June 4, 2018 Arts & Culture Joan Quigley, Ronald Reagan’s Guide to the Stars By Jessica Weisberg “Virtually every major move and decision the Reagans made during my time as White House Chief of Staff was cleared in advance with this woman in San Francisco who drew up horoscopes to make certain that the planets were in a favorable alignment for the enterprise,” writes Don Regan, President Reagan’s chief of staff, in his memoir, For the Record. Regan kept a color-coded calendar on his desk, with “good” days highlighted in green and “bad” days highlighted in red. Here’s the calendar for the first few months of 1986: Jan 16–23 very bad Jan 20 nothing outside the WH—possible attempt Feb 20–26 be careful March 7–14 bad period March 10–14 no outside activity March 16 very bad March 21 no March 27 no March 12–19 no trips exposure March 19–25 no public exposure April 1 careful April 11 careful April 17 careful April 21–28 stay home Read More
June 1, 2018 This Week’s Reading Staff Picks: Utopia, Lapsed Christians, and Artificial Intelligence By The Paris Review It may be the humidity this week, but I’ve felt as though in a fever dream while reading R. O. Kwon’s remarkable novel, The Incendiaries. Every page blooms with sensuous language—“paper-lantern strings pearled the lawn”; “plates leaped from the shelves, white fragments like giant teeth gnashing toward us”; “lawns floated wide, like magic carpets”—and the book’s mood is otherworldly, even if its setting, a wealthy college in the Northeast, isn’t. Chapters are distributed among three characters: Will Kendall, a scholarship student and lapsed Christian; Phoebe, a wealthy student guilt-ridden over her mother’s death; and John Leal, a would-be cult leader. Each plays out a different form of fanaticism, one no less dangerous than another, and Kwon weaves her characters’ lives together with one hand while unraveling them with the other. These are characters in quiet crisis, burning, above all, to know themselves, and Kwon leads them, confidently, to an enthralling end. —Nicole Rudick Read More
June 1, 2018 Humor Abridged Classics By John Atkinson John Atkinson has illustrated and summarized the books you don’t want to read but nevertheless feel you should. Read More
June 1, 2018 On Music Lonesome Together By Drew Bratcher On YouTube exists a rare video of Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson performing the song “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” The segment, which was taped in Los Angeles as part of a 1978 prime-time special, made for a very public reunion—it had been nine years since Cash first performed Kristofferson’s song on The Johnny Cash Show, his short-lived TV variety program featuring rock, blues, and folk singers alongside the Grand Ole Opry crowd. The original performance had been controversial. Cash’s producers, anticipating blowback from the song’s references to drug use, had asked him to switch the chorus from “On a Sunday morning sidewalk / I’m wishing, Lord, that I was stoned” to “On a Sunday morning sidewalk / I’m wishing, Lord, that I was home.” Cash said he’d give it some thought, but when the time came, he delivered the lines as is, putting the weight of his quavering bass-baritone behind a lyric that was at once a provocation (drugs were a Nashville taboo) and a personal confession (Cash really was hooked on pills). A live recording of the performance was released to country radio and quickly ran up the charts, eventually winning the 1970 CMA Award for Song of the Year. Read More
May 31, 2018 At Work Carnival and Chaos: An Interview with Herbert Gold By Robert Kaiser Herbert Gold, now ninety-four and still clacking away on his Royal typewriter, was once a famous author. His most successful novel, Fathers, was admired by critics and read widely: it was a best seller for many weeks in 1967. In the New York Times, Eliot Fremont-Smith called it a “beautiful … book, the best and most deeply felt that this talented, sensitive and dispassionate author has yet produced.” It was Gold’s seventh published volume of fiction; there would be nearly twenty more, plus six books of nonfiction. Saul Bellow was a personal friend and an admirer; he published short stories by Gold in his magazine, The Noble Savage. Vladimir Nabokov put one of Gold’s stories, “Death in Miami Beach,” on his personal list of favorite American short stories. When the success of Lolita allowed Nabokov to give up academia to write full-time, he chose Gold to succeed him as a lecturer on Russian literature at Cornell; and in 1967, Gold