March 28, 2012 On the Shelf Thurber Insults and Library Dreams By Sadie Stein A cultural news roundup. Happy seventy-sixth, Mario Vargas Llosa! Muggles get the Harry Potter treatment in Florida. “At Ollivanders, the wand shop, character actors put on a show. With a few dozen people crowded into a room, a bearded wizard proceeds to help a child select a wand. ‘Descendo!’ he cries. Boxes tumble down and the shelves fall apart on cue. It was the wrong wand. ‘Repairo!’ he cries. The shelves put themselves back together. The long-bearded gent eventually gives the girl an Ash wand, ‘an excellent wand for a charismatic, successful wizard.’” You can even read the books! At forty-two, historical novelist Rabee Jaber is the youngest winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. On the plus side, James Thurber wrote back to his fans. “One of the things that discourage us writers is the fact that 90 per cent of you children write wholly, or partly, illiterate letters, carelessly typed. You yourself write ‘clarr’ for ‘class’ and that’s a honey, Robert, since s is next to a, and r is on the line above.” An ode to the thesaurus. How about a little fancy-library porn? (This Johns Hopkins professor totally beats Lagerfeld in the library stakes.) Book origami. Henry James is the most-studied writer. Did it really take this long to make an Art of War graphic novel?
March 28, 2012 Arts & Culture The Grandmaster Hoax By Lincoln Michel In September 2006, the World Chess Championship devolved into a debate about bathrooms. One champion, Veselin Topalov, accused the other, Vladimir Kramnik, of excessive urination, hinting that Kramnik was retreating to the unmonitored bathroom to receive smuggled computer assistance. (Kramnik responded that he merely drank a lot of water.) Kramnik was eventually declared the victor, but to many, the episode displayed the sad state that the grand game had fallen into since Garry Kasparov lost to IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997. Back then, Kasparov was bitter about the loss and accused IBM of cheating—with human intervention, saying that he saw uncanny human intelligence in the computer’s moves. Even that incident, though, was not the first time the line between man and machine had been blurred in the game. The first machine to awe humanity with its chess mastery was the eighteenth-century life-size automaton known as the Turk. Constructed in 1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen to impress Empress Maria Theresa, the Turk appeared as a wooden Oriental sorcerer seated at a large cabinet. Before playing commenced, Kempelen would open the cabinet doors to reveal the clockwork machinery that controlled the Turk. The audience could see that there was nothing else inside. After the doors were closed and a challenger seated, the Turk would come eerily to life. He would move the pieces robotically, but shake his head or tap his hand in human displays of annoyance or pride. He also nearly always won. The Turk became a spectacular attraction, thrilling, baffling, and terrifying viewers across Europe and America for decades. Read More
March 27, 2012 Arts & Culture On Tour with The Magnetic Fields: Part 1 By Emma Straub I’ve worked for the band the Magnetic Fields for the past ten years and have sold their merchandise on every tour since they released i, in 2004. Their latest tour, for their new record, Love at the Bottom of the Sea, began last week, and, as is my wont, I’ve been taking notes. After a warm and fuzzy show in Hudson, New York, the first completely positive experience in Philadelphia in recent memory, and a very quick trip to Minehead, England, for All Tomorrow’s Parties, the Magnetic Fields took the Tour at the Bottom of the Sea to Austin, Texas, for their first-ever appearance at South by Southwest, the juggernaut music festival that turns the entire city into a beer-and-taco-stained pair of jeggings. Half the band and crew flew in from New York, and the other half from Boston, meeting up in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport for the puddle jumper to Austin. We shared the plane with several members of the E Street Band, which made Sam Davol (cello) quiver with excitement. When we landed, the steamy Texas air relaxing our synapses, Sam asked E Street violinist Soozie Tyrell for her autograph, and I made a proclamation: in Austin, I was going to find a) Bruce Springsteen or b) Timmy Riggins, my very favorite fictional character on Friday Night Lights, played by heartthrob and Austin resident Taylor Kitsch. I find that wishes are more likely to come true when spoken aloud. Read More
March 27, 2012 At Work Michael Robbins on ‘Alien vs. Predator’ By Emily Witt Michael Robbins. Reading the poetry of Michael Robbins is kind of like driving around the parkways and frontage roads of America’s suburbs. His poems have a Best Buy, a Red Lobster, a Kinko’s, a Pizza Hut, and a Guitar Center; they reference the slogans of Christian billboards and the bumper stickers of hippies; they offer the choice between Safeway and Whole Foods and between the corporate classic-rock station, the corporate urban-music station, and All Things Considered. The poems are heavy with concern for the elephants, the whales, and the freedom of Tibet. They have a Rhianna song stuck in their heads. Among poets, Robbins follows in the footsteps of Frederick Seidel and Paul Muldoon in writing about contemporary life using more traditional poetic forms and rhyme. He also references and sometimes even quotes Philip Larkin, John Berryman, Theodore Roethke, Wordsworth, and others. But Robbins is more playful and less grandiloquent than his sometimes-grim forefathers: after reading his first book, Alien vs. Predator, the two things I kept thinking of were not poetry at all, but rather the short stories of George Saunders and the video art of Ryan Trecartin. As Saunders did with marketing jargon and Trecartin with reality television, Robbins congeals his suburban idyll, transforming its vacant vernacular into unsettling poignancy. And sometimes it’s even funny. I reached Robbins by phone in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. We spoke the day after Rick Santorum’s victory in that state’s Republican primary. Where are you working right now? I’m a visiting poet at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, which is where I’m staying and just waiting until I get out of this city. You don’t like it? The people are great at the university, my students are great, but Hattiesburg is … it’s just like if you opened a university in a Taco Bell, basically. It’s just the ugliest place I’ve ever seen in my life. Read More
March 27, 2012 Bulletin Adieu, Deirdre; Bienvenue, Sadie By Lorin Stein Sadie Stein. Faithful readers, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is that our senior editor, Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn, is ditching us for Harper’s magazine. It is a grievous blow. During Deirdre’s tenure as editor of the Daily, our readership has doubled and so has the amount we publish. Truly we have grown by leaps and bounds. At Harper’s, Deirdre will oversee the book section—one of the best in the country—so our loss is America’s gain. That, anyway, is our line, and we’re sticking to it. The good news is that our deputy editor, Sadie Stein, has bravely agreed to step into Deirdre’s seven-league boots. You already know Sadie from her groundbreaking reports on wine cake and exotic meats and “the old ‘do I give my crush a sexually explicit book’ conundrum,” not to mention her weekly roundup, On the Shelf. We trust that you will welcome her in her new capacity—effective April 1—and join us in wishing her luck!
March 26, 2012 Bulletin Get Your Paris Review Totes While They Last! By The Paris Review If you’re just joining us, a recap: when you buy or renew a Paris Review subscription, you’ll receive this lovely tote bag, inspired by our Spring cover, all for $40.* Not to mention, four issues of the best fiction, essays, poetry, and interviews. But act fast! This offer expires Wednesday, March 28, at 6 P.M. Paris Review time (which is, confusingly, also Eastern Standard time). In short: order now! And don’t forget your Revel ticket—you only have until the end of the week to reserve a spot at the best party in town. *Canadian and international prices are higher.