January 25, 2024 Books The Darkest Week of the Year: Fosse’s Septology By Sean Thor Conroe Hans Gude, From the western Coast of Norway, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. 1. This past fall, Jon Fosse won the Nobel Prize in Literature. In December, I attended a traditional Norwegian brunch and live stream of Fosse’s Nobel lecture at the Norwegian consul general’s residence in New York City. At the time, I’d only read Melancholy, Fosse’s 1995 novel about a grandiose and possibly ephebophilic painter who ends up in the asylum. I had no idea, at the time, how intensely Septology, his recent seven-volume epic, set over the seven days leading up to Christmas—the same seven days, in the liturgical calendar, as it so happened, that I’d end up reading it—would hit me. That it would serve as a guidebook, a religious text, a light over the darkest week of the year. Septology follows Asle, an aging painter and widower living in Dylgja, on Norway’s western coast, as he prepares for his annual Christmas exhibit in the nearby town Bjørgvin. He lives alone, doesn’t drink or smoke, and is a practicing Catholic. His social circle is limited to Åsleik, his neighbor and friend; Beyer, the gallerist who shows his paintings; and Ales, his long-deceased wife, with whom he still speaks every day. Each volume starts with Asle contemplating a painting he’s just painted, a blank canvas with two strokes forming a cross; each volume ends with Asle praying the rosary. Every Christmas, Åsleik invites him over to his sister’s house for Christmas dinner. And every year, Asle declines, choosing to spend it alone, in his house he got with Ales, since “even if Ales has been dead a long time she’s still there in the house.” Only this year he thinks he might accept Åsleik’s invitation to Christmas dinner at Sister’s. He spends the seven days, over the seven volumes leading up to Christmas day, deciding. Read More
January 24, 2024 Dispatch How to Rizz (for the Lonely Weeb): Derpycon By Liby Hays My first brush with Derpycon lore—and by lore I mean its legally enforced code of conduct—was a scroll through its extensive weapons policy. “LIVE STEEL,” the website went, “is defined as bayonets, shuriken, star knives, metal armor—including chain mail.” Studs on clothing constituted a fringe case, subject to approval by convention staff. This precaution was not due to fear of terrorist attacks but to the preponderance of weapon-wielding anime characters, a popular costume choice among attendees. The rules, I imagined, had been set in response to years of disastrous horseplay, yaoi paddle hazing rituals, and airsoft-gun-as-ray-gun mishaps. Thankfully everyone on the registration line ahead of me had gotten the memo, and their cardboard scythes buckled innocuously. Derpycon was billed as a three-day, all-ages, “multi-genre” anime, gaming, sci-fi, and comics convention for nerds of all stripes. It boasted “panels, concerts, video gaming, cosplay, vendors, dances, LARPs, artists, and so much more.” The branding this year aligned the convention with the conventional definition of derpyness, meme-speak for bumbling or awkwardness, rather than the more controversial Derpy, a cross-eyed background character from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Any catering to the controversial “brony” (adult male fans of My Little Pony) set would have surprised me. Instead, images proliferated of mishaps: someone running late for the train with a slice of toast in their mouth and “under construction” imagery (the convention’s mascot is the Derpycone). The provisional or half-baked aspects of the con would therefore feel on-brand. The press pass I received contained a charming illustration of a blushing man struggling to stop a train with a large wooden beam in his arms. Read More
January 22, 2024 First Person Young, Slender, Blond, Blue-Eyed By Édouard Louis From Interiors, Claudia Keep’s portfolio in issue no. 246 of The Paris Review. PHOTOGRAPH BY CARY WHITTIER, COURTESY OF CLAUDIA KEEP AND MARCH. I climbed the stairs two at a time. I no longer know what I was thinking about in that stairwell, I imagine I was counting the steps so as not to think of anything else. I arrived at the door, caught my breath and rang the bell. The man approached from the other side, I could hear him, I could make out his footsteps on the wooden floor. *** I’d first met him on the Internet just two hours earlier. He was the one who’d contacted me. He’d told me he liked boys like me, young, slender, blond, blue-eyed—the Aryan type, he’d insisted. He’d asked me to dress like a student and that’s what I’d done—at least his idea of a student—with an oversized hoodie I’d borrowed from Geoffroy and sky-blue trainers, my favorites, I’d done what he wanted because I was hoping he’d reward my efforts and pay me more than he’d promised. I waited. Read More
January 19, 2024 On Children's Books Caps for Sale By B.J. Novak Photograph courtesy of B.J. Novak. I’ve noticed that a striking number of the best children’s books have been written by people who had no children: Margaret Wise Brown (Goodnight Moon). H. A. and Margret Rey (Curious George). Maurice Sendak. Dr. Seuss. I have a theory as to why. If you don’t have kids, you can only really experience the book from the child’s point of view. Parents can’t help but have all kinds of agendas when they read a book to their child. And who can blame them? As long as the child is a captive audience, why not teach them about something? Like patience, or the alphabet, or Who Simone Biles Is? The best children’s books teach none of that. They aren’t advertisements for anything—not even the important things. They’re an advertisement for reading itself; for the entertainment value of the world itself. Read More
