April 14, 2011 The Culture Diaries A Week in Culture: John Swansburg, Editor, Part 2 By John Swansburg This is the second installment of Swansburg’s culture diary. Click here to read part 1. DAY FOUR I slip out of the office around noon and walk over to SoHo to check out an exhibition of photographs taken on the Paris Metro by Chris Marker. I am an enthusiastic straphanger—I’m known in the Slate offices as a staunch defender of the MTA—so I was looking forward to seeing Marker’s project, but the photos fail to move me. Marker has captured the drudgery of commuting and the diversity of Paris’s commuters, but the photos are almost uniformly glum; they fail to register the vitality a packed subway car can have. (I’ll never forget the time I saw a guy with Four Quartets and a critical text perched on his lap on a crowded C train. Come on, Marker, where’s the wonder?) A few of the shots juxtapose faces Marker has photographed on the subway with faces from masterpieces of painting. Some of the likenesses are impressive, but it feels like a silly trick; I don’t need to be shown that this woman looks kind of like Mona Lisa to care about her. The Marker exhibition leaves me wanting to see what Bill Cunningham would do with the assignment of spending a week riding New York’s rails. I have dinner at the bustling John Dory Oyster Bar—yes, more oysters, I swear this week is not typical—with my friends from Port Washington, Long Island. Among other things, I’ve learned that citizens of Port Washington harbor ill will toward the neighboring hamlet of Plandome, which, despite its tiny size (population 1,272) and proximity to both the Port Washington and Manhasset stations, for some reason has its own Long Island Rail Road stop, unnecessarily adding two to three minutes to the Port Washingtonian’s commute each morning and evening. Weary passengers have been said to exhibit countenances akin to Munch’s The Scream upon pulling into the Plandome station. Read More
April 13, 2011 The Revel James Salter’s Acceptance Speech By James Salter Photograph by Neil Rasmus. A transcript of last night’s speech. Well of course I knew this was going to happen. Terry McDonell called me and he said, “We would like to give you the Hadada this year,” and I said, “Terry, it might be a better idea to give it to somebody a little younger.” He said, “No, no, no, no, you are missing the point entirely.” It turns out that in the African language from which the word comes, hadada means “Hail, great father.” Ha-da-da. The Paris Review was always the pinnacle, it was the place to be published, you were thrilled if you were published in The Paris Review, and George Plimpton himself was practically mythical. He was a legendary figure. I had written a novel. It was A Sport and a Pastime. And it had been turned down by publishers, four or five of them, and I thought I was probably wrong about it, it was not really any good. And then, through a friend, Bill Becker, it came to The Paris Review. One day the phone rang, and I said “Hello.” And a voice said, “Yes, hello, this is George Plimpton.” He said, “You know, I have your novel, and I really like it, I like it very much. We’d like to publish it.” At that time, The Paris Review had a small book publishing operation, they had published a handful of books. He said, “We’d like to publish it.” I said, “That’s wonderful.” He said, “Yes. But there is just one thing.” “Yes.” He said, “I don’t think that any really good novels are written in the first person.” Of course, my mind went blank. I couldn’t think of anything. I didn’t know what to say to him except, suddenly it occurred to me, a book really far removed from the book we were talking about, that was the only thing I could think of, I said, “Well, what about All Quiet on the Western Front,” and he said, “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” That was the end of the editing. Read More
April 13, 2011 The Revel Robert Redford Presents the Hadada Award By Robert Redford A transcript of last night’s speech. Photograph by Neil Rasmus. When I walked in, a woman came up with a little recorder and she said, “I am really sorry, but can I have a word with you?” And I assumed she was part of the program and so I said—I wanted to be helpful—so I said, “Sure.” And she said, “Just a few words, I just want to talk about [he mumbles into his hand].” And I said, “I’m sorry?” I thought she was saying something important, and I said, “What?” And she said, [he mumbles into his hand], and I said, “I’m really sorry,” and she said, “What do you think about Trump and Huckabee?” And I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” I was so surprised. And she says, “Now, what do you think about Trump running for president?” And I said, “I have absolutely no thought.” I am happy to say that the reason I am here and that you are all here is such a good one, because I am here to dedicate an award to a man who is so deserving of it, and for me to see him come to this place in his life—his life has been so rich and full and varied in so many interesting ways—is truly an honor. And I guess some writers can write and be really flashy and just score big on their first work, and then maybe they fade away after that, maybe that was too much too soon, and other writers just build an aggregate over the years, and they just grind and they develop and they work and they grow, and they grow with time—they were always good, they stayed true to form, true to themselves, true to the form that they developed for themselves. And then they rise up to that point of shining light and that is where Jim is, so I am really happy to be here to support him and his family. Read More
