January 23, 2014 Arts & Culture “The Past Is a Mist”: Pinter’s Proust By Christopher Richards Photo © 2014 Nancy Crampton Yellow screen. Sound of a garden gate bell. Open countryside, a line of trees, seen from a railway carriage. The train is still. No sound. Quick fade out. Momentary yellow screen. The sea, seen from a high window, a towel hanging on a towel rack in foreground. No sound. Quick fade out. Momentary yellow screen. Venice. A window in a palazzo, seen from a gondola. No sound. Quick fade out. Momentary yellow screen. So begins the wordless sequence of thirty-six shots at the start of The Proust Screenplay, Harold Pinter’s adaptation of À la recherche du temps perdu, written in the seventies and never filmed. To celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Proust’s Swann’s Way a series of public events have been planned in New York. Part of 92Y’s contribution to the centenary was a staged reading of Pinter’s The Proust Screenplay, which was produced at the National Theatre in London in 2001 but had never been performed in the States before its 92Y debut. Helmed by the same director from the National’s production, the 92Y’s reading was directed by Di Trevis, who collaborated with Pinter to stage his screenplay. Performed by a cast of fourteen—led by Peter Clements, a dead ringer for Proust—the crowded event felt like a staged reading in name only; fully blocked out with lighting cues, set pieces, and props, the presence of the actors’ scripts was the only sign that this wasn’t a complete production. Read More
January 22, 2014 Arts & Culture A Mountain of Sable Plumes By Dan Piepenbring Strawberry Hill, Walpole’s Gothic revivalist manor, in Twickenham. Earlier this week, to commemorate Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday, Flavorpill found ten Gothic short stories for our delectation, and I must say, they’re really hitting the spot. January is especially well suited to the tint of the Gothic mindset—nothing helps you settle into the winter doldrums like an unceasing parade of bloodied knives, thousand-yard stares, disemboweled corpses, creaking doors, and shrieking virgins. It’s enough to make you want to sunder a frilled shirt and drink rancid port from a tarnished silver chalice, muttering all the while about the gloaming, the gloaming, the gloaming… And let’s not forget the funereal knell of church bells. You’ll want those, too. If you really want to whip yourself into a Gothic froth, I recommend The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel, widely regarded as the forebear of the Gothic proper. It’s not “good,” exactly—you won’t find independent booksellers foisting it on you as a forgotten classic—but it packs a lot of senseless murk into a slim volume, and it features one of my favorite opening scenes in all of literature: a homely young man is crushed to death by a giant helmet, which seems to have fallen from the sky. Read More
January 22, 2014 Arts & Culture, Our Daily Correspondent Like the Cat That Got the Cream By Sadie Stein Photo: catsdrivingthings.tumblr.com The girl and the boy stood in the doorway of the crosstown bus as we crossed the park. She was dressed all in black, her lank hair streaked with crimson, eyes circled with heavy kohl, wrists crisscrossed with black rubber bracelets. Her backpack bore an “Emily the Strange” badge. Her companion, plump and pale, in an oversized trench coat, turned toward her with a coy tilt of his head. “Mee-ow,” he purred, extending and then curling his fingers one by one in what was clearly intended to be a cat-like manner. His companion did not respond. “Mee-ow,” he said more loudly. “I’m so fucked on this test. Let’s get some pizza,” she said impatiently, pulling the stop bell. There was a brief silence. Then, “Purrrr-fect,” said the boy. She ignored him. They got off at the next stop, after a very slow old lady.
