June 13, 2012 Poetry Watch: Dorothy Parker “Reads” By Sadie Stein We have long been intrigued, fascinated, and terrified by the ingenious work by the folks behind Poetry Reincarnations. While the reincarnated Walt Whitman and the Ruined Maid deserve mention, in honor of tonight’s Strand event, we bring you Dorothy Parker “reciting” “One Perfect Rose.”
June 13, 2012 Contests Tonight! Join Us at the Strand By The Paris Review Don’t miss it! Tonight at 7 P.M., join us for the kickoff of our event series at the Strand, where (in addition to enjoying performances, mingling, and wine) we’ll announce the finalists of our tote-bag contest. To celebrate our collaboration, we asked you to submit designs for our newest tote bag. And did you deliver! Below, find a few of our favorites! (Thanks, everyone!) Read More
June 13, 2012 Books Wednesday: Me By Witold Gombrowicz A page from Gombrowicz's diary. Yesterday at the Polish Club, I dropped by right at the end of the steamrollering of my soul and works. The paper that was positive about me was the work of Karol Swierczewski and Mrs. Jezierska read a paper against. A discussion followed at whose conclusion I appeared. Thomas Mann, an experienced connoisseur in these matters, said that an art that grows in the light of recognition from the very beginning will undoubtedly be different from an art that must win a place for itself with difficulty, and at the price of much humiliation. How would my work have looked if from its very inception it had been crowned with a laurel wreath; if even today, so many years later, I did not have to devote myself to it as to something forbidden, shameful, and inappropriate? Read More
June 13, 2012 On the Shelf 50 Shades of Wednesday By The Paris Review Familiar-looking cover art. Bret Easton Ellis wants you to know he is not joking about his desire to adapt 50 Shades of Grey for the screen. (Someone’s already called dibs on lingerie.) How said screenplay might read. Speaking of NSFW: Can you, like Martin Amis, tell which sex wrote which sex scene? Jennifer Benka is the new executive director of the Academy of American Poets. A Ray Bradbury Museum? Maybe … Speaking of, childhood homes of twenty famous authors.