August 22, 2012 Arts & Culture Books and Bodies: On Organs and Literary Estates By Casey N. Cep The New Yorker made headlines this month by publishing “new” work by F. Scott Fitzgerald. “Thank You for the Light” had been rejected by the magazine in 1936 when Fitzgerald first submitted it, but editorial judgments—like love, pain, and kitchen knives—have a way of dulling over time. “We’re afraid that this Fitzgerald story is altogether out of the question,” read the original note spurning the story. “It seems to us so curious and so unlike the kind of thing we associate with him, and really too fantastic.” Resubmitted by Fitzgerald’s grandchildren, “Thank You for the Light” was, at least by Fitzgerald’s own standards, ready for publication. Its condition differs greatly from his final work, tentatively titled The Love of the Last Tycoon but published as The Last Tycoon in 1941. Fitzgerald died of a heart attack before he could finish the novel, so what went to press was a version of his incomplete draft, notes, and outlines pieced together by the literary critic Edmund Wilson. In his preface to the novel, Wilson wrote, “It has been possible to supplement this unfinished draft with an outline of the rest of the story as Fitzgerald intended to develop it.” Read More
August 22, 2012 First Person Letter from India: The Permit, Part 3 By Amie Barrodale The story so far: Clancy and Amie continue to struggle to obtain the elusive permit that will allow them to find accommodation in a remote mountain area. We stayed one night in McLeod Gange. It might be called the woo-woo capital of the world. Woo-woos everywhere—frustrated, blissed out, on drugs—unwashed woo-woo land, with lots of coffee shops. In the morning, we passed a black street dog with white paws. He limped on a hind leg. Clancy said, “Hey, White Socks, how’s it going?” Read More
August 22, 2012 On the Shelf My Little Pony, Typography Humor By Sadie Stein “What did the horse say to Bordeaux?” Typographic humor. Bravery, boldness, folly: six insane acts of writing. (Some more literally so than others.) “I took little snippets of text and ideas from some of my favorite authors, and let the words be a springboard for an illustration. The illustrations incorporate and interact with the text and hopefully add up to something that engages the mind as much as the eye.” “Twilight’s libraries are profoundly disorganized.” A human librarian gives a professional critique to Ponyville’s My Little Pony librarian, Twilight Sparkle. Nothing you didn’t already know: books can indeed treat depression and anxiety. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
August 21, 2012 In Memoriam Prabuddha Dasgupta, 1956–2012 By Sadie Stein We were saddened to hear of the death of legendary Indian photographer Prabuddha Dasgupta last week at fifty-eight. As Geoff Dyer wrote in issue 200, with Dasgupta’s work, “we are in the realm of dreams and memories—exactly whose is never clear.” Pause Play Play Prev | Next [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
August 21, 2012 First Person Letter from India: The Permit, Part 2 By Amie Barrodale The story so far: Amie and Clancy find themselves stranded in a remote area, in need of a permit before they will be allowed to stay anywhere. The next day, as we were heading out to get a car, Tenzin, the proprietor of the guesthouse, stopped us and explained that it might take us two or three days to get the permit. He suggested we pack our room, offering to sell it while we stayed in Dharamsala. He said, also, that we could stay until August 6—we could stay as long as we liked. “I can shuffle rooms around,” he said once, and then later, “We have had a cancellation.” Still later he added, “You will have to change rooms, but your new room will be just as nice.” We shrugged our shoulders. So long as we had a room. In Dharamsala, we were directed to “District Commissioner” office 111. We poked our heads into a medium-size room shared by four men. Their desks were piled high with manila folders tied together with tennis-shoe laces. We said, “Protected area pass?” in a tone that suggested we might be arrested for asking the question. The administrators reacted as any American in her office might, should an Indian couple poke its head in and say three words in Hindi. Read More
August 21, 2012 On the Shelf Vintage Ads, New Appeals By Sadie Stein Book sculptures by Kelly Campbell. “I’d been accustomed to write about the old vanished world with its homes and its family life and its comparative peace. All of that went. And though I can think about it I cannot put it into fiction form.” A 1958 film of E. M. Forster in which the author talks about why he stopped writing novels. We have a soft spot for the READ posters, peopled with unlikely celebrities, found in the children’s room of every eighties library, but these are arguably more attractive! “Obviously, one must not take this article’s title too literally. Nor should it be read as anything more or anything less than purely subjective musings in no particular order.” Fifty Books That Will Make You a Better Writer. “A Masterpiece Has Happened!” (Can a masterpiece happen? We defer to the publishers of Of Mice and Men.) A list of classic book ads. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]