July 16, 2013 Look This Is a Book By Sadie Stein This is a 3-D orihon, or accordion book, made by Chicago artist and teacher Tom Burtonwood, and developed for the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College.
July 16, 2013 On the Shelf Live Like William Blake, and Other News By Sadie Stein The picturesque West Sussex cottage where William Blake lived, sometimes nude, from 1800–1803 (the period during which he wrote “Jerusalem”) is on the market for £650,000. The agent says, “The original part of the cottage has been altered little in its essential features. The rooms in which William Blake lived retain enormous character and the dining room was at this time the site of his printing press.” Reading (along with writing and doing puzzles) improves cognitive function in old age, a study shows. In which writers such as Emma Straub and Matthew Specktor discourse on their favorite literary streets. Google’s Kafka doodle was not remotely Kafkaesque, Twitter feels. July 17, obviously, is Take Your Poet to Work Day. Herewith, handy cutouts of several bards. Blake not included (but that’s probably a good thing).
July 15, 2013 Arts & Culture Smoke By Philip Connors If you live on a peak in fire-prone country, as I do every summer in the Black Range of New Mexico’s Gila National Forest, the big one will eventually come for you. This knowledge does not cushion the fact that if you’re a lookout evacuated by helicopter you can’t help but feel a failure. The point of the job is early detection: the sooner a smoke is spotted, the more options you give firefighters to contain it. When you’re airlifted by the whirlybird, the options have dwindled to none but run. I realize self-quotation is a dishonorable habit, but it sounds a little smug to say I saw it coming and leave it at that. The fact is, a lot of people saw it coming. All you had to do was read the story written plainly on the faces of the mountains. Read More
July 15, 2013 Video & Multimedia Watch Richard Wright Act in Native Son By Sadie Stein In 1948, Richard Wright starred in this screen test for the film adaptation of his classic 1940 novel, Native Son. Says Studio 360’s Amanda Aronczyk, “if that sounds like a bad idea, that’s because it was”—not least because the non-actor was twice as old as twenty-year-old Bigger Thomas—but this clip remains a fascinating piece of literary and cinematic history.
July 15, 2013 History Required Reading for Bastille Day By Ted Scheinman Claude Monet, Rue Montorgueil, Paris, Festival of 30 June 1878. So hangs it, dubious, fateful, in the sultry days of July. It is the passionate printed advice of M. Marat, to abstain, of all things, from violence. Nevertheless the hungry poor are already burning Town Barriers, where Tribute on eatables is levied; getting clamorous for food.—Thomas Carlyle, History of the French Revolution The old saw that “an army marches on its belly” was blunted on July 14, 1789, as a half-starved, bibulous mob overran the walls of the Bastille, the Bourbon kings’ infamous political prison-turned-armory. Leaders of the rabble were more excited about hoarding gunpowder and fusils than about liberating the prison’s seven remaining, apparently apolitical inmates. Over the next two centuries, La Fête Nationale (or simply “le quatorze Juillet”) has metastasized from a Gallic celebration of freedom to a worldwide excuse for holding a multiday anarchic party, ideally with decent wine and minimal casualties. Read More
July 15, 2013 On the Shelf J. K. Rowling’s Party is Over, and Other News By Sadie Stein By now, you are probably aware that J. K. Rowling wrote detective novel The Cuckoo’s Calling under the guise of Robert Galbraith, an ex-military family man. Quoth she, “It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name.” Can’t imagine what anyone would stand to gain by revealing the truth behind the modest seller. The publishers who turned the novel down are, of course, kicking themselves. Related: a brief history of the pseudonym. For your alienated youngster: My First Kafka.