November 25, 2013 Bulletin What We’re Doing By Sadie Stein New Yorkers! Tomorrow night, head to McNally Jackson Booksellers to see Geoff Dyer and Ben Lerner discuss how to write about looking (among other things). Moderated by our very own EIC, Lorin Stein.
November 25, 2013 Arts & Culture Recapping Dante: Canto 8, or High Drama By Alexander Aciman Crossing the Styx, illustration by Gustave Doré, 1861. This fall, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! Canto 8 is perhaps the most exciting we have encountered so far. The story alone is a harrowing prelude to a great adventure: it’s like the first few minutes of a Bond movie, right before the theme song and titles start rolling. Canto 8 ends just as Dante and Virgil arrive at the edge of the Styx, where the wrathful are punished. Dante spots two towers (not to be confused with those from Lord of the Rings). These towers appear to be communicating with one another—as one launches a flame into the air, the other responds. A curious Dante asks Virgil what this signifies, and Virgil doesn’t really address his question. By now Dante has learned not to press such an issue, and knows that if he allows himself to get derailed by a mystery like two flaming towers, he’ll never get anywhere. Phlegyas, who operates the little stygian skiff, arrives at the bank of the river. As noted in canto 7, the wrathful sinners are here hurled into the muddy Styx and are left to bob there as punishment; indeed, the Hollanders point out that Phlegyas’s job probably isn’t to carry sinners from one side to the other—like Charon—but rather to keep the sinners in the mud. As he arrives and greets Dante and Virgil, Phlegyas seems thrilled to have a fresh pair of sinners to toy with, but Virgil takes particular pleasure in announcing that he and Dante are, in fact, on a quest and as such are exempt from the punishments of hell. Phlegyas is as disappointed as “one who learns of a deceitful plot.” Read More
November 25, 2013 Bulletin See You There: St. Mark’s Fundraiser By Sadie Stein Image via Blogcitylights. Over the past months, we have closely followed the efforts of our friends at St. Mark’s Bookshop to find a permanent, affordable home in Manhattan’s East Village. Now, the owners have announced plans for a December 5 fundraiser to help them move to a smaller home a few blocks east of their current Third Avenue location. Both in-store and online, you will be able to bid on signed first editions by the likes of Anne Carson, Lydia Davis, and Paul Auster.
November 25, 2013 Arts & Culture The Mail Room By Sam Sweet When the United States Postal Service finally expires, what will you remember? When the last ornate post office is sold off for “mixed-used development” and all postage is reduced to digital printouts, what will you tell future generations about the way it was? If all philately disappeared into private collections, what would you want your grandkids to know about the strange pockets of paper we called letters and the tiny stick-on paintings we used to send them? Bill Gross—one of America’s wealthiest bond traders and the only stamp collector with a net worth of two billion dollars—hopes you’ll make a visit to the new William H. Gross Stamp Gallery in Washington, D.C., which he funded with a portion of his fortune. The grand opening of the gallery, on September 22, was intended as a celebration of the depth and splendor of philatelic culture at a time when the postal service is facing certain extinction. It was probably the biggest party anyone has ever thrown for the American postage stamp. It was also, undoubtedly, its first memorial. Read More
November 25, 2013 On the Shelf How the Magic Happens, and Other News By Sadie Stein Begin your week with these lovely shots of the Strand Rare Book Room. Cary “Westley” Elwes is, as one might expect, writing a memoir about the making of The Princess Bride. “Compiling this Guardian/Observer list of one hundred great novels in the English language, and rediscovering old favourites from week to week, has become as much an autobiographical as a literary process.” How the magic (or at least the list) happens. “That swaggering conception of manhood now seems wholly deleterious, and even his worldliness suggests little more than a knack for talking to waiters.” Michael Gorra on Hemingway.
November 22, 2013 Arts & Culture Dallas, Part 1: From Afar By Edward McPherson Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. With all eyes on Dallas, it seemed fitting to re-run one of our favorite pieces from 2012, an ode to the city and its complicated legacy. Between 318 and 271 million years ago, the ancient continental core of North America butted against what would become South America. Land folded and faulted; mountains were born. Then what would become the Gulf of Mexico opened, and inland seas washed the peaks away. It pays to remember there are mountains beneath Dallas. The tops may have eroded, but the roots remain buried deep. Some 165 million years later—in 1841—John Neely Bryan built a shelter on a bluff and called the area Dallas. One hundred and twenty-two years later—in 1963—John F. Kennedy was shot on that bluff, now named Dealey Plaza. Seventeen years later—in 1980—J. R. Ewing was shot on TV. Read More