April 13, 2011 The Revel James Salter: “This Is My Stockholm” By Thessaly La Force James Salter accepts the Hadada Prize. Last night, close to five hundred people gathered at Cipriani’s 42nd Street to honor James Salter at our Spring Revel. Robert Redford was there to present the Hadada Prize to Salter. The two have known each other since the sixties, when Salter wrote the screenplay for Downhill Racer. Said Redford at the podium, “I am lucky to be here tonight to honor a man who is my friend and whom I respect deeply.” As Salter took the stage, guests at every table stood up, applauding the author. Salter thanked George Plimpton for publishing his novel A Sport and a Pastime, and as he picked up the statuette he told the crowd, “This is my Stockholm.” Below are some photographs from the night (and go to the Billy Farrell Agency to see more). We’ll be posting Salter’s full speech on The Daily later today. Robert Redford and James Salter. Read More
April 13, 2011 The Culture Diaries A Week in Culture: John Swansburg, Editor By John Swansburg The author radios an Erie Canal bridge operator to request passage for his vessel, Hulberton, NY. DAY ONE Uh, oh. My plan was for this culture diary to culminate six days hence in a cheeky dispatch from Charlie Sheen’s “My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option” tour. I am a ticket holder to his planned stop at the Toyota Presents the Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford, Connecticut. (Syntactically, at least, the event and the venue deserve one another.) But this morning I read A. O. Scott’s devastating report from Sheen’s opening performance, at Detroit’s Fox Theater, and I’m troubled. I’d signed on to see Sheen at the suggestion of two Connecticut-based friends who I don’t see nearly as often as I’d like to. (The three of us have a tradition of dreaming up foolhardy adventures as an excuse to spend time together: A couple of years ago we sailed the Erie Canal from Rochester to Medina, New York, in a vessel with a top speed of six knots per hour, which is about the rate at which an old man jogs. Another recent trip involved us trucking up to Hartford to see what’s left of the Grateful Dead, which is not much.) Of course, I also bought the Sheen ticket because I wanted to see the wreckage up close. Scott’s essay forces me to confront the fact that there’s no way to take in the spectacle without being implicated in its tawdriness: We [in the audience] profess dismay at Mr. Sheen’s long history of drug abuse and violence against women, but we have also enabled and indulged this behavior, and lately encouraged his delusional belief that he could beat the toxic fame machine at its own game. The price of a ticket to one of his shows represents a wager that it is impossible to lose. The audience that walked out of the Fox could feel righteously ripped off and thus morally superior to the man they had paid to see, who seemed to feel the same about them. Win-win! What have I gotten myself into? Read More
April 12, 2011 James Salter Month Solo Faces By J. D. Daniels Our Spring Revel is tonight, April 12. In anticipation of the event, The Daily is featuring a series of essays celebrating James Salter, who is being honored this year with The Paris Review’s Hadada Prize. Imagine: there is a man who likes to climb mountains. It’s the only thing he likes. Of course he likes women, too, but he won’t put them at the center of his life. “I’m not really a great climber,” he says, “I’m not that talented.” He just loves it more than anyone else does, or can. But he isn’t climbing. His name is Vernon Rand, and he’s bumming around, roofing, picking up work out in Los Angeles. And then one day, playing father to his girlfriend’s twelve-year-old son, he encounters his old climbing companion, Jack Cabot. That they are lost brothers is admitted outright, but not that Cabot is Rand’s animating force, prophet, bird or devil, tempter sent. As for Rand, he had had a brilliant start and then defected. Something had weakened in him. That was long ago. He was like an animal that has wintered somewhere, in the shadow of a hedgerow or barn, and one morning, mud-stained and dazed, shakes itself and comes to life. Sitting there [with Cabot], he remembered past days, their glory. He remembered the thrill of height. That’s all it takes, Cabot’s tapping on the door. That in Rand which loves the mountain stirs. There was something he had to tell her. He was leaving, she said. She could hardly hear him. “What?” He repeated it. He was going away. “When?” she asked foolishly. It was all she could manage to say. “Tomorrow.” “Tomorrow,” she said. Read More