November 2, 2012 On the Shelf I Sent My Book to David Foster Wallace and All I Got Was This Lousy Postcard By Sadie Stein “Why did he choose to send me a postcard? Simply because it’s a few cents cheaper than mailing a letter in an envelope? Was it just sitting around when he was looking for something to write on? Does he buy stacks of these postcards for the express purpose of responding to random fans? And worse, does he write this same prepared response to every letter?” Frank Cassese on hearing from DFW. An unpublished Truman Capote story has come to light and will be published later this month. “Within the world of the Thurber dog there are many different specimens and varieties.” “I don’t know why Hollywood is fascinated by my book when they never care to film it as I wrote it.” Authors respond to adaptations of their work. “For Halloween, a pointy hat, fake hair and a broom [make] a witch’s outfit.” And other wisdom from Pippa Middleton’s literary debut. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
November 1, 2012 Arts & Culture Island of the Blue Dolphins Cave is Found By Sadie Stein The Island of the Blue Dolphins was my home; I had no other. After more than twenty years of searching, a Navy archaeologist believes he has found the cave on San Nicolas Island occupied by The Lone Woman—better known to many as the protagonist of Scott O’Dell’s 1960 classic, Island of the Blue Dolphins. The Newberry Medal–winner was based on the true story of a Native American woman left behind when the rest of the Nicoleño tribe was evacuated from the channel islands by missionaries after the population was decimated by Russian fur traders; one story has it she returned to the island to search for her missing child. Read More
November 1, 2012 First Person The Human Centipede; Or, How to Move to New York By Elissa Bassist I moved to New York for graduate school. I was in my mid-twenties, and what do we do when we’re in our mid-twenties? We move to New York with very little money and very high hopes. Like many, I entered into the nexus of love and wealth and fame looking for a piece of the glistering and transmutable dream itself. In short, I was here to write a book. But standing on the threshold of this dream, I began to panic. I thought, I have arrived, and thought nothing of how far I had to go or what it would take to get there. I could see downtown Brooklyn from my window, and most days my impression of New York came from inside my bedroom. Outside, the sidewalks were cobbled and uneven, and the houses and apartments looked like replicas of the houses and apartments I’d watch on TV. I’d lived in Brooklyn less than a month but had already settled into an inexplicable depression I’d nicknamed The Darkness. I couldn’t leave my apartment, except to attend class in Manhattan two nights a week. Sitting on the F train, I felt sure no one could lived in New York without a constantly replenished supply of antidepressants, courtesy of some kind of pharmaceutical Fresh Direct. Read More
November 1, 2012 Quote Unquote Happy November! By Sadie Stein “November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.” —Emily Dickinson
November 1, 2012 On the Shelf Bookstores Take a Beating, and Other News By Sadie Stein Brooklyn's Powerhouse Books, post-Sandy How did bookstores fare in the wake of Hurricane Sandy? A sad reality for many right now: how to care for water-damaged books. The (thankfully unscathed) New York Public Library has waived fines … until November 8. Many independent bookstores are refusing to stock books from the Amazon imprint. The Proper Art of Writing: a compilation of all sorts of capital or initial letters of German, Latin and Italian fonts from different masters of the noble art of writing.
October 31, 2012 Arts & Culture Circus and the City: New York, 1793–2010 By John Reed As we—like Lady Justice at her scales—weigh the virtues and policies of our presidential candidates, our very future in the balance, it is perhaps not without merit to reflect upon the classical history of democracy, and a fledging nation, now great, which has taken up a banner of representative government as passed down from the Greeks and Romans of antiquity. Perhaps, as well, as the airwaves are electric with the storied truths apropos to this most momentous of elections—this cotterpin in the history of humanity, perhaps the very universe, this year of destiny, of DECISION 2012!—we might look to the birth of our comedic and dramatic tradition, which we will find in the Dionysian festivals of Ancient Greece. Or, wait, is it more of a circus? Circus it is. Hollywood may claim Aristotle as a father, and Washington may fancy itself an ancestor of the Roman Republic, but don’t we all know that our truer father is P. T. Barnum—tabloid king and political boss—and that our truer tradition is the circus, three rings? Pause Play Play Prev | Next Through February 3, Circus and the City: New York, 1793-2010, is on display at the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts, Design, History, Material Culture. The show spans three floors of the Upper West Side Townhouse, and claims New York—and rightly so—as the wellspring of the American Circus (which, alas, isn’t just under the bigtop).