December 15, 2011 The Poem Stuck in My Head Frank O’Hara’s “To the Harbormaster” By Olivia Cole Lately I’ve been thinking about Frank O’Hara and his sometimes terrible taste in men. I can’t help but see the painter Larry Rivers as a thoroughly undeserving recipient for one of my favorite poems, O’Hara’s “To the Harbormaster.” The pair’s messy entanglement started (inevitably) at a party, with a drunken kiss and grope behind a curtain. The two were hidden, but O’Hara was wearing his trademark white tennis shoes, and the two pairs of shoes, his and Rivers’s, were in full view of the heaving room. O’Hara’s letters to Rivers maintain that he could take him or leave him, but, like those trainers peeping out from underneath the curtain, the poems rather give the game away. Rivers’s involvement with O’Hara was against his better judgement, and in his autobiography he claims never to have had full sex with a man, a fact that partly explains the poem’s fixation with impossibility and insurmountable distance. Read More
December 15, 2011 Arts & Culture Taylor’s Multitudes By Liz Brown Silvano and I met about ten years ago through mutual friends. I don’t remember the exact shirt he was wearing at the time, but I know it had bright colors and elaborate embroidery. (Later, I learned it came from Alpana Bawa.) Also, he was wearing one dangling, bauble-y earring. Possibly it included a feather. This was at a party where most people worked in publishing, which is to say, he stood apart. Other details I have filed away about Silvano include that in the house he shares with his husband, Craig, there is a shrine to Anna Magnani and a poster from his 1977 campaign for supervisor of Board 5 in San Francisco. In the poster, he wears a one-shouldered top and tights and is beaming, his long arms flung skyward, a look inspired by a Patti Labelle album cover. He was running as the “dada alternative” to Harvey Milk. Also, in Robert Gluck’s novel Jack the Modernist, the narrator goes out to a performance piece in which Silvano appears as “Madame Chiang-Ch’ing.” More recently he got his associate’s degree in accessories at FIT. I knew all this about Silvano, but I didn’t have any idea how much Elizabeth Taylor meant to him. Not even when I met him at his home Sunday morning and he came to the door wearing a purple felt fedora, an iridescent purple mandarin-collared jacket, and purple suede boots. We were on our way to a preview of the Elizabeth Taylor collection being auctioned off this week. Read More
December 14, 2011 In Memoriam George Whitman, 1913–2011 By The Paris Review George Whitman. It is with sadness that we mark the passing of Shakespeare & Co. proprietor George Whitman, a good friend to this magazine and to literature generally. Whitman played host to literary giants and hundreds of itinerant travelers. A living legend and a certified character, he for decades managed to balance the demands of an artistic institution and a popular tourist attraction. He’ll be missed and remembered—as he is in this bittersweet reminiscence by Alexander Nazaryan.
December 14, 2011 Arts & Culture On the Shelf By Sadie Stein A cultural news roundup. Cult author Russell Hoban has died at eighty-six. Just what every child hopes to find under the tree: a Joyce Carol Oates doll. Not so much? How about some grammatical correction? A children’s science book? Or a Vonnegut-inspired tee? (#booknerd) These same people might enjoy an at-home table-reading party. The Utne Reader pulls up stakes for Kansas. Tuck Everlasting: The Musical. Literary novels, the HBO shows. On Joan Didion’s “Oh, wow.” : “Much of the fun in these rather bitchy back-and-forths is seeing literary heavyweights get just this peevish.” Capote in the buff! Pooh’s predecessor!
December 14, 2011 Events John Jeremiah Sullivan Tonight at The Half King! By The Paris Review Photograph by John Taylor. Come listen to John Jeremiah Sullivan read tonight at an event hosted by The New York Times Magazine! We can’t promise James Wood on bongos, but there may be music from Michael Jackson, Axl Rose, Bunny Wailer, or Geeshie Wiley, and there’s sure to be lots of good bourbon-drinking. John Jeremiah SullivanAt The Half KingTonight: Wednesday, December 147:00 P.M.505 West 23rd StNew York, NY 10011
December 14, 2011 Books Vile Bodies, or Bad Sex Virgins By Jonathan Gharraie Hendrick Goltzius, The Fall of Man, 1616, oil on canvas. Courtesy The National Gallery of Art. We have to get our stories straight, she and I, but first we have to get John Updike’s stories straight. I have just bought the Everyman edition of The Maples Stories, and I am trying to describe to my date the arc of the Maples’ marriage and why I think these stories are successfully erotic, how they bring the best out of Updike. I am actually talking about myself, about all the stuff I’ve read, but that’s okay. As last of the male narcissists, Updike would understand. She understands. We are both rehearsing our lines for the evening over a curry somewhere in North London. It is exceptionally, reproachfully cold, and neither of us feels particularly well-equipped to withstand the inclement weather. My shirt makes me look like a Bond villain and feels like a rumpled parachute. The curry is the wrong kind of hot. She asks the most difficult question of all. “How are you going to pass me off?” I struggle to reply. She is both my date and not my date. She is the girlfriend of an old friend, and I have been instructed to show her a good time, in return for temporary London accommodation. I am being conspicuously trusted. We are getting to know each other, having only met twice before tonight, but I must be very transparent because she quickly settles on an apt description of our relationship. “I know,” she says, patting me gently on the arm, “we’ll say I’m your chaperone.” She makes me sound like a debutante and, in a sense, this is accurate. This is the first time I have attended the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards, but the same is true for her. Read More