July 31, 2013 First Person Wild Things By Elisabeth Donnelly Somewhere between Kardashian news and a blog detailing where to buy every outfit worn by Taylor Swift I hit rock bottom. In the space between where I wanted to be—asleep—and where I was stuck—awake—I had chosen the easiest route, whiling away the ink-black night, slack-jawed and blindly clicking through whatever late-night gossip lit up the computer screen. The air was thick with heat on that sticky July night. No air trickled through the window screen. I was in a stupor, the particular sort of stupor that meant that nothing registered, that my reflexes were slow. I was vulnerable, mentally asleep, and regretfully awake. And I was hearing noises. We had just moved to the country. I was used to city life, city noises, city nerves. In the city, you steel yourself for danger, but there’s a comfort to being in a populated area, close to neighbors and cops. The bucolic loneliness of the country offers promises of peace, but to me, it’s sinister. You’re the only person screaming for miles around. Read More
July 31, 2013 Arts & Culture A Partial List of Things John Berryman Found Delicious By Elon Green Saul Bellow’s “Leaving the Yellow House”[1] His own poetry[2] Autolycus of The Winter’s Tale, deemed an “irrelevance”[3] “Bunny,” met in London[4] The Irish, who “all speak English and are blazing with self-respect”[5] A stone[6] A breeze[7] Theodore Roethke’s detail[8] A tribute, written by T. S. Eliot, about Ralph Hodgson[9] Dialogue in Don Quixote[10] An unspecified “new taste sensation”[11] Your “end”[12] An unspecified “author,” also “rational & passionate”[13] The body of a married woman, seen in a restaurant[14] His friend Ernest Milton Halliday’s marks at Columbia University[15] Risk[16] [1] Saul Bellow’s foreward to Recovery/Delusions, Etc.[2] Saul Bellow’s foreward to Recovery/Delusions, Etc.[3] Berryman’s Shakespeare[4] Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman[5] Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman[6] “Dream Song 121”[7] “Dream Song 339”[8] Freedom of the Poet[9] Freedom of the Poet[10] Freedom of the Poet[11] “Gislebertus’ Eve”[12] “Shirley & Auden”[13] “A Prayer for the Self”[14] “Dream Song 4”[15] John Berryman and the Thirties: A Memoir[16] Stephen Crane Elon Green is a freelance writer who oftentimes contributes to The Awl.
July 31, 2013 On the Shelf Crystallized Books, and Other News By Sadie Stein It takes some work to decipher this infographic charting writers in prison for nonliterary crimes, but we like that it exists. Larry McMurtry’s epic rare-book auction is now the subject of a documentary. The band Heaven’s new single, “Dandelion Wine,” is named after the eponymous 1957 Ray Bradbury title. Bibliotherapy: exactly what it sounds like. Artist Alexis Arnold’s Crystallized Book series: exactly what it sounds like.
July 30, 2013 Video & Multimedia Too Hot, Too Greedy By Sadie Stein Close watchers of this space may observe that we have, in the past, posted the iconic video for “Wuthering Heights.” But when we realized that today was not just Emily Brontë’s birthday but also Kate Bush’s, well, you can see that we had no alternative.
July 30, 2013 Arts & Culture Kerouac in the Sun By Vanessa Blakeslee Fred DeWitt for Time magazine, January 1958. Courtesy of Orange County Regional History Center. “Yesterday, in 4 hours, I typed up the 12,000 word Diamond Sutra on a long 12-foot scroll, beautiful, with my final transliteration, one of the most precious religious documents in the world, even you’ll like it when you read it,” Jack Kerouac writes to Joyce Johnson in November 1957. A little more than two months have passed since the publication of On the Road and Gilbert Millstein’s glowing review in the New York Times. Kerouac and Johnson, a budding literary talent in her early twenties, have been romantically involved since January, their sporadic visits in New York interspersed by a lively correspondence. Kerouac had gone to Mexico City in the summer of ’57, but left after falling ill. He landed in Orlando, Florida, where his mother was renting a 1920s bungalow. From August to April 1958, he would make several trips to New York and celebrate his newfound literary acclaim. No one at the time, including Jack himself, could have realized how this small, sleepy house would figure in his life: becoming not only his refuge as On the Road climbed the bestseller lists, but the site of his last, prolific outpouring, resulting in a novel that many consider to be his greatest work, The Dharma Bums. Read More