July 14, 2017 On the Shelf I’m Telling You for the Last Time, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring A postcard by Alfred Mainzer. First, an announcement: this is my 874th On the Shelf column, and my last. I’m leaving my post at The Paris Review to seek my fortune as a writer, after which, impoverished and bruised, I’ll come crawling back, begging for your forgiveness. I’ll give a more proper farewell in a post on Monday. For now I’d like to say: it’s been a pleasure and a privilege to start my day this way for the past three and a half years. The Internet, as we know, is full of garbage, but it’s also full of profound, inventive, incisive writing (it is very large, this Internet), and I’ve enjoyed using this space to share some of my favorites with you. We’ve had some fun, haven’t we? And some coffee. I’m sorry for all the occasions this roundup kind of sucked: when I was hungover, say, or when I overslept, or when I looked out the window and saw a cop standing at my car writing a parking ticket. But I’ve just checked, and, for the moment, there are no cops at my car. So let’s have one last go at it: Read More
July 13, 2017 On the Shelf Time to Brush Up on Your Demonology, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring Ukobach, a minor oil demon, depicted by M. Jarrault. At this point, there’s no good reason not to become a Satanist. If I’m going to swear an oath of fealty to a demonic, sadistic, megalomaniacal overlord, it may as well be Satan himself, instead of some bush-league rip-off. (The faker has orange skin; the real deal is straight crimson.) Even if you’re on the fence about Lucifer, it’s a fine time to brush up on the basics of Satanism; one never knows when a well-worded appeal to the powers of Hell will come in handy. In a new essay, Eric Grundhauser looks back at Jacques Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal, which provides a great primer on the cast of demons down below. Also, it has nice drawings: “De Plancy published dozens of titles in his lifetime, but he never surpassed the success (or infamy) of the Dictionnaire Infernal, which first appeared in 1818 and was followed by several updated editions. The full subhead for the 1926 edition describes the book as a ‘universal library on the beings, characters, books, deeds, and causes which pertain to the manifestations and magic of trafficking with Hell; divinations, occult sciences, grimoires, marvels, errors, prejudices, traditions, folktales, the various superstitions, and generally all manner of marvelous, surprising, mysterious, and supernatural beliefs.’ Many of the demonic descriptions in the Dictionnaire Infernal have their roots in earlier demonological texts, such as the sixteenth century Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, or the seventeenth century Lesser Key of Solomon. Both of those titles contained hierarchical descriptions of Hell’s many denizens, versions of which de Plancy included in his text. Among the spirits presented in de Plancy’s book are well-known evils such as Lucifer and greedy Mammon, but also more obscure devils such as the lower demon Ukobach, who tends to fireworks and oils, and the bellows-bearing fallen angel Xaphan.” Most people don’t read poetry. Press them about this and they’ll usually say something like, “I don’t ‘get’ it,” or “It’s just so pretentious,” or “The poets have degraded our society’s moral fiber, and they killed my baby.” You should never accept the first two reasons as an excuse. As Matthew Zapruder writes, there’s no reason to believe that poetry isn’t straightforward or that you can’t understand it, even if you regard yourself as a rube: “Like classical music, poetry has an unfortunate reputation for requiring special training and education to appreciate, which takes readers away from its true strangeness, and makes most of us feel as if we haven’t studied enough to read it … The art of reading poetry doesn’t begin with thinking about historical moments or great philosophies. It begins with reading the words of the poems themselves … Good poets do not deliberately complicate something just to make it harder for a reader to understand. Unfortunately, young readers, and young poets too, are taught to think that this is exactly what poets do. This has, in turn, created certain habits in the writing of contemporary poetry. Bad information about poetry in, bad poetry out, a kind of poetic obscurity feedback loop. It often takes poets a long time to unlearn this. Some never do. They continue to write in this way, deliberately obscure and esoteric, because it is a shortcut to being mysterious. The so-called effect of their poems relies on hidden meaning, keeping something away from the reader.” Read More
July 12, 2017 On the Shelf Those Jazzy Ironworks, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring Rose Iron Works, Muse with Violin Screen (detail), 1930. (Image via Hyperallergic, courtesy the Cleveland Museum of Art, on Loan from the Rose Iron Works Collections. © Rose Iron Works Collections. Photo by Howard Agriesti.) When we think of the Jazz Age, we think of the hairstyles, the fashions, the … jazz. You’d think the world was nothing but highball glasses and long, langorous cigarette holders. But who among us pauses to remember the zoning regulations of the Jazz Age? Who dares to stop and consider the period’s sideboards, bookcases, coffee services, and ironworks? I will tell you who: the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Museum. Their new exhibition, “The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s,” aims to transcend the clichés of flapperdom by focusing on less celebrated objects and designs. At last, the vases and daybeds of the 1920s will get their fifteen minutes of fame. Allison Meier writes, “Many of the featured designers were immigrating from Europe, or having their creations