January 21, 2014 Arts & Culture, Our Daily Correspondent Curious Punishments By Sadie Stein A still from Quick Draw McGraw. The other day, my brother called and asked if I would look and see if he had accidentally left his good trousers at my apartment while he was crashing with me; he needed to attend a funeral. I said he had, and that I would press them for him. “I wish he could afford some better clothes,” I said regretfully to my friend. “But it’s not like anyone will be looking. And the lights probably won’t be be very bright.” (While this may seem a trivial concern, anyone who has worn black polyester to a funeral will know what I’m talking about.) “It will be fine,” said my friend. “It’s not as though he’ll be in rags. Or a barrel and suspenders.” This got us thinking about barrels and suspenders—the familiar image of an individual in visibly reduced circumstances. I imagined it had originated in old political cartoons or similar. And then of course we had to look it up. Wikipedia informed us that, indeed, a cartoonist called Will B. Johnstone was known for having created a New York World-Telegram cartoon character known as the Tax Payer, who—presumably having been taxed so exorbitantly that he could no longer afford clothing—was portrayed sporting only a barrel held up by suspenders. But the origin of the trope was most likely the Drunkard’s Cloak, or Newcastle Cloak, a form of pillory in seventeenth-century Germany and England in which the publicly inebriated were placed in a barrel colorfully illustrated with scenes of drunken antics. As one helpful Web site explains, “There were two kinds—the enclosed barrel which forced the victim to kneel in his or her own filth, or the open barrel which allowed the victim to roam about town, open to ridicule and scorn.” A Sophie’s choice, really. Especially as both barrels were likely employed for communal use and, presumably, never cleaned. Read More
January 20, 2014 Arts & Culture Recapping Dante: Canto 14, or a Finger-Wagging Editorial Letter By Alexander Aciman Priamo della Quercia, Dante Meets the Sodomites, c. 15th century. This winter, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! Dear Dante, I’ve received your manuscript for Canto 14 of the Inferno, and I have quite a few notes. The language and poetry of this passage is absolutely magical; a few passages in particular caught my attention, such as “The gloomy forest rings it like a garland,” (line ten), which is such a beautiful way of phrasing it. And the expression “scorn for fire,” on line forty-six, sounds like the title of a Philip Roth novel. You have a good ear for lyricism and your poem is a unique, fascinating glimpse into theology, history, literature, even love. You’re really carving out a niche for yourself in the Italian canon—kudos! That said, certain parts left me wanting more, and they confused me enough to wonder if you were really trying your hardest. On line forty-three, Dante addresses Virgil by saying, “Master, you who overcome all things—all but the obstinate fiends who sallied forth against us at the threshold of the gate.” This really threw me off. For the whole poem, Dante has been meek, eager to be with Virgil, and here it almost seems as if he’s mocking Virgil. It doesn’t really fit in with the reader’s impression of Dante—which, I hasten to mention, you have spent the last thirteen cantos crafting expertly. This canto focuses on those who have sinned against God. Their punishment is to have flakes of fire slowly rained down on them (nice touch, by the way—very Sodom and Gomorrah). Our attention is drawn to one sinner who is sitting in the corner brooding, almost without regard for the flakes of fire falling over him; it’s such a magnificent image that I almost expect him to be Hector or Achilles, but instead it’s a small-timer named Capaneus, who goes on to talk about Thebes for a few lines. From what I understand, Capaneus is in hell because after his victory at Thebes, he scorned Jupiter, who in an instant struck him with lightning for blasphemy. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: you need to find a readership and speak to it. Nobody will know who Capaneus is, Dante. You already told the story of an unknown historical figure in the last canto; now it’s time to make a splash. If you want to talk about Thebes, let’s tag in Oedipus himself. Read More
January 17, 2014 Windows on the World Lysley Tenorio, New York, New York By Matteo Pericoli A series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. From room 1006 at the Standard, East Village, you see a white-faced clock overlooking a small triangular park. A sea-green dome ringed with small arched windows is partly blocked by a boxy rectangular building, faded and plain except for the cross on its south-facing wall. On the rooftop hangs a single line of laundry. Straight ahead is a building, wide and blank as a wall, that nobody seems to enter or exit. If you don’t live in New York, you might not know the names of these buildings or their significance, how they function in the city, what they mean to its people. But this is the gift of being somewhere new, in a place that will never be home. Everything is defined by your first impressions. That sea-green dome, so out of place and time, might house things both ancient and futuristic—rusted astrolabes on the shelves, side by side with next generation iPads. The crucifix could be the final remnant of a failed church, the original cathedral demolished decades ago, replaced by a building full of a thousand cubicles. That white-faced clock, the brightest thing at night, may very well be the front of a crime-fighter’s headquarters or a supervillain’s lair. That line of laundry, winter-damp and flapping—those are the clothes of a dead man who had no loved ones left behind to gather them. And directly across, that building is lifeless as ever, but someone is inside, waiting to be glimpsed, you’re sure of it. All you need to do is wait. —Lysley Tenorio Lysley Tenorio is currently the Paris Review Writer-in-Residence at the Standard, East Village.