April 2, 2018 Arts & Culture Shakespeare’s Twitter Account By Kate Dwyer On February 13, just after midnight, the Daily Kerouac Twitter account tweeted, “As I’m writing this, the radio says there’s a foot of snow falling on Long Island.” A Twitter user named Susan replied, “Turn off the radio, go outside and listen to the snow.” As I read the exchange, I happened to be less than a mile from Kerouac’s home in Northport, New York, where, on February 13, it was not snowing. The conversation seemed suspended somewhere between now and the early 1960s, when Kerouac first wrote the lines in a letter to Allen Ginsberg. I couldn’t help but picture some version of Kerouac sitting at his typewriter receiving Susan’s reply on an iPhone. It was a bizarre sensation. Daily Kerouac is one of several literary tribute Twitter accounts devoted to tweeting quotes from authors. Sometimes these quotes are consecutive sentences from longer works, other times they’re non-sequitur snippets chopped off midsentence. Shakespeare has at least three tribute accounts, the largest of which, @Wwm_Shakespeare, boasts 158,000 followers. The most popular Oscar Wilde account has upward of 160,000 followers while Sylvia Plath has nearly 200,000 and @_harukimurakami clocks in at 235,000. I have a personal fondness for the Frank O’Hara account. There’s a Virginia Woolf bot that tweets quotes in Korean and a Lovecraft bot that tweets in French. And there are mash-up accounts like @WhitmanFML, which uses an algorithm to combine Whitman quotes with random tweets hashtagged #FML (short for f*ck my life), resulting in tweets such as, “When the psalm sings instead of the singer but i only have the ugly pieces left of the bread #fml.” Some of these accounts are run by living people who carefully select quotes that rhyme with the outside world, and some are run by bots programmed to spit out quotes using elegant Python code. Read More
March 30, 2018 Arts & Culture The Nationalist Roots of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary By Jess McHugh Amid the rancorous screaming matches of political discourse in 2016, a tempering voice emerged from an unlikely source: the dictionary. During the presidential election and its aftermath, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary mobilized its large social-media following to fact-check political figures who treated all language like fiction. From explaining the meaning of fact to differentiating between bigly and big league, the dictionary served as a biting challenge to the new regime, winning praise for its pithy critiques. Merriam-Webster’s resistance to an administration steeped in nativism, however, is complicated by the dictionary’s original goal to create and preserve a monolithic American culture. Noah Webster Jr., the dictionary’s founding author, was one of the first American nationalists, and he wrote his reference books with the express purpose of creating a single definition of American English—one that often existed at the expense of regional and cultural variation of any kind. Read More
March 28, 2018 Arts & Culture Chinese Rhymes By Anthony Madrid Everybody who cares anything for old poetry in English knows how it feels—knows how awful it feels—when a poem is rhyming away and then suddenly the rhyme goes off the rails for a second because English pronunciation has changed since the time the poem was written. Take a look at this gallery of specimens. Exhibit A: Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove Millions of examples of that. Love rhymed with prove or move. Elizabethan poetry is rife with this. • Exhibit B: A winning wave, deserving note In the tempestuous petticoat; A careless shoestring in whose tie I see a wild civility. Tie used to be pronounced tee. Read it again and say tee where it says tie. Aha. • Exhibit C: Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know What’s roundly smooth or languishingly slow. And praise the easy vigor of a line Where Denham’s strength and Waller’s sweetness join. I don’t know whether Pope pronounced line “loin,” or join “jine.” But it must have been one or the other. • Exhibit D: Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? Eye was pronounced ee. Read it again. Read More
March 26, 2018 Arts & Culture What We Can Learn from Neruda’s Poetry of Resistance By Mark Eisner When I first embarked on writing a biography of Pablo Neruda over a decade ago, I wanted to explore the political power of poetry and its capacity to inspire social change. Neruda’s social verse was an integral part of the humanity he expressed; even without pen in hand, he boldly inserted himself into direct action. I happened to finish the book—Neruda: The Poet’s Calling—at the end of Trump’s first hundred days in office. As a result, the questions that I’d been exploring for years suddenly took on new urgency. As resistance increasingly becomes the operative word in our current political reality, what can one of the most important and iconic resistance poets of the past century offer us? What might he give us as we continue to shape the next chapter in our own cultural story? Some answers, or at least perspectives, can be found in the vivid details of Neruda’s life and work. Read More
March 22, 2018 Arts & Culture The Time for Art Is Now By Claire Messud Still from The Shadows for Under The Influence by Nadav Kander. In these relentlessly dark and riven times, I find myself beset by a near ravenous hunger for beauty. My spirit lurches at a line of Shakespeare or Louise Glück—“All fear gives way: the light / Looks after you … ” My eyes linger on the photographs of Nadav Kander, the paintings of Marlene Dumas, the sculptures of Sarah Sze. I reassure myself of the possibility of serenity by recalling Willa Cather’s masterpiece, Death Comes for the Archbishop, or by listening to the extraordinary voice of Hannah Reid, the vocalist of London Grammar. I long for that expansion of my soul. We have so much to learn. The ideals that have shaped my entire life thus far have been called into question by the election of this so-called president. They are ideals worth fighting for: a faith, as Martin Luther King assured us, that the long arc of history bends toward justice; that societies have the desire and capacity for improvement; that reflection and communication will foster greater compassion; and a belief that one of the most powerful paths to progress is through art and literature. I have believed in the value of knowledge and of truth. And I have believed that the quality of a life is not measured by money, celebrity, or material goods but by richness of mind, generosity of spirit, and by meaningful human relationships. Read More
March 21, 2018 Arts & Culture The Jumpsuit That Will Replace All Clothes Forever By Heather Radke Photo: Lara Kastner. It’s fifty degrees in January, and the air in the Garment District smells strangely of pea soup. The building I’ve been directed to is supposed to be an art gallery, but all I can find is an office-supply showroom. I wait outside on a street dotted with FedEx trucks, Pret A Mangers, and fabric stores selling colorful sequined silks and heavy white brocades—the expensive material of saris and wedding dresses. In the early twentieth century, when New York City was still the center of the American garment industry, this neighborhood housed sewing factories where Eastern European immigrants made the petticoats and shirtwaists sold on Fifth Avenue. Most multinational fashion brands have since moved their operations overseas, and the sewing work that is still done in the Garment District is usually completed by newly graduated FIT students working as interns, not by members of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. I’m here to meet Abigail Glaum-Lathbury, who will give me a jumpsuit she made just for me that I will wear as my only article of clothing for the next three weeks. Abigail is one of two artists who comprise the Rational Dress Society, a collective committed to what the group calls “counter-fashion”—a critique of fashion and capitalism through political dress. Abigail and her partner in counter-fashion, Maura Brewer, have been wearing only jumpsuits for the past three years—to weddings, to job interviews, to teach their classes at art school, and to visit their families over Thanksgiving. Their closets are nearly empty: they each have three jumpsuits, a few jumpsuit-compatible sweaters, workout clothes, pajamas, and underthings—that’s it. They don’t have to buy new clothes or wonder how they’ll look in the culottes that have recently come into fashion. They never have to choose a new outfit because they’ve already picked the one they’ll wear forever. Read More