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3-D Demon Eruptions in ’s-Hertogenbosch, and Other News

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On the Shelf

Bosch’s Haywain Triptych. Photograph: Rik Klein Gotink for the Bosch Research and Conservation Project

  • A small Dutch town with the incredible name of ’s-Hertogenbosch is planning a truly legendary celebration of Hieronymus Bosch: “The whole city (already famous in the Netherlands for its wild Shrovetide carnival) is planning to go slightly bonkers with Bosch fever. There will be moving projections of Bosch paintings in the marketplace and 3D recreations—erupting through pavements or hanging from lampposts—of angels, demons, damned souls, mermaids riding on flying fish, drunken priests, lascivious women, and monsters with the legs of a giant chicken and the body of an egg. More images will be projected under the bridges and in the tunnels of the river and canals, for an adventure billed as ‘The Boat Trip of Heaven and Hell.’ ”
  • Meanwhile, in London, the art scene is drawing its inspiration from a more contemporary source: One Direction fan fiction. The artist Owen G. Parry’s latest work “explores the world of ‘Larry Stylinson,’ that is, fanfiction and fanart that explore a sexual relationship between One Direction band members Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson … Parry’s pieces include Larry Underwater Kiss, a digital silk print, Larry!Hiroglyfics, etched drawings of the couple on Perspex alongside the slogan ‘ship everything,’ and Larry!Domestic: masks of Louis and Harry in pink containers, alongside a wearable pregnant belly marked with Harry’s tattoos.”
  • Olly Moss’s new video game Firewatch derives its subversive power from something you don’t find often in the medium: solitude. It does, after all, feature a pair of “rudderless forty-somethings” who keep their eyes to the horizon for a living: “The game is set in a few acres of a fictional national park in Wyoming, where you play as a fire lookout who intends to spend the lingering days of summer working alone at his typewriter, occasionally scanning the horizon for curls of smoke … The core of the game is the relationship between Henry and Delilah, a neighboring lookout with whom Henry keeps in near constant contact on his battery-powered radio. Delilah, who has spent many summers here, is by turns a mentor, a therapist, and a flirt. You choose how Henry responds to her jibes and inquiries, selecting from a range of options to reply either in kind, in defense, or with silence.”
  • From 1940 to 1948, New Yorkers could enjoy the the New York PM Daily, a distinctive tabloid that served as a progressive voice for the city, complete with unflinching photography and a mission statement that feels positively Sanders-esque: “PM is against people who push other people around. PM accepts no advertising. PM belongs to no political party. PM is absolutely free and uncensored. PM’s sole source of income is its readers—to whom it alone is responsible. PM is one newspaper that can and dares to tell the truth.”
  • Most of us (i.e., me) assume that translating is a total paradise—a famously lucrative sideline free of pressure, stress, or neurosis of any kind. The translator Natasha Wimmer sets the record straight: “By translating something you’re implicitly recommending it. I always think about that when I choose a project. I was just reading an interview with the translator Michael Hofmann who translates from German, and he was saying that in his ideal world people would consider his name an imprimatur. I’m really not sure how many people look to the translator to see what to read next, but I do try to make coherent choices … There’s a reason I’m translating a woman next. I think about that; I think about the question of women writers in translation. I’ve translated on commission a lot, so I tend to just choose the best of what I’m offered, and that’s happened to be male writers. But I do think that it’s my responsibility to seek out women writers and to translate them.”