March 6, 2014 Arts & Culture Unbelievably, Wonderfully Grand By Kevin Nguyen Wes Anderson, Stefan Zweig, and their sumptuous surroundings. Looking at this year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay, Bill Morris at The Millions grumbled that “Hollywood screenwriters need to mix more fiction into their diet.” He can at least give a pass to Wes Anderson, whose new film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is based not just on one novel but on an entire oeuvre—that of Stefan Zweig, an Austrian writer whose work Anderson has helped revive. In fact, Zweig’s influence on Anderson is so profound that the filmmaker compiled The Society of the Crossed Keys, a new anthology of Zweig’s work. Unfortunately, the collection is only available in the UK, but its constituents—Zweig’s memoir, the novel Beware of Pity, and the novella “Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman”—can be found separately in the US. Both Zweig and Budapest find comedy and melancholy in the changing landscape of 1930s Europe, and Anderson is quick to admit his debt to Zweig. The film features two characters meant as stand-ins for the writer—there’s the hotel’s nostalgic, effete concierge, M. Gustave, and the unnamed Author, who appears throughout as a narrator and interlocutor. But Zweig’s influence on Anderson extends far beyond this latest film. Though Anderson says he came across Zweig’s books only six or seven years ago, the pair have long shared similar themes and aesthetics, even if Anderson didn’t know it. For starters, consider their fastidious preoccupation with appearance. In an essay examining The Royal Tenenbaums against J. D. Salinger—another of Anderson’s literary influences—Matt Zoller Seitz established a concept called “material synecdoche—showcasing objects, locations, or articles of clothing that define whole personalities, relationships, or conflicts.” Anderson uses his meticulously designed mise-en-scène as visual shorthand for his characters. It’s how we understand the Tenenbaums from their wardrobe, their childhood bedrooms, and the way the opening scene itemizes the things in those rooms. It’s one of Anderson’s favorite storytelling mechanisms—think of Moonrise Kingdom, in which Sam Shakusky’s raccoon hat and glasses set him apart from the rest of the Khaki Scouts; think of Max Fischer’s red beret in Rushmore. In Anderson’s work, the exterior reliably informs the interior. Read More
March 6, 2014 Arts & Culture, Our Daily Correspondent Eternal City By Sadie Stein Photo: Sadie Stein The Whitney Biennial has generated any number of reviews—the more comprehensive ones will tell you about the distinguished curators, the three “biennials within a biennial,” the ambient sound installations. So far, I have not read anything about the Apple. On a chilly evening earlier this week, I attended a preview with a friend. It was, as others have recounted, crowded. “I thought you were the artist,” said a woman as I studied one of the pieces, a voluptuous ceramic by Alma Allen. “Because of the way you’re dressed, I mean.” “Thank you,” I said. Alma Allen is a man. By the door, a young woman was handing out canvas bags. “Just the ladies,” she said as we exited. I waited until I was home to open my gift bag. Inside was a black box. “BCBGMAXAZRIA + WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART,” said one side of the box. Another side said “Celebrating 25 Years of Style.” A third said, “25th Anniversary Chrome Apple.” And the fourth featured text: This chrome apple epitomizes the eternal relationship between fashion and art. We present this gift to you in celebration of BCBGMAXAZRIA’s 25th anniversary and the 2014 Whitney Biennial Sponsored by BCBGMAXAZRIA. Read More
March 6, 2014 Quote Unquote How to Convert a Nonbeliever By Dan Piepenbring Gabriel García Márquez is eighty-seven today. Márquez in 1984. Photo by F3rn4nd0, via Wikimedia Commons. INTERVIEWER You describe seemingly fantastic events in such minute detail that it gives them their own reality. Is this something you have picked up from journalism? GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ That’s a journalistic trick which you can also apply to literature. For example, if you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants flying in the sky, people will probably believe you. One Hundred Years of Solitude is full of that sort of thing. That’s exactly the technique my grandmother used. I remember particularly the story about the character who is surrounded by yellow butterflies. When I was very small there was an electrician who came to the house. I became very curious because he carried a belt with which he used to suspend himself from the electrical posts. My grandmother used to say that every time this man came around, he would leave the house full of butterflies. But when I was writing this, I discovered that if I didn’t say the butterflies were yellow, people would not believe it. —Gabriel García Márquez, the Art of Fiction No. 69
March 6, 2014 On the Shelf Death, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring A depiction of one of Frederik Ruysch’s anatomical displays. Image via the Public Domain Review. Sherwin B. Nuland, the author of How We Die, is dead. In Los Angeles, a group of ghost hunters are chasing the dead. The punk ethos of the Lower East Side is dead. The Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch died in 1731, but his deathly sketches still haunt us today: “not only did he exalt the human anatomy as a wondrous product of creation, but he presented himself as a veritable artist of death.” On the eastern seaboard, the hemlock is dying out. Though the tree bears only a superficial resemblance to the plant that killed Socrates, “it seems impossible to separate the hemlock tree from the hemlock plant’s poison, for a poet to keep the death of Socrates out of the picture—for death is in the forest, especially a hemlock forest, especially now.”
March 5, 2014 In Case You Missed It That Was the Month That Was By Dan Piepenbring Photo: Jack Weir, via Wikimedia Commons Before everyone gets too deep into March—what with its Madness; its Ides; its suspicious “in like a lion, out like a lamb” mentality; its trying Lenten sacrifices; its Prince Kūhiō Day; blah, blah, blah—let’s not forget dear old February, arguably the most hated month, if not the cruelest. At only twenty-eight days, it always gets short shrift, even during leap years; it’s as if we can’t wait to wash our hands of it. Well, we’re here to say: we’re going to miss it. It was a fine month, one for the books, and we have proof—below are some of the excellent long essays the Daily published. Now, onward, to Saint Patrick’s Day, Pi Day, National Potato Chip Day, and Save a Spider Day. Read More
March 5, 2014 First Person, Our Daily Correspondent The Child Is Father of the Man By Sadie Stein Once upon a time, a very nice couple whom I didn’t know very well threw some kind of party. I can’t remember what the occasion was, but I do know that they lived in a nice apartment near the Broadway-Lafayette F stop, and that I went to the party with a former boyfriend. It proved to be a memorable evening. We made small talk with lots of nice people. At some point we found ourselves clustered together with two other couples; at least one component of each was an architect. Some public figure had just come out as gay, and one of the guests said something innocuous about the importance of being true to oneself. “Oh, I agree,” said one of the women, blandly. “Take my father-in-law, for instance. It wasn’t until he got terminal cancer that he was able to tell the world who he really was.” “What was that?” said my ex-boyfriend. Read More