May 18, 2012 This Week’s Reading What We’re Loving: Girls, Cribs, and Literary Detective Work By The Paris Review How often have you read a TV review by a writer of our generation and thought of Susan Sontag? It’s never happened to me—until this week, when I read Elaine Blair’s review of Girls in The New York Review of Books. By paying attention to one little sex scene, Blair makes deep arguments about sex scenes in general, the limits of romantic comedy, and the real meaning of sexual freedom. —Lorin Stein About a decade ago, my friend Mikey loaned me a book he thought I’d enjoy. I’ve only just got around to picking it up. Though I’m a bad friend, he isn’t: the book—Leonid Andreyev’s The Little Angel—is terrific, after a fashion. The stories are intriguing, especially “At the Roadside Station” and “The City,” but the translation is rather bad. I’d love to see it revisited by another publisher and translator. I’m looking at you, NYRB Books. And how about Natasha Randall? I loved her translations of We and A Hero of Our Time. —Nicole Rudick For those with a green thumb and a love of literature, look no further than Writing the Garden: A Literary Conversation Across Two Centuries for an insightful glimpse into garden writing over the last two-hundred years. Lush illustrations color the pages and accompany extensive excerpts from the writings of influential figures of gardening’s past and present, such as Thomas Jefferson, Gertrude Jekyll, and Michael Pollan. Gain a little inspiration for your own beckoning plots, or simply get yourself excited for summer’s peak. —Elizabeth Nelson Read More
May 18, 2012 On the Shelf Auden, Furious and Peripatetic By Sadie Stein “In Defense of Brooklyn”—November 1946. Local jerky and artisanal bitters do not, however, figure in the argument. When St. Marks in the Bowery changed its liturgy, Auden did not like it at all. His opener: “Have you gone stark raving mad?” Speaking of Auden, his many New York addresses. Yes, all would now be very expensive. President Obama claims to have never heard of 50 Shades of Grey. This inspires ambivalence. Chicago celebrates the centenary of native son Studs Terkel (who actually died at ninety-six). A camera that takes written pictures. Newbery-winning children’s author Jean Craighead George has died at ninety-two. An accomplished journalist and a nature lover, George was perhaps best known for her 1973 novel, Julie of the Wolves.
May 17, 2012 Arts & Culture Live on Air By Jessica Gross Radio journalism is having some trouble with self-definition right now. Every art form always is, of course, but radio’s growing pains are under particular public scrutiny. In January, This American Life broadcast part of a monologue by Mike Daisey, who had visited factories in China that make Apple products; it turned out he’d invented pieces of the narrative based on reports he’d heard, not seen, about labor conditions in other factories. This American Life retracted the episode, and a thousand questions bloomed. What does this mean for the industry as a whole? Is journalism even about facts anymore? Are larger truths ever more important, or is that a false dichotomy? Is storytelling different from journalism? Where do documentary-style shows like This American Life fall on the spectrum, and to what standards must they adhere? Good questions, all, and vital ones. May I sidestep them? If the spotlight is on fact versus fiction, the refracted light falls somewhere else: on the reason this episode matters so much to us. The original Mike Daisey program was the most popular in This American Life’s sixteen-year history. Listeners cared about Daisey’s character and about the ones he described: his translator; a thirteen-year-old laborer; a man with a mangled hand. All, save for Daisey, were invented, in the pure sense of the word, but visceral. This is the point: we can’t care about information until we can feel, and we can’t feel until we know people. We can’t learn until we empathize. This American Life may be the go-to example of character-driven radio journalism, but it’s a pervasive practice right now. Radiolab, StoryCorps, The Moth, Radio Diaries—name a radio program and I will show you its protagonists. It’s impossible to say, for certain, where a form of expression begins. But I offer that this concept—that we need characters in order to understand pretty much anything—was first put into practice in radio by Edward R. Murrow, during World War II. Read More
May 17, 2012 On the Shelf Crime, Punishment, and Chess By Sadie Stein The link between chess and writing. An excised page of The Little Prince goes on the block. Live out your fantasies in the penthouses that serve as the setting for Fifty Shades of Grey. Speaking of fantasies … hot authors. A Bay Area judge allows a prisoner to go free—provided he reads an hour a day and completes book reports. Meanwhile, a white-collar criminal is ordered to write a book. (The author considered, and rejected, the opening line, “Call me a Schlemiel.”)
May 17, 2012 The Poem Stuck in My Head Edward Lear’s “The Dong with a Luminous Nose” By Sam Munson Edward Lear was born two hundred years ago this month. His reputation, which has outlived many others, rests largely on a book of limericks published when he was thirty-four and a single poem, appearing twenty-one years later, that begins (as you all know, or should): The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat They took some honey, and plenty of money Wrapped up in a five-pound note Read More
May 16, 2012 On Politics Kim Jong-Un’s First Speech, Interpreted as Doggerel By Anacharsis Clootz On April 15, Kim Jong-Un, the new leader of North Korea, gave his long-awaited maiden speech, on the hundredth anniversary of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, the country’s founder. Befitting the occasion, enormous crowds attended, and male and female soldiers marched with goose-stepping precision. North Korea-watchers considered it an important moment to gauge the new leader, and he did not disappoint, celebrating the particular take on history that distinguishes North Korea from all other nations. A full transcript has just been provided by a North Korean website, but for the readers of The Paris Review, a condensed version has been prepared, in poetic form. Read More