October 2, 2013 Video & Multimedia Good Grief By Sadie Stein Full disclosure: I once played Charlie Brown in a summer-camp production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. It was a deeply scarring experience. I hate Peanuts. It feels good to admit that. Today marks the sixty-third birthday of Peanuts. Here is a slideshow of some of the strip’s greatest hits. And here is the theme song.
October 2, 2013 On the Shelf Dickensian Peg Legs, and Other News By Sadie Stein There are so many wooden legs in the works of Dickens. David Bowie’s one hundred favorite books include The Trial of Henry Kissinger, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. “You’ve published a novel, and half a dozen short stories, and you’ve found clever ways to fluff up your bio. You think of your writing resume as one of the most creative pieces of fiction you’ve written.” Justin Kramon on being a fiction-writing professor. “Fleming was essentially a bureaucrat during the war. But, being an imaginative man, he could not help thinking about a more active role as a secret agent.” The real story behind the birth of James Bond. Yup: the Library of Congress is closed, too.
October 1, 2013 Bulletin Announcing: A Call for a Writer-in-Residence By Sadie Stein The Paris Review is partnering with the Standard, East Village to find a Writer-in-Residence. The idea is this: in January, a writer with a book under contract will get a room at the Standard, East Village, in downtown Manhattan, for three weeks’ uninterrupted work. Applications will be judged by the editors of The Paris Review and Standard Culture. Find application details here.
October 1, 2013 Quote Unquote The October Game By Sadie Stein Winslow Homer, An October Day, 1889. “He had never liked October. Ever since he had first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother’s house many years ago and heard the wind and saw the empty trees. It had made him cry, without a reason. And a little of that sadness returned each year to him. It always went away with spring.” —Ray Bradbury
October 1, 2013 On the Shelf The Font of Least Resistance, and Other News By Sadie Stein Fave: yet another word with a surprisingly venerable history. A bookie’s take on the Nobel Prize in Literature. “Fame has a dark side. When Times New Roman appears in a book, document, or advertisement, it connotes apathy. It says, ‘I submitted to the font of least resistance.’” The strange mystery of editor Ronald Lane Latimer.
September 30, 2013 Arts & Culture Fall Sweeps By Alexander Aciman Something is gnawing at the nape of your skull: on the one hand, your favorite fall shows are coming back. But you just read an article about synaptic pruning, the process by which your brain eliminates neurons that don’t get any exercise. And whether or not there’s any truth to this neurological use-it-or-lose-it theory, you’ve nonetheless come to the conclusion that your brain is on the brink of self-destruction. Which is to say: it will get rid of every neuron that hasn’t got anything to do with watching Netflix, looking at Buzzfeed, or eating food that’s terrible for you past 3 A.M. You want to watch Boardwalk Empire—what will happen to Nucky Thompson, or Richard Harrow? You want to catch up on The Walking Dead, but then you remember that synaptic pruning, and a frightening question about the difference between you and an actual zombie floats through your head. The convenience of hour-long shows is that they often air on Sunday night, when you have nothing to do. We have a compromise. Don’t spend an hour on the latest would-be cable sensation; instead, tune in for the first season of The Divine Comedy, the hot, new (relatively speaking) series by Dante. Every week, ideally on Sunday at 9 P.M., read one canto—often less than 140 lines!—of what may be the best poem ever written. Season 1 is called the Inferno—think of it as your new Home Box Office. Unfortunately, there isn’t a teaser with fast cuts and a voice over about one man’s trip through hell that can be embedded into this post, but here are some positive early reviews: “Dante’s masterpiece is one of the supreme works of art that the ages have witnessed.” —Theodore Roosevelt “I love Dante almost as much as the Bible. He is my spiritual food, the rest is ballast.” —James Joyce “Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third.” —T. S. Eliot And just as every landmark show requires a thorough recap (had you really seen an episode of Mad Men until a a blogger pointed out all the “themes”?), so too will we bring you Dante recaps every week. Go to Barnes & Noble, or BookCourt, or use your parents’ Amazon Prime membership, and pick up the Inferno. We prefer the Hollander translation. The premiere is this Sunday. To catch up on our Dante series, click here. Alexander Aciman is the author of Twitterature. He has written for the New York Times, Tablet, the Wall Street Journal, and TIME. Follow him on Twitter at @acimania.