October 31, 2012 Arts & Culture Circus and the City: New York, 1793–2010 By John Reed As we—like Lady Justice at her scales—weigh the virtues and policies of our presidential candidates, our very future in the balance, it is perhaps not without merit to reflect upon the classical history of democracy, and a fledging nation, now great, which has taken up a banner of representative government as passed down from the Greeks and Romans of antiquity. Perhaps, as well, as the airwaves are electric with the storied truths apropos to this most momentous of elections—this cotterpin in the history of humanity, perhaps the very universe, this year of destiny, of DECISION 2012!—we might look to the birth of our comedic and dramatic tradition, which we will find in the Dionysian festivals of Ancient Greece. Or, wait, is it more of a circus? Circus it is. Hollywood may claim Aristotle as a father, and Washington may fancy itself an ancestor of the Roman Republic, but don’t we all know that our truer father is P. T. Barnum—tabloid king and political boss—and that our truer tradition is the circus, three rings? Pause Play Play Prev | Next Through February 3, Circus and the City: New York, 1793-2010, is on display at the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts, Design, History, Material Culture. The show spans three floors of the Upper West Side Townhouse, and claims New York—and rightly so—as the wellspring of the American Circus (which, alas, isn’t just under the bigtop).
October 31, 2012 Books “The Lottery”: PG-13 Version By Sadie Stein In honor of the master of the creepy story, Shirley Jackson, we bring you this incredibly misleading pulp paperback cover. It must have led to some really disappointed —or freaked out—readers. Also: who is this demon lover of which they speak? [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
October 31, 2012 First Person The Haunting; Or, the Ghost of Ty Cobb By Sadie Stein In July, a bat of Ty Cobb’s sold at auction for $250,000. The buyer, a Denver collector named Tyler Tysdal, said the bat was a present for his two-year-old son, John Tyler. This seemed to me very risky: as a small child, I was terrified of the ghost of Ty Cobb. I can only imagine this had its genesis with my own dad. When I was small, he wrote a novel that dealt with the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, and baseball players of the era were a frequent topic of dinner-table conversation. In any event, I was somehow aware of the outfielder’s penchant for virulent racism, spiking opposing players, and general nastiness. The real fear, however, did not set in until the day in 1985 when Pete Rose broke Cobb’s all-time hit record. Read More
October 31, 2012 On the Shelf Boo! And Other Ways to Scare Kids By Sadie Stein The top ten books for creeping out kids: a guide for parents. “Give your ghost a life story, and other rules for writing a ghost story.” What scares Neil Gaiman? Scariest of all: “I wouldn’t have known about my Russian pirate translator had I not set a Google Alert for the title of my debut novel when it was published, in April 2011.” Peter Mountford chronicles an unlikely alliance. “It was, perhaps, inevitable that Homo floresiensis, the three-foot-tall species of primitive human discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores, would come to be widely known as ‘hobbits.’ After all, like J. R. R. Tolkien’s creation, ‘they were a little people, about half our height.’ But a New Zealand scientist planning an event about the species has been banned from describing the ancient people as ‘hobbits’ by representatives of the Tolkien estate.” [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
October 30, 2012 On the Shelf Gun Found in Donated Book, and Other Book News By Sadie Stein When Indiana librarians opened a donated copy of Robert Stone’s Outerbridge Reach, they found it contained an Arma San Marco .31-caliber, a single-shot black-powder handgun. Reported reaction: “Oh, my.” Essential stormy-weather reads. Faulkner vs. Woody Allen: the plot thickens. How to care for old and lovely books. A breakdown of the megapublishing merger. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
October 30, 2012 Arts & Culture Like: Facebook and Schadenfreude By Francesca Mari I was the 501st person to join Facebook. The inimitable Hatty Hong, number 499, urged me on from her desk across our freshman dorm room. I hardly used it the first few months because so few others were active, and as a senior I logged on to look at dead people’s profiles. Or to click through photographs of myself to remember where my time went. I didn’t think it was appropriate to remain a member after graduation. Facebook was something you were to outgrow, like Tommy Girl perfume or AOL Instant Messenger. Five years since graduation, I use it more now than ever. As an elder user, I can say one thing with authority: When it comes to disseminating news about Facebook, few media are more effective than Facebook itself. That’s how I came to learn that longtime users like me are more likely to believe others happier than themselves. At least according to a study from Utah Valley University. The longer one has used Facebook, they found, the more likely he or she is to recall other people’s positive posts: the stunning honeymoon in Greece of a girl you never really knew in high school—and whose last name now looks, well, Greek; a list of very impressive graduate school acceptances, the likes of which prompted one Awl writer to dash off a lesson in Facebook manners. Read More