October 27, 2011 Arts & Culture The Poet’s Poker By David Zax Photograph by Tiago Daniel. For Rita Dove, it was an unusual Saturday. It began ordinarily enough: Dove had spent the afternoon at the Academy of American Poets, where she is one of fifteen “chancellors.” By 8 P.M., though, the day had taken a strange turn, and Dove, who is fifty-nine, found herself in the basement of the Chinatown Brasserie, sitting in a recessed booth illumined by a red lantern, looking out over five poker tables ringed with players who had each paid $1,500 just for the privilege to sit there. “I’m terrified of those tables,” she said. Even so, she added, referring to poets, “We’re supposed to be open to new experiences, so here I am.” She was by no means the only noteworthy author present. At one table sat the novelist Walter Kirn; at another, the comedian, writer, art collector, and banjoist Steve Martin; at a third, the novelist Amy Tan, the evening’s host. Her invitation to the poker tournament had begun, “This may be one of the most unusual dinner invitations you’ll ever receive.” Read More
October 26, 2011 Bulletin On the Shelf By Sadie Stein A cultural news roundup. Whiting winners have been announced. A Shakespeare organization defends the Bard’s honor against the slander of Anonymous. After all, “With its portrayal of William Shakespeare as a drunken buffoon who could hardly read, let alone write some of the finest poetry in the English language, Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous was unlikely to be popular with the Stratford set.” Ditto Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing. We imagine Melville fans will be wary of Moby-Dick in space, too. Speaking of Moby-Dick … Here’s one for purists: Tolkien’s original Hobbit illustrations. A Harold Pinter sketch has been rediscovered. Ditto a forgotten O’Neill one-act. Protest for tots. Archimedes’s brain. Tintin’s long shadow. Authors’ heavy beards. “From the moment Ron Shaoul took it upon himself to investigate the practice of reading on the toilet, scouring medical literature and turning up nothing of note as to its public health consequences, the situation became clear that here, on his hands, was a big job.” Writers for the 99 percent. Booksellers, spies … two sides of the same coin!
October 26, 2011 First Person Part 3: The Departure By Mark Van de Walle Poolside at the Beat Hotel. Photograph by Michael Childers. A story in three parts. Previously: Part 1, The Amanuensis, and Part 2, The Offer. After two months of twelve- to sixteen-hour days, and six-and-a-half-day weeks, I began to realize I’d misread the signs that led me to the Beat Hotel. The caretaker’s house did have the advertised citrus trees, pool, fireplace and view, and the Camaro—glowing, golden—was there, too. But I hadn’t spent a single night in the house. Instead, I collapsed in a room at the Beat, got up early and went back to work. The Camaro stayed in the driveway. Worse, my fantasy about living the writer’s life in the desert was precisely that: I hadn’t written a single page. Instead of breaking my writer’s block, Steve entombed it beneath an endless, proliferating series of tasks. Read More
October 25, 2011 First Person Part 2: The Offer By Mark Van de Walle Steve Lowe and the Mugwump. Photograph by Michael Childers. A story in three parts. Previously: Part 1, The Amanuensis. I met Steve the first time I stayed at the Lautner Motel, in August of 2000. I was in California to do research for a book about trailer parks, and there was an anarchist trailer park, a place called Slab City, in an abandoned military base about sixty miles south of Desert Hot Springs. I’d brought my girlfriend and wanted to stay somewhere nice to make up for the 120-degree temperatures, so we wound up at the Lautner. It was late when we finally arrived, but almost as soon as we’d gone inside and put our luggage down, Steve knocked on the door. Read More
October 25, 2011 Video & Multimedia Reading in Bed with James Franco By The Paris Review The other night James Franco curled up with Amie Barrodale’s story “William Wei,” from issue 197. Then he sent us the tape. Click here for the finished, cleaned-up audio version. Click here for the video: Click here to buy the issue. Stay tuned for more dramatic readings by fans of The Paris Review.
October 25, 2011 At Work Anne Enright on ‘The Forgotten Waltz’ By Miranda Popkey The writer Anne Enright, a native of Ireland, is perhaps best known for her 2007 Booker Prize winning novel The Gathering, a darkly beautiful novel about a family gathering in the wake of a suicide. In The Forgotten Waltz, her fifth novel and her first since winning the Booker, she takes up a seemingly more mundane plot: that of adulterous love. Gina, married to Conor, narrates her affair with Séan—himself married and father to a troubled daughter, Evie—which comes to a head as Ireland’s economy collapses. It’s an affair whose outcome is known from almost the very first pages, and Enright is not interested in judging Gina or Séan—Gina believes, ultimately, that there is nothing to forgive and, if Enright does not agree with her outright, she makes Gina a sympathetic enough character that it is possible for the reader to do so. The considerable narrative pleasures of this novel lie in Enright’s luminous language, as she sketches Gina’s attempts to figure out what happened and how and why. The author, who has a quick wit and a hearty laugh, as well as a refreshingly no-nonsense attitude, spoke to me recently from the West Coast, where she was on book tour. Read More