December 13, 2012 Video & Multimedia A Man Pronounces the Longest Word in the World By Sadie Stein If you so choose, watch one Dmitry Glubovskyi pronouncing the longest word in the world, the 189,819-letter chemical name for titin (which is, appropriately enough, the largest protein in the world). Warning: it takes three hours. To quote the Daily News, “It gets really good at the 1:32:54 mark, when a pack of corgis invades.” We’ll take their word for it.
December 13, 2012 Arts & Culture Christmas with Monte By Colin Fleming Up until the early spring of this year, I considered myself an absolute Christmas fiend. Not in the Grinch sense of breaking out the Boris Karloff accent and green grease paint and plotting how I might swipe presents, but rather trying to figure out, as early as possible, how best to immerse myself in a holiday that I loved like no other, in a typically over-the-top fashion. You know that person you read about, who bops his head along to Christmas songs on the oldies station—yes, Brenda Lee, you rock around that tree indeed!—the day after Thanksgiving, who insists on seeing Rudolph “live,” every year, because it’s just more real on TV than Blu-ray? I was that guy. Before I had occasion to become a different guy. And before I decided to spend this holiday season with M. R. James. Read More
December 13, 2012 On the Shelf Leo Tolstoy, Emerging Author, and Other News By Sadie Stein Target inexplicably shelves Tolstoy under “Emerging Authors.” “My feeling was, if you’re going to propose to your girlfriend this way, you’ve got to do it right … You do it in the finished book.” An illustrator pops the question in print. The unlikely friendship between Walt Whitman and Bram Stoker. The fiscal cliff for English majors. Why we reread.
December 12, 2012 Bulletin For the Little Ones on Your List! By Sadie Stein Here at The Paris Review, we have all your holiday shopping covered! And for the youngest Parisians among us, we bring you our adorable onesie, in 100% cotton, with a hand-drawn logo. Your choice of custard or baby blue. Get yours here!
December 12, 2012 Arts & Culture The Porter’s Lodge By Michael McGrath In the summer of 2003, I attended a viewing party celebrating the premiere of The O.C. at my friend Diesel’s house. Specifically, in a guesthouse planted in an overgrown corner of his grandparents’ backyard. We called it the Barn, or the Sidehatch. The Sidehatch had moldy furniture, an unreliable toilet, seashell ashtrays, and yellowed window lace. The refrigerator was noisy and warm. A thorny jungle pressed against the back windows. We sank into the spotted divan, clinked cups filled with stolen table wine and scarcely potable vodka sodas, and cheered as Ryan, the greasy angel from Chino, took up residency in the Cohen family pool house. In dreams I occasionally confuse those two structures—the faded shingles of the Sidehatch easing to smooth, cool white—the way you might confuse a historical personality with the actor who portrayed them on film. That viewing party is a warm memory I often revisit in colder, lonelier moments, and the Sidehatch remains close to my heart, as much an unexpected salvation as Ryan’s Newport Beach. Read More
December 12, 2012 Poetry On the Twelfth Day of the Twelfth Month of 2012… By Sadie Stein … we bring you an excerpt from Russian Symbolist poet Aleksandr Blok’s 1918 poem The Twelve. “Today I am a genius,” he wrote after completing the twelve-canto chronicle of the October Revolution. The opening lines are amongst the most famous in Russian literature. Black night.White snow. The wind, the wind!It will not let you go.The wind, the wind!Through God’s whole world it blows The wind is weavingThe white snow.Brother ice peeps from belowStumbling and tumblingFolk slip and fall.