January 14, 2011 Look Holding Patterns By Nathan Harger Nathan Harger, Untitled (Holding Patterns), Brooklyn, New York This the graphic answer to living in a city like New York. It’s an environment where I see the same objects and structures repeating themselves everywhere: They are somewhat different, yet still they look interchangeable. Read More
January 14, 2011 Ask The Paris Review Excellent Dialogue; A Dubious Seduction Strategy By Lorin Stein I would love to read a book with really excellent dialogue (as in, clever but recognizable as spontaneous human speech). I feel that reading good dialogue will both make me a better conversationalist and save me a lot of head banging in my living room. (The most recent occasion for self-abuse: “‘I think I’ll go to the store now,’ she said, ‘I’d like some whole-wheat crackers.’”) —Anonymous Good dialogue has never saved anyone from either head banging or self-abuse, as far as I know. If anything, I think, good dialogue tends to teach us how little it resembles real speech. Real speech deals with whole-wheat crackers. That’s what it’s for. Dialogue deals with whole-wheat crackers only if those crackers tell a secret—if they reveal something about the character speaking. In this sense, dialogue is closer to lyric poetry than it is to expository prose. It does more work in less space, and it tends to deal in repressed or unconscious knowledge. Since readers of “Ask The Paris Review” are probably tired of seeing me recommend the novels of Henry Green, I suggest Philip Roth’s Deception, anything by Richard Price or Virginia Woolf or the great pioneer of dialogue, Jane Austen (yes, she depresses me, but she uncovered the possibilities of the form), or Ivy Compton-Burnett or Don DeLillo or Ann Beattie or Raymond Carver or Elmore Leonard or Eudora Welty … The fact is, most great writers have great ears. We may not think of Henry James as a master of dialogue, but his novels nearly always turn on the ambiguities of invented speech. And this tends to be the case. Read More
January 14, 2011 This Week’s Reading Staff Picks: Faust, Ibsen, and Bananas By The Paris Review I’m reading Randall Jarrell’s translation of Goethe’s Faust, for no better reason than that I found a good used copy while browsing at the Strand. Jarrell died before he could finish part I—at times the verse is a little rough—but Robert Lowell stepped in to translate Gretchen’s famous Spinning Song, which now reads, very movingly, like an elegy for his friend: “My peace is gone, / My heart is sore, / I never find it, / I never find it. // When I look through my window, / I look for him. / When I leave the house, / I go on looking.//…If only I could / Catch him and hold him.” —Robyn Creswell I saw Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman on Tuesday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Ben Bratley describes James Macdonald’s “thaw-proof” production as having a “sense-numbing wintriness” to it. I loved the sight of Lindsay Duncan, Alan Rickman, and Fiona Shaw standing amid large banks of snow on stage. A small blizzard descended on New York that evening, and when I exited the theater, snow was falling heavily. For a brief moment, it felt as if I hadn’t yet left the play. —Thessaly La Force The box set of Sandy Denny’s complete recordings are an imposing introduction to one of the most indelible voices of the last fifty years. Fortunately, Rob Young is at hand to steer a course through her work. Denny’s rich and allusive personal mythology—which draws upon maritime literature, pre-Raphaelite poetry, and English classical music—has been a major influence on artists like Kate Bush and Joanna Newsom. Head straight for “All Our Days,” “an eight minute mini-cantata with chords streaking like shafts of sunlight stabbing through clouds, and the alien ripple of a vibraphone recalling the mystical opening of [Vaughan Williams’s] Eighth Symphony.” —Jonathan Gharraie Read More
January 14, 2011 On Television Things Change By Josh MacIvor-Andersen The final installment of a five-part story. Read part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4. The author in his backyard, alongside his head shots from his teenage years. Sometimes my friends tell me I should get high and go on TV. They say it might blow my mind—to reach a twisted reality as I act out a fake me on a made-up television set, looking through altered eyes into a camera that projects me through little boxes into living rooms all over Nashville. “It’d be a crazy trip, man.” “Too crazy,” I say. “I don’t think I could handle it.” I’m content to get high quietly, mostly alone. Lots of my friends are in it for the party, to take their acid and lose their clothes, run around like rednecks, doing cartwheels and staring at tracers. But I try to take it seriously. I read a little Timothy Leary, feel like I’m some psychedelic pioneer working through important, meaningful, universal things in my own spinning mind. I feel, in fact, like I’m finally reaching the real me, walking through the wardrobe and discovering the acid-drenched Narnia that was there all along. Some nights I feel like I might be the king of the whole damn place. It’s just that the paranoia grows, too. Everywhere I go, every gas station or shopping mall or skate park, people start whispering, “Hey, that’s the Kids Club dude.” I’m never sure if they’ll want to fist fight or ask for my autograph. I project a vivacious, wholesome, ridiculous me to a few hundred thousand viewers every day. And as soon as the cameras click off, I use my earnings to buy a hundred, a thousand chemical portals, highs and trips and all kinds of pills to creep further and further into myself—to the only place where I can close my eyes and feel peace. Read More
January 13, 2011 The Culture Diaries A Week in Culture: Jonathan Lippincott, Designer, Part 2 By Jonathan Lippincott This is the second installment of Lippincott’s culture diary. Click here to read part 1. DAY FOUR 11:30 A.M. Start reading the manuscript of Amy Waldman’s The Submission, a novel we are publishing this summer, and get pulled right in. This is still the most exciting part of the job, even after all these years—being one of the first readers of something that is really good. The story takes place a couple of years after the September 11 attacks, and is about a committee chosen to select a memorial for ground zero. In the opening chapter the committee is having its final meeting, there is a lot of arguing back and forth, a decision is finally reached, the anonymous entry opened, and it turns out the artist is Muslim. Chaos ensues. Read through lunch, and then have to get on to other projects. 6:30 P.M. Opening for a show of new work by Sarah Brenneman at the Jeff Bailey Gallery. This is the third show of her paintings that I have seen, and it is interesting to see how an artist’s work evolves over time. The paintings are done in watercolor, sometimes also with pencil and gouache. I was always struck by her beautiful sense of color and pattern, and now elements of the paintings are cut out and collaged elements are added, making an even more animated image. A very strong show. Catch up with a few friends, and then head out to dinner. 7:45 P.M. Dinner with our friend Peter, whom we haven’t seen in quite a while. We have a great time catching up, talking about recent books and less recent movies. Duck Soup, Pennies from Heaven and Bay of Angels need to be added to the Netflix queue. Today’s photos: Read More
January 13, 2011 On Television The Day I Met Hillbilly Jim By Josh MacIvor-Andersen Part four of a five-part story. Read part 1, part 2, and part 3. A young Josh meets Hillbilly. Hillbilly Jim lumbers into the studio wearing sunglasses. I am on time this time. Early, even. Because I’ve been briefed I say, “Hi Mr. Morris. I’m Josh.” His hand engulfs mine, pumps up and down. He is massive. Six-foot-seven, broad shouldered, and suspiciously orange. “Howdy,” he says. “Good to meetcha.” I am meeting Hillbilly Jim. This is real. I have note cards to tell me which questions I’m supposed to ask. They are stacked up in my hand, which is sweating profusely. Hillbilly Jim has lost his shirt and is now clothed simply in denim overalls. He sits in a folding chair in front of me. There are lights all around, heat slapping us from a hundred directions, illuminating our faces, Hillbilly’s unnaturally tan, mine ghost white beneath all the makeup. Action! Read More