May 31, 2012 On Television Dear Joan Holloway, Was It Something I Said? By Adam Wilson Dear Joan, Just wanted to check in, as I can’t help but feel slightly responsible for your actions in this week’s episode. I thought these letters from the future would do you all some good, providing twenty/twenty hindsight into your blindingly Day-Glo historical moment. But Doc Brown was right: messing with the past can alter the future in unexpected ways. Matthew Weiner and company thrive on this very notion; they’ve remodeled the mid-sixties into an era in which cigarettes don’t cause cancer, and the advertising industry is the pinnacle of glamour, filled with beautiful people in beautiful clothes making eyes at each other across rooms then retreating into bedrooms with beautiful bed frames for bouts of steamy congress in which panties always match the bra, and a woman can achieve orgasm just by inhaling Don’s smoky musk. No surprise, then, that here in 2012 we’ve gone gaga over sixties style, sporting skinny ties and summer plaids, puffing cigs like we’re unaware of science, and ruining perfectly healthy marriages because, according to Pete Campbell’s friend from the commuter train, variety is the spice of life. We should probably all reread Richard Yates. Maybe it was wrong to tease you with a glimpse into third-wave feminism when the second wave is only now breaking against your shoreline. But don’t think I’m judging you. Read More
May 31, 2012 Bulletin Literary Bars, Brooklyn Lamentations By Sadie Stein RIP illustrator Leo Dillon. Just in time for Book Expo, ten literary bars in Manhattan. Book lovers rally around the marked-for-death University of Missouri Press. 50 Shades of Grey alternatives for the erotica addict. The evolution of the book cover. A Brooklyn elegy.
May 30, 2012 History Queen of the Web By Sadie Stein Queen Elizabeth has put Queen Victoria’s complete journals online. (Well, in collaboration with Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and ProQuest.) The 141 journals, sourced from the Royal Archives, chronicle Victoria’s life from the age of thirteen to eighty-one. The monarch was a faithful and articulate correspondent, and while the content is hardly what one might term juicy, there are certainly plenty of personal revelations, domestic details, and opportunities for analysis. (If you can read her handwriting, that is—not every journal is transcribed.) On this day in 1837, the soon-to-be queen recorded, Wrote a letter to dear Uncle Leopold. Walked. Wrote my journal. Dressed (as though I was going to an evening party.) … Saw Dr. Clark. Played on the piano. Wrote. At 7 to 4 we dined.
May 30, 2012 Arts & Culture Mad Man By Lary Wallace Dick DeBartolo’s first piece for Mad was published in 1962, when he was still in high school, and his work has appeared in every single issue since June 1966. He has written for sections throughout the magazine, but his greatest claim is as a satirist of movies and TV shows—that is, as a writer of the kind of elaborate pop-culture parodies that have, arguably, been the magazine’s signature brand of humor ever since they began running them regularly, about a dozen issues into their existence. The influence of these satires—as written by DeBartolo as well as Harvey Kurtzman, Larry Siegel, Frank Jacobs, Arnie Kogen, Stan Hart, Lou Silverstone, Desmond Devlin, and others—has ranged well beyond the realm of illustrated humor, or even comedy generally; it’s entered the cultural water supply, enriching the work of filmmakers, politicians, authors, actors, and advertisers. Once you’ve acknowledged this, you’re only one short step away from acknowledging DeBartolo’s particular influence on culture at large. Read More
May 30, 2012 Bulletin Lunch Poems, Mixtapes, Beats By Sadie Stein Spend your lunch at MoMA with Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems, written while O’Hara worked at the museum. The name says it all: Gladwell title generator. Elif Batuman visits Orhan Pamuk’s Musuem of Innocence, with eye-opening results. Ask Maira Kalman. She’ll answer questions live! Watch the trailer for On the Road. A literary mixtape for … the brain? Eyes?
May 29, 2012 Look Authors in Bathing Suits By Sadie Stein Summer has kicked off, and hereabouts, at least, it actually feels like it. In honor of the stifling humidity, enjoy Flavorwire’s gallery of writers in bathing suits. Chances are you’ve seen Sylvia Plath and Papa in their respective kits, but Eugene O’Neill? Anne Sexton? Special points to Hunter S. Thompson, left, for actually working (and drinking) in swimwear.