July 20, 2011 Arts & Culture Li Bing Bing at High Tea By Claudine Ko Li Bing Bing as Nina/Lily in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Just as high tea was being served at Gordon Ramsay’s Maze restaurant in midtown’s London Hotel last Wednesday, Li Bing Bing was accosted by a group of young fans, cameras in hand. Li, thirty-eight, one of the China’s most famous actresses, was perfectly coiffed, and dressed in skinny black pants, a butterfly-print top and a crisp white blazer with a mandarin collar. Her face gave way to an ever-so-slight sulk as the fans excitedly chatted in their native Mandarin and gathered around. But then the petite actress swept her hand through her hair, rose from her seat and smiled pleasantly for the photo. Li had arrived in town earlier in the week to promote her latest film, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, accompanied by director Wayne Wang, author Lisa See, and producer Florence Sloan. (The latter’s counterpart, producer Wendi Deng Murdoch and wife of Newscorp’s Rupert, was conspicuously absent.) The movie is loosely based on See’s novel, which is set in a remote, nineteenth-century Chinese village and follows the difficult, foot-bound lives of Lily and Snow Flower. The women have been laotong (“same old”)—or, as one might say, BFFs—since meeting at age seven and, when apart, communicate the tales of their lives through written messages using their own made-up language. For those who may have been excited by the trailer, ahem, there is no lesbian sex, nuanced or not. Wang also took substantial artistic license, reimagining the story through a split in time and personality—the modern-day, bustling, city lives of businesswoman Nina (Lily) and writer Sophia (Snow Flower). Read More
July 19, 2011 Nostalgia Paradise Lost By Vanessa Blakeslee Photograph by Little Sophie. Four years ago, I embarked on a relationship with a man twenty years my senior, whose Florida home, a few streets over from my condo, boasted wall-to-wall carpeting with a space-galaxy motif, a vintage circus-sideshow banner in the master bedroom, and a six-foot-tall statue of a gecko dressed as a jester, which overlooked the backyard. My family was reluctantly supportive, in that “you’re our daughter and we love you, even if your choices worry us” manner. I had survived, just barely, one brutal heartbreak after another in my midtwenties. It was refreshing to find someone who embraced the eclectic, rallied friends to swing by for dinner, and appeared with surprise snacks when I was scribbling fiction poolside. But mostly, I felt relieved at finding someone who was nice, a champion of my own long-stifled quirkiness. He had spent eighteen months in federal prison twenty years before, on a fraud felony. Ah, but wasn’t the past just the past? It wasn’t fair to hold a human being to a mistake made so long ago. Didn’t I have my own shameful moments, perhaps not felonies or arrests, but black marks when I had been less than my best self? Don’t we all? In the spirit of loving kindness, as I watched my fiction burst to life under my new love’s backyard Buddhist prayer flags, I dismissed any signs of cautionary red. A mentor of mine calls fiction writers “literary cannibals.” I was having fun, and my writing responded to the offbeat environment of vinyl Jesus figurines embedded with Magic 8 Balls, wind chimes, and the Grateful Dead. Halfway through a grueling semester in a low-residency M.F.A., I had been questioning my ability to master fiction. Now my adviser proclaimed I had achieved a breakthrough—“a talent for inventing loopy comic situations.” Things only seemed to get better. My man and I came up with affectionate names for each other—I was Babette and he was Babu. Real monikers fallen away, the relationship carved its own offbeat identity. Read More
July 18, 2011 Contests William Burroughs Catches Some Rays By Sadie Stein Peter Orlovsky, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs relaxing on the beach. Have we got a contest for you! Break out those Photoshop skills and place your favorite writer on our super-duper Paris Review beach towel for a chance to win exactly this towel! Meta, we know. To enter, join our Flickr group and submit your image to the pool. We’ll share the winning image, along with a couple of our favorites on The Daily by the end of this month. P.S. Don’t do Photoshop? If you’d like to get a beach towel of your own, simply subscribe or renew with our special beach towel offer.