imported to the United States. Others were Americans who went abroad to study and train, picking up tubular metal techniques at the Bauhaus in Germany or ideas for bold hues from De Stijl in the Netherlands … British designer Wells Coates’s green, circular Bakelite radio, one of the manufacturing innovations being spread to the new middle class, rests on German designer Kem Weber’s sage-hued, streamlined sideboard, which was also intended for serial production. Russian-born craftsman Samuel Yellin’s curling wrought iron fire screen mingles with Lorentz Kleiser’s monumental tapestry showing Newark’s transformation from an indigenous village to an orderly town, both pieces demonstrating the endurance of historical European aesthetics. A towering ‘Skyscraper Bookcase’ of California redwood with black lacquer, all designed by Austrian émigré Paul Frankl, incorporates the zoning-enforced architectural setbacks of the new skyscrapers, something which Erik Magnussen’s Cubic coffee service with its silver angles does on a smaller scale.” Not unrelatedly: the Bloomsbury Group’s Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant once designed a lavish, 140-piece dinner set, and now you can see it. (You cannot eat off of it, unless you buy it.) As Francesca Wade writes, the set emerged from a deep depression; Kenneth and Jane Clark had visited Grant in 1932, and found him in the dumps. “ ‘In an attempt to revive his interest in decorative art,’ [Kenneth] writes in his autobiography, ‘we asked him and Vanessa to paint us a dinner service.’ Two years later, Bell and Grant presented Clark with 140 pieces, including 50 Wedgwood plates illustrated with portraits of famous women from history—twelve writers, twelve queens, twelve beauties, and twelve dancers or actresses, and one of each of the artists, painted by the other. ‘It ought to please the feminists,’ Bell wrote, offhandedly, to Roger Fry. The service vanished in the 1980s, last seen in the Normandy home of Clark’s second wife, who was presumed to have sold it. Anyone interested in it has had to make do with black-and-white photographs in which many of the plates are stacked up, their faces hidden. But it recently resurfaced in the collection of an undisclosed European collector, who has now put it up for sale. It was displayed by Piano Nobile at the Masterpiece fair this month, and will be shown in the autumn at their London gallery.” Read More
July 11, 2017 On the Shelf I’m in Love with a Card Catalog, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring Some people fetishize librarians. Me, I fetishize the card catalog. It’s a lonely fetish—no pornographer, to my knowledge, has yet written a starring role for a card catalog, or even a cameo. But I think it’s only a matter of time. I mean, look at these catalogs! They’re so big—so full—so … alive with utility. The way a card catalog oozes democratic spirit and well-organized accessibility, it just gets my heart racing. A new book by the Library of Congress, The Card Catalog, is almost titillating in its portrayal of objects in obsolescence. As Michael Lindgren writes, beneath its sumptuous photography, the book mounts a compelling and perhaps depressing case for bygone forms of information technology: “The text provides a concise history of literary compendia from the Pinakes of the fabled Library of Alexandria to the advent of computerized book inventory databases, which began to appear as early as 1976. The illustrations are amazing: luscious reproductions of dozens of cards, lists, covers, title pages and other images guaranteed to bring a wistful gleam to the book nerd’s eye … Now, waxing nostalgic about card catalogs or being an advocate for the importance of libraries is a mug’s game. You can practically feel people glancing up from their iPhones to smile tolerantly at your eccentricity … Although some contemporary readers might consider this book outrageously quaint, the card catalog’s conceptual structure was the underpinning of the Internet; the idea of something being ‘tagged’ by category owes its existence as an organizing principle to the subject headings delineated by the Library of Congress. A national card catalog system was the original ‘search engine’ … The card catalog stands with other great twentieth-century works of civic architecture as testament to the potential of what a society—and a government—can achieve … ” Are you an artist over sixty? Are you tired of hot young bucks getting all the fame and glory? Marlena Vaccaro wants to be your gallerist. As James Barron reports, her Chelsea gallery represents only older artists—an attempt to thwart entrenched ageism in the art world: “The gallery began several years ago when Ms. Vaccaro decided that someone should counter an art world problem: Older, lesser-known artists were being passed by just because they were, yes, older. She had heard stories. Ms. Vaccaro was a painter and printmaker who also worked in mixed media. She had owned a gallery in TriBeCa. ‘If, by the time you’re forty, you haven’t demonstrated earning power in terms of sales, it’s hard to get the attention of a big gallery,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’s only ageism at work. It’s the economy of running a gallery. Sure, there are tons of galleries that show older artists, but they are the high earners. Everyone who was big and famous in the sixties and seventies is older now. They’re still represented if they’re still alive, and their paintings still sell for gigantic dollars.’ ” Read More
