May 4, 2012 On the Shelf Bacon, Sci-Fi, and Feuds By Sadie Stein The literary feud hall of fame! Ploughshares launches the fascinating First Drafts, in which writers discuss their revision process. Novelist Jane Rogers wins the UK’s science-fiction prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, for The Testament of Jessie Lamb. The future of the e-reader? Neil Gaiman’s reading and listening list. New York’s children’s bookstore Books of Wonder plays host to a bacon bakery.
May 3, 2012 On Television Dear Sally Draper, Maybe Wait a Few Years to Read This By Adam Wilson Dear Sally Draper, You know what’s weird? You could be my mother. I mean, you’re not, obviously. My mom’s a ginger and Jewish, and her sixties childhood was really quite different from yours, what with her not having Don Draper as a dad or Betty as a mom, and her not seeing her step-grandmother go down on Roger Sterling in the back room at an American Cancer Society Benefit. So yeah, sucks to be you. But what if things had gone differently? What if my mom had stayed with that painter who looked like Charles Manson and once punched my grandfather in the face, and my dad had met you instead among the bohemians inhabiting seventies Jerusalem, drinking wine on Old City balconies, discussing poetry and politics, and inhaling the sweetly mingling odors of bellflower and frying falafel? Read More
May 3, 2012 Bulletin PEN Presents: “Reviewing Translations” By Sadie Stein Here at The Paris Review, the art of translation is a subject near and dear to our hearts. Tonight, join Haykanush Avetisyan, Ruth Franklin, Julya Rabinowich, and our very own Lorin Stein as they discuss the tricky business of reviewing translations. To quote the PEN World Voices site, When a translated work is reviewed, what exactly is being critiqued? Is it the work itself or the quality of its translation? How does reviewing a translation differ from reviewing a work in its original language? Should critics be bilingual? Should they be experts in the literature and history of foreign cultures? Cosponsored by the Austrian Cultural Forum, Ledig House, the PEN Translation Committee, the National Book Critics Circle, and the School of Writing at the New School. For details, see the PEN Web site.
May 3, 2012 Bulletin Introducing the 1966 Tee By Sadie Stein In celebration of its two-hundredth issue, The Paris Review is proud to present the Winter 1966 T-shirt. Modeled on a nifty shirt that we discovered on the back cover of issue 36, the design is George Plimpton’s own. As he stated in that ad, it’s “the sort of once in a very rare while shirt that makes an editor proud to do his job.” To celebrate the ’66, we took to the street, asking some New York friends to name their favorite Paris Review authors. In the coming days, watch this space to see their picks. And for a limited time we’re offering a special deal: the T-shirt plus a year’s subscription for $40, giving you access to the greatest writers (and T-shirts!) of today. Printed on American Apparel 50/25/25’s, the shirt comes in men’s (S, M, L) and women’s sizes (M, L). To quote George, we beg you to “share with us the thrill of wearing it.” Offer good for U.S. addresses only.
May 3, 2012 On the Shelf Beautiful Bookshelves, Rule Breaking, and More! By Sadie Stein The Tehran International Book Fair cracks down on “harmful” titles. “Poets break all the rules. When other writers take their photos outdoors, poets stay inside. They’re the only ones who wear hats or leather jackets with nothing underneath.” Target will no longer be in the Kindle business. (A sentence that would have mystified our forebears.) “The passive voice remains an important arrow in the rhetorical quiver. After all, it exists for a reason.” A gallery of beautiful bookshelves.
May 3, 2012 First Person Memories of the Lakeside By Lorin Stein To East Villagers of a certain age, it came as a blow: after sixteen short years on Avenue B, the Lakeside Lounge has closed. For many of us, that bar was like our living room. I don’t mean that my friends and I spent a lot of time there—I mean it was a lot like our apartments. The Steve Keene acrylics on the walls, the mismatched bench and tables, the overflowing ashtrays. The fug. The great advantage of the Lakeside over one’s living room was the music. This isn’t the place to talk about jukeboxes in general, much less the work of art in the age of digital reproduction, but that jukebox was a big deal. I remember making a special trip to the Lakeside one night, alone, in the snow, just to hear “Sitting on Top of the World” as performed by the Mississippi Sheiks. I also remember stopping there for a beer by candlelight the night of the blackout. It was strange to sit there in the silence. Every other night the place was full of music. I never saw Iggy Pop or Dee Dee Ramone at the Lakeside, but I did hear Jason Morphew and the Reachers play whenever they came to town. It was there I first heard that verse, from Geoff Reacher’s “Paranoia Is Fame,” worthy of the Louvin Brothers: Slowly my mind opens more and more And when I’m dead it will be a beautiful flower Blooming, choking out the weeds Photosynthesizing starlight in the garden’s darkest hour The other great attraction of the Lakeside was its photo booth. That machine took magically good photos, photos for the photo averse, as, for example, the poet Frederick Seidel (shown here with my sister, Anna O’Sullivan). One of the pictures was so unflattering, so off-putting, so deeply dour, that Seidel put it on the cover of his collection Ooga-Booga.