January 18, 2024 Letters Letters to a Biographer By Joyce Carol Oates Greg Johnson and Joyce Carol Oates have been corresponding since 1975, when he wrote her a letter about a professor of his who had committed suicide and she responded. He wrote to her occasionally over the following years, mostly about her writing, and then eventually his. Their back-and-forth became a friendship, led to a biography Johnson published in 1998, and continued after. “Inadvertently, unwittingly, through the years Greg and I seem to have composed a kind of double portrait that, at the outset, in 1975, neither of us could possibly have imagined; nor could I have imagined that Greg would be my primary correspondent through most of my adult life,” Oates writes in her introduction to a selection of these letters, which will be published in March. The letters provide, as the best ones do, flashes of dailiness that build up over decades into something more substantive. The Review is publishing several, from 1995, below. January 25, 1995 Dear Greg, I’m enclosing the London Review since they’ve sent me several extra copies, and I thought you might find the publication attractive. It’s a junior version of New York Review—each review much shorter, but approximately the same quality. Elaine [Showalter] often publishes here. Yes, I did ask [my publicist] to send You Can’t Catch Me. (Do you recognize Tristram?) Thanks for your comments! It was a fascinating puzzle, to me, to write; the appropriation of a “self” by another “self” continues to haunt . . . . . . The Bienens are in Evanston, IL, very busy, of course, but we continue to hear from them and will see them fairly soon, back in Princeton for opening night of Emily’s new play (an adaptation of the Delaney sisters’ memoir) [Emily was Emily Mann —GJ] . An opening night of my own is Feb. 1. (But I must attend two previews beforehand, one followed by a “panel” of Deborah Tannen and me. My play The Truth-Teller is about a sociolinguist—not Deborah!) We had a lovely dinner and theater evening with Betsey Hansell and her husband Cliff Ridley (drama critic, Philadelphia Inquirer) on Sunday, before attending an excellent performance of The Cherry Orchard . . . Betsey said that she enjoyed her conversation with you very much, and asked about you. Of course, we were delighted to boast a bit about your OR book and other outstanding accomplishments. (I wonder if you know what Betsey looks like? Probably you wouldn’t remember, from our photo album. She and I were extremely good friends in my Detroit/Windsor years. I feel a real sisterly affection for her, and we are both very interested in art.) Speaking of which: I’ve had a truly wonderful, absorbing and fascinating few weeks, writing a monograph, George Bellows: American Artist, for the Ecco “writers-on-artists” series. I’d never done anything quite like this, and now I really envy art historians. Bellows’s work is remarkably varied, and frequently brilliant. He’d become famous immediately for his boxing paintings, but they’re a small fraction of his output; I’m most taken by his seascapes and landscapes, and some of his odd, provocative portraits. Read More
January 17, 2024 Re-Reading Sorting through the Wreckage: The Stories of Diane Oliver By Tayari Jones Diane Oliver. Courtesy of Peeler Studios. Read Diane Oliver’s short story “No Brown Sugar in Anybody’s Milk,” published in the Summer 2023 issue of the Review. A year ago, I had never heard of the astounding short story artist Diane Oliver. This admission is embarrassing, as I am a novelist and professor. Furthermore, Oliver and I have a number of shared characteristics. We both are Black, Southern, daughters of educators, graduates of women’s colleges, and we both attended the University of Iowa. Born in 1943—the same year as my mother—she was a generation ahead of me, paving the way. Yet, somehow, I had never come across her work, not even at Spelman College, where Black women’s writing is the core of the English major. Initially, I blamed myself. Why had I not been more diligent as a graduate student? Oliver published four stories in her lifetime, and two posthumously. Her work appeared in Negro Digest, Sewanee Review, and was reprinted in the anthology Right On!. In other words, Neighbors was hiding in plain sight. After more thinking, I faulted the gatekeepers—whoever they may be—for not including Oliver in the anthologies that form the curriculum of writing programs. But after a while I grew tired of wondering why and chose to celebrate the discovery. I encountered Neighbors in a most unusual manner. I received a copy printed on plain paper, no intriguing cover, no laudatory blurbs from great writers, not even a paragraph from the publisher providing context or summary. I knew only that the author was a Black woman and the manuscript was slated for publication. The bound stack was simply labeled “Neighbors.” I could have asked for more information or done a quick Google search. Instead, I recognized the opportunity for what it was: a chance to let the words introduce me to the work of Diane Oliver. Read More