June 27, 2013 On the Shelf Area Man Returns Book After Discovering Wilde Gay, and Other News By Sadie Stein The Tweet pictured above really speaks for itself. And another one down: Chicago’s oldest used bookstore, the eccentric and beloved O’Gara and Wilson Antiquarian Booksellers, is closing its venerable Hyde Park location. But all is not lost: the shop is relocating to a more affordable location in Indiana. Here are mashups of chick lit and Marvel comics, because we live in a world unrecognizable to our great-grandparents. Speaking of! Subtle changes (degredation or evolution, you choose!) to the English language, happening as we speak. The Atlantic asks: Must every new coming-of-age novel be “the next Catcher in the Rye?” (Yes.)
June 26, 2013 Softball Softball Notes: TPR vs. n+1 By Cody Wiewandt Photo Credit: Emily Farache. Team |1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10 Total n+1 |2|0|0|1|0|1|0|0|0|0 4 TPR |0|0|3|1|0|0|0|0|0|1 5 After a week off due to bad weather, the 2013 Paris Review softball season finally had its second act last Thursday afternoon: a riveting extra-inning victory over friendly rival n+1. Although last season’s meeting resulted in a easy TPR win, these two teams have, historically, been very competitive, and this year’s game—which took place at our new home field in West Chelsea—was a characteristically tight contest throughout. General notes (linear and tangential), thoughts, and feelings on the game below: n+1 scored first on some hard hits by the top of their lineup, but the damage was mitigated by some stellar TPR outfield defense, which would prove to be a recurring theme. Pitching for our opponents was Marco Roth, the sometimes dominant but always infuriating, screwballin’ n+1 editor and cofounder. He wore a Pier Paolo Pasolini cotton replica T-shirt jersey; Pasolini, Italian poet and filmmaker, was a surprisingly keen softball player, frequently taking breaks during the shooting of Salò—his controversial adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom—to organize a series of lighthearted pickup games with the cast and local schoolchildren. After the first inning, the game fell into a steady rhythm. Our defense remained strong, and with some timely hitting we lurched out of the middle innings one run ahead. Highlights included an inside-the-park home run by Ben “Chaos Mode” Wizner; some slick fielding by second baseman Louisa “Louisa” Thomas; and an escalating series of really great dugout high fives. We gave up the lead in the penultimate regular frame, and the game remained tied at the end of regulation. Now feels like the right time to introduce this man, who, unaffiliated with either team, inexplicably decided to root for n+1, making his allegiance known through constant heckling. Example: when I came up to bat in the sixth he yelled out the schoolyard classic, “Easy out!” (I popped up to third.) Afterward he came to over to congratulate us, and offered to umpire our next game. In the top of the seventh, Chad Harbach, who taught a seminar on the Art of Hitting All Game, smashed a ball to right field that would definitely have been a home run if not for an overhanging tree. Before the start of the game, it had been decided that if this situation arose, the resulting ruling would be a live ball, and, although it was an obvious home run, he and his cohorts displayed their patented Art of Graciousness in accepting the decision. He didn’t score, and the game remained tied. This was not the only close call. Twice in the late innings n+1 hit it deep into center, and both times Robyn “Great Defensive Outfielder” Creswell came up with spectacular catches. Creswell, whose presence last season was spotty (on account of his newly born daughter), had been sorely missed, and was this game’s unanimous MVP. In the bottom of the tenth we finally broke through, winning the game off the bat of captain and associate editor Stephen “Ham Sandwich” Hiltner. Notable debuts: Poet and frequent TPR contributor Rowan Ricardo Phillips, who switch-hit and displayed some nifty glove work; assistant editor Clare Fentress, who played catcher and hit n+1 editor Nikil Saval in the head throwing the ball back to the mound; and TPR’s head of advertising and promotions, Hailey Gates, the most stylish TPR team member since Styron. Kudos to: us, for winning; the sun, for shining; and to n+1’s Keith Gessen, for lending me his glove every inning. Next up: Harper’s (June 27th , 3:30 P.M., Chelsea Park). Cody Wiewandt is The Paris Review’s softball correspondent.
