April 25, 2012 On the Shelf Crowdsourced Books, Twenties Muses, the World’s Worst Word By Sadie Stein Reckless, glamorous It Girls of the Jazz Age. The strange tale of Bram Stoker. For the first time since 1945, there will be a new German edition of Mein Kampf. Perhaps inevitably, a crowdsourced book written by the Internet. This Philip Larkin tribute was fantastic. The people have spoken, and they loathe the word moist.
April 24, 2012 On Language It Is Hoped By Sadie Stein Linguists and grammarians the world over may weep into their Manuals of Style, but the march of progress continues: as of this week, the AP Stylebook has altered its definition of hopefully. As they tweeted, “We now support the modern usage of hopefully: It’s hoped, we hope.” (Previously, the accepted definition was, “In a hopeful manner.”) As the AP deputy standards editor David Minthorn told the Washington Post somewhat mournfully, “We batted this around, as we do a lot of things, and it just seemed like a logical thing to change. We’re realists over at the AP. You just can’t fight it.” Naturally, the decision has been controversial. While some have heralded the AP’s flexibility, others, like editor Rob Rheinalda, take a dimmer view, opining, “It’s lazy and it’s subjective. The speaker presumes that everyone shares that hope.” The WaPo piece had generated 680 comments as of this writing. Is Rome burning? Or is language simply in perpetual flux? We are reminded here of the immortal words of Ken Kesey, who, in his Paris Review interview, remarked, “As you get older and hopefully wiser, you find that blame and punishment beget only more blame and punishment.” Amen.
April 24, 2012 Bulletin Join Us This Thursday! By The Paris Review This Thursday, join us at NYU’s Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House for an evening of new fiction and poetry from The Paris Review, hosted by editor Lorin Stein. The event, part of NYU’s Creative Writing Program Reading Series, will feature readings by recent contributors, including Adam Wilson, author of Flatscreen (and winner of our Terry Southern Prize) and Rowan Ricardo Phillips, author of the poetry collection The Ground. For details, visit the Reading Series Web site.
April 24, 2012 Bulletin Who Needs the Pulitzer? We’ve Got Joshua Cohen! By The Paris Review We are delighted to report that Joshua Cohen’s story “Emission” (Summer 2011) has been awarded a Pushcart Prize. With the other prizewinners, it will be included in The Pushcart Prize XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses. But remember: you read it here first!
April 24, 2012 Arts & Culture Mapping Markson By Sadie Stein When modernist novelist David Markson died in 2010, the West Villager’s personal library ended up, by his request, at his old haunt, the Strand bookstore. Word quickly spread, and bibliophiles and readers tried to snatch up as many of the annotated books—many of which figured in Markson’s own work—as possible. (Alex Abramovich describes buying up three shopping bags’ worth of classics, complete with notes and marginalia.) The books were, typically, signed: either Markson, David M. Markson, Markson NYC, or Markson London. It’s an archive worthy of a university but preserved, instead, in bits and pieces on bookshelves all over New York and beyond. Now, a tumblr, Reading Markson Reading, has dedicated itself to, as the author puts it, “Exploring the mind, method and masterpieces of David Markson through the marginalia found on the pages of the books in his personal library.” An intimate glimpse into the writer’s thoughts, for all readers to share. Watch Markson reminisce at the Strand in 2007.
April 24, 2012 On Music Big Squeeze By Ezra Glinter On a recent Tuesday afternoon I was sitting with Walter Kuehr in the back room of Main Squeeze Accordions on Essex Street, asking questions about the accordion business. He said he mostly does repairs these days, and he conducts the Main Squeeze Orchestra, a fourteen-piece all-female accordion band he founded in 2002. Photos of famous accordion players line the wall: Myron Floren of the Lawrence Welk Show; John Linnell from They Might Be Giants; Texas conjunto star Flaco Jimenez; “Weird Al” Yankovic. They’ve all played in Main Squeeze, often in exchange for instrument repairs. On a shelf piled high with books and accordion music there’s an advance copy of Squeeze This: A Cultural History of the Accordion in America, a study of the piano accordion by ethnomusicologist Marion Jacobson. She was once a student of Kuehr’s, and they keep in touch. “Something drew me in,” Jacobson said later, recalling her first visit to Main Squeeze, in 2001. “I had been thinking for some time that the accordion would be my next instrument. How could I not have this thing that makes even the simplest melodies sound so danceable, so rich?” Though Jacobson got her ruby-red Delicia Carmen elsewhere (she traded for it with her piano, which is now the house instrument at the Brooklyn music venue Barbes), she returned to Main Squeeze to learn how to play. Read More