interviewed Nabokov for The Paris Review. Gold was neither as successful nor as famous as many of the Jewish American writers of his generation, but he was no slouch. He’s left his mark on twentieth-century American literature, even if he rarely made a splash, and has lived as a writer for nearly seven decades, outliving many of his contemporaries. He knows that his end is nigh, but he’s in no hurry to leave. He has been writing poems for the first time in decades, and has a new collection of verse called Nearing the Exit. An interview with Gold is challenging because—despite his remarkably good health—he is nearly deaf. This interview took place in Gold’s rent-controlled apartment on Broadway, near the top of Russian Hill, in San Francisco, where he has lived for half a century. It’s a quiet spot with a glorious view of the Bay Bridge. Gold won’t say exactly how much rent he pays but admits that it’s less than a thousand dollars a month, surely one of the best housing deals in the city, and a fitting spot for telling the stories he’s been telling for most of a century. Read More
May 31, 2018 Poetry Rx Poetry Rx: I Wish You a Tongue Scalded by Tea By Sarah Kay In our column Poetry Rx, readers write in with a specific emotion, and our resident poets—Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz—take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. This week, Sarah Kay is on the line. Original illustration by Ellis Rosen. Dear Poets, I have never felt this way about anyone before. At first, I didn’t understand what I was feeling, but I’m sure of it now. I have fallen in hate with someone. He hurt my friend, who loves him, and she’s still with him. I don’t wish him any pain, but I want him to cease being a threat to my friend’s happiness. It has taken up residence in my heart, and it feels like poison. Poets, this is the first time I have loathed someone, and I don’t know how I can go on like this. I was going to ask if you had any poems for hatred, but perhaps my real need is for a poem for unearned forgiveness. Sincerely, First Hate Dear First Hate, I don’t know if you inhabit the same corner of the Internet that I do, but my corner has been abuzz this week with new diss tracks flying between prominent rappers. In light of these diss tracks, some conversation has turned toward people’s favorite diss tracks of all time. The responses have been delightful and surprising, including “Be Prepared,” by Scar, in The Lion King, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” and “The Last Midnight” from Into the Woods. So while I am definitely not delighted to hear that your friend has been hurt, I am just a little bit delighted by your letter, because it gives me an excuse to share one of my favorite diss tracks of all time, the poem “Grief, Not Guilt” by Jeanann Verlee. In it, Verlee writes: I wish you a tongue scalded by tea. A hangover. Burnt toast. Stubbed toes. A lost job. I wish you weeping in the shower. Salt in the sugar bowl. A wish list of sorrows. Grief, not guilt. The list of hexes continues, ranging from the almost funny (“flat tires, soggy pasta, a tax audit to fail”) to the truly haunting (“a room wallpapered with my photographs. / A chamber filled with empty bassinets”). The poem is so dexterous that even without details, we readers are still left suspecting that whomever this poem is directed toward must have done something truly horrible to earn such wrath. Our empathy never leaves the narrator. Such a poem feels cathartic to me. Sometimes having someone else’s diss track to listen to and sing along with is a way to force some loathing to exit my body so it doesn’t poison me with bitterness. I hope this poem gives you a thrill and maybe a laugh and maybe a place to pour some vicarious loathing into. Because then you do not need to actually wish bad things upon this specific man. Because the trap is that if you really do wish horrible things on the man who hurt your friend, the risk is that they might come true. And if your friend is the kindhearted person I suspect she is, she might feel inclined to tend to all his new hurts and misfortunes. Instead, know that the universe keeps track of the miseries we inflict on others. Don’t worry about him getting his. Worry about being a fierce protector of your friend’s heart, as you already are. In the meantime, start collecting great diss tracks to sing along to, for when you really need to let off some steam. When she’s ready to see him plainly, in her own time, you’ll be ready. With a playlist. —S. K. Read More