July 20, 2012 On the Shelf Book Mazes, Ugly Covers, Hauntings By Sadie Stein Brazilian artists Marcos Saboya and Gualter Pupo have made a maze out of books. Beautiful books, ugly covers. Sure, e-books are huge, but are they heirlooms? Regardless, Penguin has acquired self-publishing platform Author Solutions. And the British government is looking into the whole public-library-e-book-lending situation. In other news, a haunted bookstore? [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
July 19, 2012 On Food The Original House of Pies: SoCal Comfort By Aaron Gilbreath When the waitress set the slice of strawberry pie in front of me, I tried to contain my excitement. This moment was the culmination of two years’ worth of waiting, two years of longing and imagining my order and relishing memories of the last time I ate here at the Original House of Pies. I had first learned of the place from a song. There are no lyrics in the Friends of Dean Martinez’s “House of Pies.” Instead of vocals, an electric guitar plucks the melody in sync with a heavy-bottom bass. It isn’t a catchy melody. There isn’t much to it. The tune mostly sets a mood. Under the guitar, brushes make slow circles across a snare drum, and a high lap steel whines its laconic counterpoint, casting a spell, like when heat and blinding sunlight make everything slow and heavy. Although it was recorded by a Tucson, Arizona, group, the song sounds the way summer in Los Angeles feels. The guy who wrote it, Joey Burns, was raised in L.A. and drew the song’s title from an East Hollywood restaurant. I thanked the waitress, and she left me to savor my pie in private. Read More
July 19, 2012 Books Character Studies: Lady Brett Ashley By Stephanie LaCava “Damned good-looking” is how Ernest Hemingway—or, rather, his antihero Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises—describes Lady Brett Ashley when she appears at a Parisian club with a mob of pretty boys. “Damned good-looking” is better than pretty. It’s better than the colloquial “hot,” better than beautiful, even. Damned good-looking, it is. Imagine Hemingway, the great economist of words, deciding just how he would introduce perhaps his most enduring siren. Original drafts of the novel open with the character Ashley (better known as Brett), though she would eventually come to play a smaller role. Hemingway was bewitched, at the time of writing, by the self-possession of the real-life Lady Duff Twysden, and she—rather than his wife, Hadley—would serve as the partial inspiration for The Sun Also Rises’s heroine. (Indeed, he would dedicate later editions of the novel to her.) Read More
July 19, 2012 On the Shelf Erotic Classics, Christian Colleges, Dealbreakers By Sadie Stein Yup: e-books outsold hard copies in 2011. Out of the mouths of babes: a six-year-old judges classics by their covers. Speaking of classics: a British publisher adds sex scenes to them. Erotic rewrites include Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre. Written a great opener? Call the first graf hotline. The C. S. Lewis Foundation plans to open a college based on his Christian teachings. Dealbreaker books . [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
July 18, 2012 Video & Multimedia Watch: The Mosaic Man of the East Village By Sadie Stein Chances are, anyone who has spent any time in Manhattan’s East Village is familiar with the work of Jim Power, aka “The Mosaic Man.” For the past three decades, Power has been on a single-handed quest to beautify an area which, when he started decorating lampposts with beautiful tile work, was far from salubrious. Despite twenty years of homelessness and the city’s destruction of some of his lampposts, Jim has remained undeterred and is a beloved fixture of the neighborhood. Etsy—with whom Power now has a shop—pays tribute with a video. Jim Power and the Mosaic Trail from Etsy on Vimeo. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
July 18, 2012 Video & Multimedia Watch: Interpublication Sexytimes By Noah Wunsch THE MAGAZINE MAGAZINES FANTASIZE ABOUT from The Paris Review on Vimeo. Story by Noah Wunsch Video by Carib Guerra & Noah Wunsch Special thanks to Eamon Kelly [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]