June 26, 2013 First Person My California Trip By Rex Weiner We were gathered in the publisher’s corner office just off Park Avenue on a snowy afternoon in February, looking at the intriguing series of ads that had been coming in over the past few months. Professionally photographed, seductively styled, they showed a shiny steel apparatus encircled with golden buds of weed damp with the resins prized by discriminating potheads. “The question is,” said Thomas King Forcade, founder and head of the publishing empire he’d built under the Trans-High Corporation banner, “what the fuck is it?” “Shit to Gold!” declared the ads appearing in the magazine where I was employed, all full-page buys. “Paid in cash,” said the sales director of High Times, the monthly publication dedicated to the ways and means of marijuana. I was on the masthead as a contributing writer on diverse topics, mostly of a cultural nature, on a career trajectory common to New York writers who toil in diverse editorial fields. Penning pieces for anyone who paid, from garish girlie mags to in-flight journals and the glossier monthlies, my expectation was to be sitting behind the publisher’s desk one day in a similar corner office with a Park Avenue view. Leaning back in his chair and torching an overstuffed reefer with a switchblade that doubled as a lighter, Forcade said, “More importantly, you dig—” taking a long drag and holding the smoke for a pensive moment before expelling the finished thought in a low tight voice—“does it really work?” The device in the advertisement was called the Pot-A-Lyzer. Selling for $299.99 from a PO box in Huntington Beach, California, the Pot-A-Lyzer promised to transform ordinary marijuana of the lowest grade into super-weed equal to the headiest strains known to cannabis connoisseurs. Mexican ditch weed, for example, could be imbued with the psychoactive punch of Maui Wowee, Thai Stick, or Colombian Gold. Ergo, shit to gold. Read More
June 26, 2013 Bulletin A Space Odyssey By Sadie Stein You will be relieved to learn that Arthur C. Clarke’s DNA is going where no man has gone before. Prior to his 2008 death, the science fiction legend graciously donated several strands of hair to NASA’s “first ever solar sail mission into deep space.” The craft, named Sunjammer, after a 1964 Clarke story, will launch in 2014, with hair aboard.
June 26, 2013 Bull City Summer My Bullish Heart By David Henry Satchel Paige in 1968. When I was nine years old, it was my belief that a professional baseball player was the most exalted thing a man could be. Ballplayers rivaled the offspring of Greek gods—only marginally mortal and, if they fell, the results were apocalyptic. Some part of me still thinks so. And yet I seldom go to the ballpark anymore, even though I live just a short bike ride south of Louisville Slugger Field, a jewel of a stadium on the Ohio River housed in the red-brick shell of the old Brinly-Hardy train shed that dates back to 1839. So I was thrilled when Sam Stephenson offered me a press pass to the Durham Bulls’ four-game series against the Louisville Bats earlier this month. The first time I found myself in the presence of a big-league ballplayer was on a Sunday night in 1968 at the Atlanta airport. The Braves were coming in off a triumphant road trip that culminated in their winning both games of a doubleheader, which was broadcast earlier that day on WSB-TV, channel 2. After he switched off the set, my dad said the most astonishing thing: “Let’s go the airport and see them when they come in.” A jolt shot through me. Can we? Should we? Was such a thing even possible? Hundreds of other people had the same idea. We watched from behind glass as a staircase was wheeled up to the plane and our heroes descended, tieless in their sport jackets, and crossed the tarmac toward the terminal. (Henry Aaron, who’d gone oh-for-the-day, headed straight for the bus.) We raced downstairs to meet them at the baggage claim, where I came face-to-face with Satchel Paige. Read More
June 26, 2013 On the Shelf Here Is Hemingway Getting Married, and Other News By Sadie Stein Flavorwire has outdone itself with this slideshow of authors’ wedding pictures. (Yup: that’s Hemingway and Hadley.) R.I.P. Nook—we hardly knew ya. (Which is, I suppose, the problem.) Reports of Leonard Cohen’s death, on the other hand, are greatly exaggerated. Beginning tomorrow, the Royal Shakespeare Company will begin tweeting out playwright Mark Ravenhill’s version of Candide. If this is the best of possible worlds, what, then, are the others? At Bookish, an exclusive peek into a day in the life of editor Amy Einhorn. Jane Austen may (or may not) replace Charles Darwin on the £10 note. She is, says Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King, “quietly waiting in the wings,” presumably for a spectacular, 42nd Street–style star turn that delights creationists the world over!