July 10, 2017 On the Shelf It’s No Fun to Be a Governess, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring Jean-Simeon Chardin, The Governess, 1739. Most writers need day jobs. I recommend the Charlotte Brontë approach: become a governess. It’s your destiny. Yes, it will leave you feeling lonely and downtrodden, and it will nurse a sense of righteous indignation in your soul. But it’ll furnish all the “material” you need for your sensational debut, and isn’t that what really matters? John Pfordresher, who has a new book out about the writing of Jane Eyre, notes that Brontë’s various stints as a governess brought her nothing but heartache, even as they informed her work: “Charlotte’s first ‘situation’ as a temporary governess began in May 1839, at an estate named Stonegappe, a large house of three stories set on a hillside surrounded by woods, enjoying a vista in the distance of the valley of the River Aire. Charlotte was to care for a young girl and her brother—the stone-throwing son of the Sidgwick family we have seen as a model for John Reed. For the socially awkward and impoverished Brontë, at age twenty-three, the inferior position of governess in a wealthy family was an almost intolerable position, far worse than teaching at Roe Head. She was ignored by adult family members, charged with insolent and rebellious children, and denied respect by all, though she considered herself not only more than their equal in terms of intelligence and ability but also a potential writer of genius … Winifred Gérin, in her beautifully written biography of Brontë, pictures Charlotte in the Sidgwick’s handsome country home during a ‘long summer evening when she sat alone, her lap filled with Mrs. Sidgwick’s “oceans of needlework” … no one from the noisy self-absorbed house-party below to share her solitude.’ ” Speaking of writers on the job: Laura Dassow Walls’s new biography of Thoreau highlights the indignities of his career as a surveyor. Jay Parini writes, “Despite Thoreau’s achievements as a writer, environmentalist and social activist (he was, among other things, a passionate abolitionist and supporter of John Brown), many of his contemporaries considered him little more than a crank, a self-involved Pied Piper for the children of Concord, MA, whom he led in search of huckleberries on hot summer days … Walls does not miss the irony that Thoreau’s profession made him ‘complicit in destroying the forest he loved.’ In 1850, for instance, he ‘walked over land he had surveyed the year before, which the owner had clear-cut and subdivided into fifty-two house lots.’ Not surprisingly, he expresses guilt over this work in his journal: ‘Today I was aware that I walked in a pitch pine wood which erelong, perchance, I may survey and lot off for a wood auction and see the choppers at their work.’ In 1851, he completed a substantial commissioned survey of Concord’s boundaries and recalled that the task had left him feeling as if he had ‘committed suicide.’ He says darkly: ‘Trade curses everything it handles.’ ” Read More
July 7, 2017 On the Shelf Your Soul Is in the Closet, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring There you are! We all have skeletons in our closets. The problem is, they’re so rarely literal skeletons—if they were, we could call up some anthropologist or archaeologist and get a reliable prognosis on the situation. No, the real problem with our closets is that they lend themselves to extreme and total disarray. A closet is a place for throwing things and forgetting about them until life calls on you to remember them again. As Shannon Mattern writes in a new essay, this makes for a fecund space—though few of us enjoy rummaging through all of the stuff we’ve allowed to accumulate, the closet remains a unique repository, a locus for a certain form of selfhood. And it has ever been so, Mattern writes: “Think of all the corporations and universities and municipal offices, the billions of closets hiding secret inventories. Old media accumulate for all kinds of reasons—nostalgia, ambivalence, data security, paranoia—and all of us, eventually, become the managers of our own distributed personal archives. We never know when we might need to access that data again. Meanwhile, the detritus that Lisa Parks and Charles Acland call ‘residual media’ piles up in garages, thrift stores, and neighborhood electronics repair shops (themselves a ‘residual’ enterprise), until some of it winds up in recycling and salvaging facilities. Those spaces, too, are extensions of our closets. They move off-site and out of sight the abject and often hazardous labor of disposal and destruction … For centuries, closets have enabled the collection, preservation, and suppression of missives and media-machines, files and folios. But they are more than that. Behind the doors, closets are also active, generative spaces where media are made, where imaginaries and anxieties are formulated, where knowledges and subjectivities are born and transformed.” Stephen Greenblatt remembers reading The Merchant of Venice as an undergraduate at Yale—the anti-Semitism troubled him, not least because it mirrored a strain of xenophobia he’d often encountered on campus. Then he went on to become a Shakespeare scholar. He found a way, he writes, to square “problematic” texts with his curiosities and proclivities: “I wouldn’t attempt to hide my otherness and pass for what I was not. I wouldn’t turn away from works that caused me pain as well as pleasure. Instead, insofar as I could, I would pore over the whole vast, messy enterprise of culture as if it were my birthright. I was determined to understand this birthright, including what was toxic in it, as completely as possible … I already had an inkling of what I now more fully grasp. My experience of mingled perplexity, pleasure, and discomfort was only a version—informed by the accidents of a particular religion, family, identity, and era—of an experience shared by every thinking person in the course of a lifetime. What you inherit, what you receive from a world that you did not fashion but that will do its best to fashion you, is at once beautiful and repellent. You somehow have to come to terms with what is ugly as well as what is precious.” Read More