July 4, 2013 Video & Multimedia Happy Fourth! By Sadie Stein George Plimpton’s passion for fireworks is legendary: he devoted a book to the subject, and held the title of Fireworks Commissioner of New York for some thirty years. In 2011, his son, Taylor, wrote movingly about sending his father’s ashes into space with his favorite firework, the kamuro. In 1994, Plimpton hosted the terrific documentary Fireworks, based on his book.
July 3, 2013 Arts & Culture Notes from a Bookshop: Early Summer, or Six Months In By Kelly McMasters Photo Credit: Lawrence Braun. Wear the old coat and buy the new book. —Austin Phelps When I tell people I run a bookshop, they often respond with envy or admiration. But first, a funny look flashes across their face—sometimes fleeting, sometimes not. A look that says, Poor girl. A look that says, She must be daft. I am not daft. It’s no secret that the bookstore industry is in trouble, and, six months into this experiment, I still don’t know if this dream is viable. Aside from the question of whether people will buy books or will simply use the shop to browse and then order from Amazon when they get home—or, as Michele Figlate’s fantastic Center For Fiction piece flays, order from their iPhone on the spot using our free Wi-Fi—there are the more prosaic reasons I may not be cut out to run a small business, like quarterly taxes and mopping the floor. But people’s love of books is not something I lose much sleep over. I’m a romantic, but I’m also a pragmatist. I did not open Moody Road Studios and assume it would pay my home mortgage or student loan, or even for my dark chocolate habit. Like many writers, I survive by keeping a dozen lines in the water. So I write. And edit. And review. And copyedit. And teach. I love each of these things and feel fortunate to be able to do work that I love and get paid for it. And I knew that in order to open this shop, I would need to continue to do all of these things in order to make it work. I won’t necessarily make money, but I can’t afford to lose any money either. Read More
July 3, 2013 Quote Unquote Happy Birthday, Mary Frances By Sadie Stein Image via Gourmet “It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it … and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied … and it is all one.” —M. F. K. Fisher, The Art of Eating
July 3, 2013 On the Shelf English Rude Word Enters German Language, and Other News By Sadie Stein Williams’ Book Store. On the manifold benefits of writing by hand. In which the author teaches Victorian literature to embryo accountants. Germany adopts shitstorm. Or, as the Beeb would have it, “English rude word enters German language.” Oh dear: the Chicago Sun-Times is discontinuing all book coverage. San Pedro’s Williams’ Book Store is closing after 104 years in business.
July 2, 2013 Listen Henri Cole’s “Self-Portrait with Rifle” By Clare Fentress Abraham Hondius, The Deer Hunt (detail), ca. 1650–95. Henri Cole contributed two poems to our Summer issue, “Self-Portrait with Rifle” and “Free Dirt.” They pair well; both wrestle with the baseness humanity is capable of, and particularly with the surprise we feel when we find such baseness in ourselves. “Self-Portrait with Rifle” illustrates this shock with a jarring scene: a man holding a gun, indignant at his victims—innocent deer—for yielding their lives to his misplaced violence.
July 2, 2013 Look Who Are the Biggest Bookworms in the World? By Sadie Stein This infographic on hours spent reading per week is fascinating.