July 18, 2011 At Work Paul Hornschemeier on ‘Life with Mr. Dangerous’ By Nicole Rudick Forlorn Funnies, the title of cartoonist Paul Hornschemeier’s periodical of short prose comics, aptly characterizes all of his work: bleak subjects leavened by drollery and gags reigned-in by finely drawn anxieties. The author of the graphic novels Mother, Come Home (2003) and The Three Paradoxes (2007) and two collections of shorter work, Hornschemeier recently published Life with Mr. Dangerous, a graphic novel he began serializing in Fantagraphics’s comics anthology, Mome, in 2005. The story concluded last winter, and the novel, which tells the story of a young woman adrift in bad relationships and obsessed with a little-known cartoon show, appeared in book form last month. I spoke with Hornschemeier from his home in Evanston, Illinois. The story was serialized in Mome over a period of five years. Was the story whole in your mind when you started, or did you create it as you went along? With most of my stories, I have key scenes in mind and I almost always have the beginning and end done right from the start. With this one, I definitely had key emotional notes I wanted to hit, and I knew how it ended and the set up. But it was strange in that I was both writing it as I was going, and, as it was coming out in Mome, I was going back and editing the story and inserting new pages. So in the book, there are thirty pages that weren’t in the serialized format. What was needed that wasn’t already there? I could see there were beats I hadn’t hit that I wanted to go back and reemphasize, pacing issues and characterization issues that I wanted to resolve. I produced that graphic novel really differently than my other graphic novels. Mother, Come Home was very act 1, act 2, act 3, and they were written very much as acts by themselves. And The Three Paradoxes was as close as possible to what a full screenplay would be, because it was so complex, with interlocking narratives. But this one was just a huge, jumbled mess. Read More
July 15, 2011 This Week’s Reading Staff Picks: Archaeologies of the Future, the Last Live Nude Girls By The Paris Review As a supplement to our science-fiction issue, I’ve been reading Fredric Jameson’s super brainy Archaeologies of the Future, his defense of SF as the last redoubt of utopianism. Jameson also makes some helpful distinctions between SF and fantasy, to the detriment of the latter (a nice antidote to Harry Potter mania). It has brought back memories of many childhood afternoons spent reading Asimov, Le Guin, and Frank Herbert—books I thought I’d forgotten but am happy to rediscover. —Robyn Creswell I’ve been fully immersed in Sheila McClear’s memoir The Last of the Live Nude Girls, about her time spent working in a Times Square peep show—eye-opening, gritty, and compelling. —Sadie Stein The theme of the summer issue of Lapham’s Quarterly is food, and by golly is it delicious! A taste of the issue’s excerpt from Vasari’s Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects: “Andrea presented an octagonal church like San Giovanni, but resting on columns. The pavement was formed of jelly, resembling a variously colored mosaic; the columns, which looked like porphyry, were large sausages; the bases and capitals Parmesan cheese; the cornices were made of pastry and sugar, and the tribunes of quarters of marzipan. In the middle was a choir desk made of cold veal, with a book of lasagna, the letters and notes being formed of peppercorns.” —Clare Fentress Inspired by a book-cover painting by Leanne Shapton, I’ve been reading a vintage Penguin edition of Bonjour Tristesse. If I can’t be in the south of France … —Thessaly La Force I’m contributing from the Palovista Ranch this week, where I’ve been writing but also rereading one of my favorite novels, Blood Meridian and, for the first time, Suttree. As expected, Cormac McCarthy is the perfect companion for long walks around the desert. —Natalie Jacoby If you get a chance to see the documentary Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness, be sure to: it’s not just a portrait of the iconic Yiddish writer but also of a lost world. I found it deeply moving. —S. S. Dani Shapiro on the difference having a child has on a memoirist: “After all, one can’t write with abandon if one is worrying about the consequences. And to have children is to always, always worry about the consequences.” —T. L. I’ve got a girl crush on former Paris Review intern, Believer editor, and author extraordinaire Vendela Vida. Read her Guardian interview on lying, The Lovers, and why she and Dave Eggers don’t linger over dinner. —Mackenzie Beer
July 15, 2011 Ask The Paris Review American Girl; Speed Levitch By Sadie Stein With Lorin in Paris, contributing editor Sadie Stein answered questions for our advice column this week. My ten-year-old daughter is going to drive my family into bankruptcy because of her obsession with everything American Girl: the dolls, the books, the furniture, everything! I’m reluctant to put a limit on her love because it has been getting her excited about reading (even if the books are well … you know). I also think it might be time for her to read something a bit more mature. Can you suggest a cheaper, and perhaps more worthy, literary obsession for my doll-loving daughter? —Marta, Los Angeles Dear Marta, The great thing about the American Girl books (and yes, I have fond memories of Changes for Samantha) is that they do get kids interested in history. And depending on which doll has taken her fancy, your daughter may want to explore “her” era further. You don’t mention a particular obsession, but there’s a terrific body of historical fiction for her age group: a few classic stories she might enjoy—all of which feature young girls, AG-style—are Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, and Sydney Taylor’s “All-of-a-Kind” series. And needless to say, if she’s not yet discovered Laura Ingalls Wilder, she’s in for a treat! I am constantly passing odd courtyards and doors in New York City. A part of me wants to take a walking tour, but every time I see a group in matching T-shirts I get anxious. Can you recommend a good book or Web site about the historical idiosyncrasies of the city? —Cebe Dear Cebe, I am a big fan of Robert Kahn’s “City Secrets” series, which are composed of entries by in-the-know natives, many of them architects and historians. A wonderful free-form guide is Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City, by Michelle and James Navius. And if you’re looking for something a little more idiosyncratic, the interactive WhaiWhai guides have just launched a New York edition, featuring trivia by Timothy “Speed” Levitch of The Cruise fame. All that said, for my money the one really essential text for visitor or native is still Here is New York. Hi Sadie, Are you related to Lorin Stein? Sincerely, APK Dear APK, No. Lorin and I are neither siblings, nor cousins, nor husband and wife. And contrary to what some may have heard, neither of us is related to MCA founder Jules Stein, either. In fact, our families come from different parts of the world. And while we’re on the subject, my surname was changed from Poloiki. That’s a story for another day (involving as it does the czar’s army and a timely adoption), but suffice it to say, the shared surname is pure coincidence. Have a question for The Paris Review? E-mail us.