October 10, 2012 On the Shelf Arthurian Legend, Literary Restaurants By Sadie Stein Oxford’s Bodleian Library has put more than three hundred thousand rare books online. J.R.R. Tolkien’s previously unseen two-hundred-page Arthurian epic poem, The Fall of Arthur, will be released next May. His son has acted as editor. As I Chipotle Dying: the #literaryrestaurants hash tag sweeps Twitter. Lena Dunham’s purported $3.5 million sale prompts a list of outrageous book deals. “Lolita, then, is undeniably news in the world of books. Unfortunately, it is bad news. There are two equally serious reasons why it isn’t worth any adult reader’s attention. The first is that it is dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is that it is repulsive.” The New York Times’s pan: just one of the bad reviews received by classics. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
October 10, 2012 Arts & Culture Crossroads of the (Art) World By John Reed Views of the Time Square Show (organized by Colab), 1980. Photo collage by Terise Slotkin At what date on the calendar, at what precise location, did counterculture become pop culture? And who do we mark down in the history books as the hero, or the villain, who masterminded the switch? There is an answer: “The Times Square Show.” In June of 1980, more than a hundred artists, under the auspice and directed by the vision of Colab (Collaborative Projects), took over a four-story building on Forty-first Street and Seventh Avenue and mounted a two-month exhibition. There were big names: Tom Otterness, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kiki Smith, Jenny Holzer, Kenny Scharf, Nan Goldin. But, already, this is a wrong turn; the notion of individual heroism, of the creative ego that strives for and achieves recognition—in other words, a modernist view of the artist—is an anachronistic way to view “The Times Square Show.” Time Square Show (organized by Colab), map of the first and second floors with list of participating artists. Floor plan by Tom Otterness, notations by John Ahearn The idea behind “The Times Square Show” was different: a collaborative, self-curated, self-generated group show that transcended trappings of class and cultures. As John Ahearn, a Colab initiator who spotted the location on a Times Square jaunt with Tom Otterness, told the East Village Eye, “Times Square is a crossroads. A lot of different kinds of people come through here. There is a broad spectrum, and we are trying to communicate with society at large.” Ahearn went on to tell the Eye, “There has always been a misdirected consciousness that art belongs to a certain class or intelligence. This show proves there are no classes in art, no differentiation.” Read More
October 9, 2012 Arts & Culture Austen Takes Brooklyn By Sadie Stein This weekend, seven hundred members of the Jane Austen Society of North America congregated in Brooklyn for its inaugural meeting, a discussion of sex, money, and power. Anna Quindlen delivered the keynote. Cornel West addressed suffering. And, of course, bonnets were worn. “This is a place where people can let their Jane Austen freak flag fly,” said one attendee. [New York Times] [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
October 9, 2012 Arts & Culture Cossacks and Clowns and Bears, Oh My! By Sophie Pinkham Galina Brezhnev. One cold March day in St. Petersburg, I paid a visit to Vladimir Ignatievich Deriabkin, whose apartment does double duty as the Museum of Gramophones. Above me was a gramophone wearing red and white clown shoes, perched on a unicycle. A samovar walked a tightrope across the room, holding a stick to help it keep its balance. Train tracks stretched across the ceiling. Brightly painted, blooming wide, the gramophones were like a garden of enormous morning glories. I was in St. Petersburg, the city once called the “Russian mirage,” doing research on criminal songs of the Soviet period. My investigations had already taken me to such exotic places as the St. Petersburg Record Collector’s Club, a set of subterranean rooms full of grizzled, toothless men in caps and striped sailor shirts. Escorted into the back room, where the head honchos were celebrating International Women’s Day by drinking cognac from metal jiggers, I suspected that I was the first woman ever to enter the building. One man asked me to marry him, saying that he didn’t want to live in New York but wanted to live as if he were in New York. This intriguing rhetorical turn was the central finding of that day’s research; the men were too busy celebrating to answer my questions. A helpful friend had told me that Vladimir Ignatievich was someone I absolutely had to meet before I left town, and I hoped that my interview with him would be more fruitful than my trip to the record club. Armed with my dictaphone, notebook, and tattered map, wearing my too-thin, too-short New York coat and my cracked, leaking New York boots, I tramped through the drifts of snow. (The St. Petersburg city administration is lax in clearing the streets—but they do better than Kiev, whose mayor was said to have proclaimed, “Let whoever put the snow down clean it up!”) The Museum of Gramophones was clearly marked and above ground, just off a major thoroughfare, and from the moment I entered it was clear that there was no risk, as with some of my previous research subjects, that I would be invited to consume multiple liters of vodka in the course of my interview. Read More
October 8, 2012 On the Shelf Politics, Nerds, Gunpowder By Sadie Stein Cormac McCarthy’s notes reveal a recipe for gunpowder and a very different Blood Meridian. Goodreads compares the reading habits of Romney and Obama supporters. J. K. Rowling returns to children’s fiction. “Using adverbs is a mortal sin,” and other rules for writing fiction from prominent writers. Ten essential reads for books nerds. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
October 8, 2012 Bulletin Introducing the Paris Review App! By The Paris Review As reported in The New York Times, we’re thrilled to announce the launch of our iPad/iPhone app! On it you’ll find new issues, rare back issues, and archival collections—along with our complete interview series and the Paris Review Daily. And if you download the app by October 21, you’ll receive the current issue, along with an archival issue—Spring 1958, featuring an interview with Ernest Hemingway, early fiction by Philip Roth, and a portfolio by Alberto Giacometti—for free! To current print subscribers: stay tuned! Soon you’ll be granted digital access to any issue covered by your print subscription. Look for an e-mail from us in the next week or two with details on how to set up your account. And to those with Android devices: we hope to have a version for you soon!