September 18, 2012 On Language Dreaming in Welsh By Pamela Petro Hiraeth. It’s pronounced “here-eyeth” (roll the “r”) and it’s a Welsh word. It has no exact cognate in English. The best we can do is “homesickness,” but that’s like the difference between hardwood and laminate. Homesickness is hiraeth-lite. A quick history lesson is a good idea before a definition: in 1282 Wales became the first colony of the English empire. Because England eventually ruled half the globe, we all know its first colony by the name the colonizers gave it: Wales, which means “Place of the Others,” or “Place of the Romanized Foreigners.” So that’s how the Welsh—the original Britons—became “foreigners” on their own island. Talk about a semantic insult. To Welsh speakers Wales is Cymru (pronounced Kum-ree): home of the Cymry, or fellow countrymen. But not too many schoolkids outside Llandysul know that. Arthur—the once-breathing chieftain, not Merlin’ s once-and-future pal—lived around the time the name “Wales” stuck, in the sixth century. He tried to hold back the English (really the Saxons) and failed. Then in 1282 Llywelyn failed too. He was the last Welsh-born Prince of Wales, aptly named The Last, and he was killed in battle by soldiers of Edward I. After that Wales became a subject state. Since then time’s centrifuge has spun it to the margins of history. Wales is a poor, rural place of mountains and ribboning hills with empty underground pockets where its coal used to be, but which, miraculously, has clung to its birthright language. Twenty years ago Welsh was spoken by eighteen percent of the population, mainly elderly folk in isolated areas. Today twenty-two percent speak it, including a burgeoning segment of young professionals who’ve helped create things like Gweplyfr (Facebook) and Twitr (Twitter). Read More
September 18, 2012 Bulletin An Object Lesson: Beware of Getting Out of Touch By The Paris Review Publisher’s Weekly called it “a kind of mini-M.F.A.” In Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story, we asked twenty masters of the medium to choose their favorite short stories from our sixty-year archive, and write an introduction. The result is a series of “object lessons” in the art of short fiction, a look back at our incredible history, and, not incidentally, a terrific read. Can you guess who wrote the following selection? “Beware of getting out of touch,” his therapist had warned. “It happens gradually. It creeps over you by degrees. When you’re not interacting with people, you start losing the beat. Then blammo. Suddenly, you’re that guy in the yard.” “I’m who?” asked Buddy. “The guy with the too-short pants,” said the therapist. Find out! And show your commitment to keeping the short story alive by purchasing a copy today!
September 18, 2012 On the Shelf Beat Letters, Literary Ink By Sadie Stein Check out this letter from Jack Kerouac to his editor, in which the Beat presses for publication of On the Road. Librarians with literary tattoos! While we’re at it, writers in underpants. (No exclamation mark.) Books You’ve Never Heard of By Authors You Have. (Spoiler: you may have actually heard of a few of them, but you get the idea.) “An audio version [of Gravity’s Rainbow] does exist, though it came from the time of cassettes, not MP3s. The book was recorded in 1986 by George Guidall … it runs to 34 hours.” [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
September 17, 2012 Arts & Culture Immoderation: On Sharing an Idol By Lesley M.M. Blume Last year, I was given the birthday gift of a lifetime: I got to spend the occasion with Diana Vreeland. A friend, who has long been close with the Vreeland family, took me on a weeklong pilgrimage to the Marrakech home of one of Vreeland’s sons. Our hosts, aware of my longstanding obsession with Diana, settled me into what is alternately known as the “D.V. Room” and the “T.V. Room,” for it boasted a rather ancient television set that looked like it might electrocute anyone who dared near it. Above it hung the splendid William Acton portrait of Vreeland that graced the first edition of her memoir, D.V. (edited, incidentally, with gusto by Paris Review cofounder George Plimpton). The painting lovingly depicted her trademark red talons, lacquer-black hair, and the leather thong sandals she claimed to have had recreated from those donned by a slave perfectly preserved (in coitus, no less) by the ashes of Vesuvius. For Vreeland, inspiration came from the most unlikely of sources. The local souk held countless wonders for the other houseguests, but the sprawling, glamorously disheveled Vreeland house engrossed me far more. The D.V. imprint was everywhere. First of all, nothing quite made sense—at least to the orderly, pedestrian mind. You had to resign yourself to wandering the labyrinth and surrendering to the various unexpected delights along the way, such as a turret room festooned entirely with leopard print, or a dark hidden library, filled with hundreds of Vreeland’s books, many (if not most) of which had been inscribed to her by their authors. In yet another room stood one of her famed Louis Vuitton traveling trunks, her initials D.D.V. emblazoned in imperial red ink on one side. One evening, after too many bottles of Moroccan wine, our party took a vote and elected to open it up. The candles in the room blew out as we lifted the lid. Vreeland was clearly present—and making it known that she could only tolerate so much reverential curiosity. Read More
September 17, 2012 Nostalgia Freak, Memory By Dave Tompkins Art from the film poster for Where Eagles Dare. The half-mouse—the good half, the half equipped with a smell memory validated by neuroscience, the half mortally known as the half that never saw it coming—shot across the kitchen floor, headed due west with a decent but final glimpse of the front yard. The back half landed somewhere near the sink. My brother had split the mouse in two with a nine-iron. According to witnesses at the scene, the creature’s separation was cartoonishly neat. I recall thinking this was a flawed method of pest control for someone with no short game to speak of. The linoleum gopher hump that rose from my grandparents’ kitchen floor—a distortion from water damage—did place the moment in a Goony Golf warp. But from my understanding, the murder was more reflex than act of cruelty. It wasn’t like my brother teed up and put the mouse through a window. (I imagine a similar instinct overtaking him the time he allegedly potato-slammed a palmetto bug on the kitchen counter, knocking it out of its exoskeleton, quivering.) He just grabbed the first thing within reach—a legendary chemistry teacher’s nine-iron—and let the mouse have it. Having once hurled a toaster oven at a cockroach, I can relate. Read More
September 17, 2012 On the Shelf Rejection, Crime, and Gum By Sadie Stein The three types of stories one editor tends to reject. Meet the Agency Review, devoted to books on advertising. The short, strange story of Gatsby gumballs. Oh, dear. An (allegedly) disgruntled author was taken into custody after (allegedly) attacking a San Francisco literary agent. A school project we wish were real. “It was George Orwell’s golden-eyed toad that made me a writer.” Simon Schama on literary inspiration.