February 20, 2013 Arts & Culture Golden Books By Sadie Stein While we can’t pretend to have actually asked the question, “What if best-selling albums had been books instead?”, we can all agree that the answer, from British designer Christophe Gowans, is brilliant. (We’d suggest The White Album, but, well.)
February 20, 2013 Bulletin See a Paris Review Interview: Live! By Sadie Stein Called “one of the finest prose stylists at work in the language, an Emerson of our time,” the psychoanalyst and essayist Adam Phillips joins Paul Holdengräber for a live Writers-at-Work interview on Monday, February 25, at the New York Public Library. In the tradition of Paris Review interviews, Phillips will discuss writing, life, and his most recent work, Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life. See program details here. To receive a $10 discount off general admission, click here and enter code FRUSTRATION at checkout.
February 20, 2013 On the Shelf Meet Your Literary Hero, and Other News By Sadie Stein #IWishICouldMeet, the popular Twitter hash tag, gets a literary twist as readers tell the LA Times which characters and authors they would love to meet #IRL. (And for the record, #ReuvenMalter.) Paul Muldoon—poet, professor, Poetry Society macher, New Yorker editor, librettist, and Rackett guitarist—lists his favorite rock books. This list of best sellers from around the world is fascinating and shaming. In fact, next, the blogger reading one hundred years of best sellers might want to tackle the Indonesian list. “The second half of the nineteenth century saw the rise of amateur press associations (ASAs)—small groups of writers, often without professional training, who would produce individual articles, pamphlets, or magazines mailed to all other members of the association; in other words, a progenitor of subscription-based blogging, and yet another example of primitive versions of modern social media.”
February 19, 2013 The Print Series Theodoros Stamos, Untitled, 1965 By The Paris Review Since 1964 The Paris Review has commissioned a series of prints and posters by major contemporary artists. Contributing artists have included Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Bourgeois, Ed Ruscha, and William Bailey. Each print is published in an edition of sixty to two hundred, most of them signed and numbered by the artist. All have been made especially and exclusively for The Paris Review. Many are still available for purchase. Proceeds go to The Paris Review Foundation, established in 2000 to support The Paris Review.
February 19, 2013 The Culture Diaries A Week in Culture: Claire Cottrell, Art Book Shop Owner and Editor By Claire Cottrell DAY ONE 7:00 A.M. Wake up to dog barking and strong skunk smell in house. Fear that door to garden was left open and skunk is loose in house. Get out of bed to confirm. Garden door is not open and skunk is not loose. Go back to bed for thirty minutes. 7:30 A.M. Get out of bed. Wash face. Gather belongings, including black cocoon coat purchased for an imminent trip to Paris found for sixteen dollars the day before at a second-hand store. Head home to Mount Washington. 8:00 A.M. Arrive at home. Make tea. Take daily vitamins. Make new favorite quick morning oatmeal: half cup of oats, two heaping tablespoons of maple syrup, cinnamon, chopped apple, fresh dates, walnuts, boiling water. Settle in to enjoy oatmeal and tea. Realize that laptop, aka lifeline, is in Amos’s car. Freak out. Cancel all morning obligations, citing laptop debacle. Text Amos. 8:05 A.M. Amos drops off laptop. 8:10 A.M. Finish oatmeal. Finish tea. Resume all morning obligations. Including: reviewing reactions to Sybil’s sad demise on last night’s Downton Abbey, looking at Atelier Bow-Wow’s pet architecture—otherwise known as teeny tiny buildings on teeny tiny sliver of land—for an article, researching Bruno Munari’s useless machines for a contribution to the new arts journal, synonym. 9:15 A.M. Tackle e-mail. Respond to e-mails from three weeks ago. Debate including ‘apologies for the delayed response.’ Decide against it thinking, No need to always apologize. For all they know I answer e-mail every few weeks because I live in a cabin removed from civilization and spend most of my time in nature. Read More
February 19, 2013 Arts & Culture The Worst Poet in the World By Sadie Stein The handwritten manuscript of a poem by the man considered the worst poet in the English language, William Topaz McGonagall, is expected to fetch up to £3,000 at auction. While the doggerel-esque verse, “In Praise of the Royal Marriage,” is certainly no threat to Tennyson, it doesn’t seem worthy of the dead-fish and rotten-egg tributes the Scottish bard’s performances regularly elicited on the music hall stage. His most infamous work is probably “The Tay Bridge Disaster,” commemorating an 1879 bridge collapse in which numerous train passengers were killed; it is either a masterpiece of outsider art or of insensitivity. Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay! Alas! I am very sorry to say That ninety lives have been taken away On the last Sabbath day of 1879, Which will be remember’d for a very long time.