January 17, 2014 On the Shelf Cinema’s Most Realistic Psychopath, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring Still from No Country for Old Men, 2007. The Gordon Lish Bot is trolling Twitter, demanding that writers craft their 140 characters more meticulously. It’s fine invective, but masochists will wish for the sting of the real thing. Science has cast its formidable gaze on movie psychopaths, declaring No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh the most “realistic.” And yet no one, living or dead, has ever dared to sport that haircut. The curiously robust posthumous life of V. C. Andrews. Lewis Carroll’s “Wise Words About Letter-Writing” still apply in the lawless land of electronic mail. This introduction to Korean alphabet art is full of colorful translations: “Using a dustpan, the black mountain is split to form letters, and then the canvas is propped up vertically, and stains caused by gravity are left behind.”
January 16, 2014 On the Shelf Peace Reigns Throughout the Land, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring Stained glass window, Denis and Saint Sebastian Church, Kruft, Germany. Photo: Reinhardhauke, Wikimedia Commons. Great news: we’re living in the most peaceful era* in human history! “To hell with Gatsby’s green light!” Why we should stop teaching novels to high school students. Shelley Jackson is, “weather permitting,” inscribing a story entirely in snow. One way to save a failing bookshop: beg people on Facebook to come spend money there. Forget Paris. Nantes, a city “situated in the estuary of the Loire,” is where it’s at. *persistent, intractable religious hostilities notwithstanding
January 15, 2014 On the Shelf Read Chekhov for a More Empathetic 2014, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring He’s here to help. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. As January reaches its halfway mark and resolutions begin to waver, how is one to guarantee a year of self-betterment? By reading Chekhov. The Argentine poet Juan Gelman is dead, at eighty-three. What do Willy Loman and Gregor Samsa have in common? They’re both drummers. Apple’s new ad for the iPad Air is full of leaden rhetoric about the glory of the humanities. Robin Williams does the voice-over, quoting himself from Dead Poets Society: “We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion.” And only with the latest and sleekest in consumer electronics can that passion find its truest expression. Alaric Hunt, the recent winner of a detective-novel writing contest, penned his book in prison, where he’s serving a life sentence for murder.
January 14, 2014 On the Shelf Critics with Sharp Objects, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring Preparing to take down an author. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. It’s that time again: the annual Hatchet Job of the Year is coming, and critics have honed their wits all year in anticipation. On the shortlist you’ll find eviscerations of John le Carré, Donna Tartt, and Morrissey, among others. While we’re doing things we do every year, let’s mourn the slow disappearance of successful midlist authors. When did it become popular to call people losers? Google knows. At the MLA conference—regularly touted, no doubt, as the sexiest gathering in academe—a titillating ad for a “mock-interview make-out session” has everyone buzzing and, with luck, making out. “I sometimes think of social media as being like the terrible apparatus at the center of Kafka’s ‘In the Penal Colony.’”
January 13, 2014 On the Shelf The Anti-Café, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring Are its days numbered? Photo: Airair, via Wikimedia Commons. In London, the anti-café has arrived. It’s a place where you pay about a nickel a minute to sit around and drink free coffee. Will the intelligentsia cotton to it? We’ll keep you posted. Golden Globes be damned—yesterday also saw the announcement of the National Book Critics Circle award nominations. If you must transpose real people into fictional avatars, heed Christopher Isherwood’s advice: “You can question their morals, call them liars, expose them as thieves—as long as you describe them as attractive.” Arthur Schopenhauer: post-Kantian metaphysician, notorious curmudgeon, prophetic technofuturist? The Supreme Court is about to argue semantics. Among the prickly issues to be addressed: what does happen mean?
January 10, 2014 On the Shelf Comedies Are Too Depressing, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring Chuchin the Clown, via Wikimedia Commons Are today’s most prestigious “comedies” too depressing? The Los Angeles Public Library is soon to offer high school diplomas. (You can’t just check them out for a few weeks; you have to work for them.) More on the curious connection between prose and booze: “Writers in this office used to drink,” said an unnamed New Yorker fixture. For the discriminating digital reader on a budget, a treasure trove of public domain e-books.