March 6, 2013 On the Shelf Fitness for Writers, and Other News By Sadie Stein “Writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.” Mohsin Hamid’s fitness tips for writers. The Vida results are in, and they are, as per usual, damning. “I was bored at work and looking for a distraction.” Maris Kreizman on the birth of Slaughterhouse 90210. It is World Read Aloud Day, should you have a child handy! (An adult will do too.) Why it’s needed? #FictionalCharactersIWantToMarry is a thing. (Reuven Malter, not that you asked.)
March 5, 2013 Quote Unquote March 5, 1815 By Sadie Stein “I was speaking to Mde. B. this morning about a boiled loaf, when it appeared that her master has no raspberry jam; she has some, which of course she is determined he shall have; but cannot you bring a pot when you come?” —Jane Austen to her sister, Cassandra
March 5, 2013 Arts & Culture The Indescribable Frankenstein: A Short History of the Spectacular Failure of Words By Jason Z. Resnikoff Mrs. Chesser taught me that there is never any reason to use the word indescribable. Invoking the indescribability of something does no work except to tell everyone, quite explicitly, that you are incapable of describing. Indescribable is not a quality something can possess, only a failure that can overwhelm a writer. Even now, years later, I can practically hear Mrs. Chesser, her voice languid with existential weariness, pleading with all of us in third-period English: “For the love of God, ask ourselves why a thing is indescribable and then write that down. Never be so lazy as to just dash off, ‘It was indescribable.’ It’s a waste of everyone’s time.” I remember her making profound eye contact with me just as the words “waste of everyone’s time” escaped her lips. Chastened, and most likely the prime offender, I made a note to myself, much of it capitalized, and have since made all-out war on the indescribable in my life. But the indescribable has a history, and a distinguished one at that. In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses the word “describe,” or some version of it, twenty-one times. Of those twenty-one, fourteen are coupled with a negation. Which means that approximately 66 percent of the time Mary Shelley uses the word “describe,” it is to describe how she, in fact, cannot describe something. “I cannot describe to you my sensations,” or, “How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe,” or, “I cannot pretend to describe what I then felt,” or, “a hell of intense tortures such as no language can describe.” But these romantic, brain-feverish testimonies to descriptive incompetence are often immediately paired with very precise descriptions, as in, “Over him hung a form which I cannot find words to describe—gigantic stature, yet uncouth and distorted in its proportions,” or when the explorer Robert Walton writes his sister, “I cannot describe to you my sensations on the near prospect of my undertaking. It is impossible to communicate to you a conception of the trembling sensation, half pleasurable and half fearful, with which I am preparing to depart.” What is that indescribable sensation? Well, trembling, half-pleasurable, half-fearful, which is actually quite descriptive. Read More
March 5, 2013 Bulletin All A-Twitter By Sadie Stein One-hundred-forty-character poets, channel you inner Bashō, O’Hara, and Williams and listen up! Immortality can be yours: the New York Public Library is sponsoring a Twitter poetry contest for National Poetry Month! Here’s the (slightly Byzantine) deal: Be American and over thirteen. Register. Follow @NYPL. “Submit three poetic tweets in English as public posts on your Twitter stream between March 1 and 10, 2013. Three poetic tweets constitute one entry and each poem must contain the @NYPL Twitter handle.” “Two of the poems can cover any topic you choose, but at least one of the three poems needs to be about libraries, books, reading, or New York City.” The panel of distinguished judges will be looking for “originality, creativity, and artistic quality.” Winners will be highlighted on all the NYPL social networks and stand to claim a passel of truly excellent poetry books. (Plus the aforementioned glory.)
March 5, 2013 A Letter from the Editor Cover Art By Lorin Stein What follows is the Editor’s Note from issue 204. For the cover of our sixtieth-anniversary issue, we asked the French artist JR to make a giant poster of George Plimpton’s face and paste it up on a wall in Paris, as a symbolic homecoming and a tribute to the patrie. Posters are what JR does. In Vevey, Switzerland, he covered one entire side of a clock tower with Man Ray’s Femme aux cheveux longs. In Havana, Los Angeles, Shanghai, and Cartagena, Spain, he plastered headshots of elderly residents—headshots many stories tall—across the facades of old buildings. He called the project “The Wrinkles of the City.” We love these pictures. We love the way they honor the desire behind any portrait—to eternalize a particular face—and at the same time welcome the wear and tear of weather, smog, graffiti: of life as it passes by. It’s been ten years since George died in his sleep, after half a century at the helm of the Review. “George,” we say, even those members of the staff who never met him. He looms large in our imaginations—as large as that image gazing across the rue Alexandre Dumas—because he invented the form of the Review and gave it his spirit. “What we are doing that’s new,” he explained in a letter to his parents, “is presenting a literary quarterly in which the emphasis is more on fiction than on criticism, the bane of present quarterlies. Also we are brightening up the issue with artwork.” This from a man who was about to publish Samuel Beckett! George’s magazine was blithely serious and seriously blithe. Read More
March 5, 2013 On the Shelf The Fortress of Solitude: The Musical, and Other News By Sadie Stein “If authors are hesitant to work with artists, artists have no reservations about working with authors’ words.” A tribute to some glorious, recent illustrations. Speaking of lovely books: nominate a cover for the 50 Books, 50 Covers book design awards. Great, bite-size cell phone reads. Speaking of short fiction, a tribute to a master of the form, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. The Fortress of Solitude: the musical.