faced with the hedonism of psychedelia, blaxploitation, and the amphetamined economy of the Reagan years. They were transitioning from taboos to tabloids to well-adjusted, literal tokens, having made it to some sense of after all or ever after in a fairy tale blurring the wasteland upheld by the lucky-bland amusements of almost-suburbanites. Unkempt and illicit ambitions were their freedom and retribution. Read More
July 18, 2024 Dispatch Costco in Cancún By Simon Wu Photograph courtesy of the author. When we arrive at the Paradisus, I worry I have made the first of many mistakes. Has Costco failed us? A bland remix of Ed Sheeran wafts up from the swim-up bar in the central courtyard into the lobby. My parents do not drink. They do not like to swim. I worry that Ed Sheeran will follow us to our room. I continue to worry. Three months ago, I called Ramona, a Costco Travel representative, and asked her a question. What is the most popular and well-reviewed of the all-inclusive vacations offered by Costco Travel? Mexico, she said. And then she qualified: Costco members have many different tastes, but most have unanimously enjoyed a stay at the Paradisus La Perla (Adults Only) in Riviera Maya, Mexico. Compared to other Latin American countries, Ramona said, many Americans reported that the Mexican resort felt “worth it.” I was hesitant to join the crowds of U.S. Americans descending on the Caribbean, but Ramona maintained that Paradisus was the best option for my needs: parents who never vacation, mostly shop at Costco, and harbor a fundamental dislike of restaurants and an extremely low tolerance for what they determine is not worth their money. Read More