November 10, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent Writing Is a Nefarious Business By Sadie Stein “Have you been doing anything you shouldn’t, William Carlos Williams?” asks the venerable women’s-hour host Mary McBride. “Writing for forty years!” replies the poet with alarming jocularity. “That’s a nefarious business, you know!” Read More
November 9, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent Between Books By Sadie Stein William Strang, Münchhausen entdeckt die Bibliothek von Alexandria, 1895. I am between books. It’s a very uncomfortable place to be. On the one hand, after finishing something good and thought provoking, you don’t necessarily want to move on too quickly—you want to digest and mourn the loss and crave the comfort of its world. You miss the characters. It would feel jarring to just open another novel and invest your mind and heart fully once again. On the other hand, after enough time, you become restive and begin to yearn for the escape, the absorption and stimulation that only a good book can bring—and you begin to wonder if you can ever feel again the pleasure and compulsion you knew only days ago. Maybe, at last, you’ve read every good book in the world. Read More
November 6, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent Mount Analogue By Sadie Stein After I wrote about Daphne du Maurier’s “Monte Verità” in September, a kind reader sent me a note: I wonder if du Maurier knew Daumal’s Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing, also 1952 (in French). Not translated to English until 1959, by Roger Shattuck (of course, du Maurier undoubtedly read French). Many similarities, though Daumal’s story is almost wholly allegorical. Read More
November 5, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent “The S Hit the F, If You Know What I’m Sayin’ ” By Sadie Stein Grisly Guy Fawkes. It’s a bit hard to celebrate Bonfire Night stateside. The authorities are likely to put the kibosh on any and all roaring bonfires and vigilante firework displays. Plus, effigies strung up from trees and set alight are apt to be misinterpreted, especially if you’re standing there cackling merrily as they burn. Read More
November 4, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent One-upmanship in the Morning By Sadie Stein The Awakening, 1900. Back in the bad old days, wags used to say the streets of Alphabet City stood, from west to east, for Adventurous, Bold, Crazy, and Dead. I’ve long thought that we need a similar system for categorizing the different hours at which one wakes up. I suggest: Nine – Nonchalant Eight – Effortless Seven – Sensible Six – Self-motivated Five – Fantastical Four – Fast-living These are, obviously, encumbered by their alliteration. Of course I’d rather have substituted a slatternly here or a debauched there, but that would defeat the purpose, and this gets the idea across. Unless your job or lifestyle demands unorthodox hours, this seems to me a rough guide to such things. Read More
November 3, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent Gore Vidal Visits Mississippi By Sadie Stein There is very little that can embellish the central fact of this clip: Gore Vidal discusses the South with Eudora Welty. Oh, wait, there’s one thing. Gore Vidal says the words “Kentucky Fried Chicken” and “McDonald’s” at 2:39, and it sounds like he’s speaking a foreign language. Sadie Stein is contributing editor of The Paris Review, and the Daily’s correspondent.