February 1, 2018 Arts & Culture The Art of Unpacking a Library By Alberto Manguel The home library of William Randolph Hearst. I would argue that public libraries, holding both virtual and material texts, are an essential instrument to counter loneliness. I would defend their place as society’s memory and experience. I would say that without public libraries, and without a conscious understanding of their role, a society of the written word is doomed to oblivion. I realize how petty, how egotistical it seems, this longing to own the books I borrow. I believe that theft is reprehensible, and yet countless times I’ve had to dredge up all the moral stamina I could find not to pocket a desired volume. Polonius echoed my thoughts precisely when he told his son, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” My own library carried this reminder clearly posted. I love public libraries, and they are the first places I visit whenever I’m in a city I don’t know. But I can work happily only in my own private library, with my own books—or, rather, with the books I know to be mine. Maybe there’s a certain ancient fidelity in this, a sort of curmudgeonly domesticity, a more conservative trait in my nature than my anarchic youth would have ever admitted. My library was my tortoise shell. Read More
February 1, 2018 In Memoriam Raising a Glass to Fred Bass, the Strand’s Iconic Owner By Brian Ransom Fred Bass with an oil painting of himself painted by artist Max Ferguson. This past Friday, a hundred or so people milled about the second floor of the Strand sipping wine, picking at cheese platters, and talking about death. A celebration of the life of Strand Book Store owner Fred Bass, who passed away earlier this month at eighty-nine, was scheduled to begin in a few moments, but the death on everyone’s lips was not Fred’s. Instead, the chatter concerned the loss of two other New York City staples: the Lower East Side movie theater Landmark Sunshine Cinema had closed that past Sunday, and farther uptown, Lincoln Plaza Cinema was slated to shutter at the end of the month. That the Strand is still standing seems almost a miracle. It has endured nine decades of metropolitan metamorphosis and been passed down through three generations of Bass owners. Of its peers on Book Row—a cutesy nickname for the cluster of used bookstores along Fourth Avenue in the twentieth century—the Strand is the lone survivor. Perhaps one element of its longevity was Fred himself, the tireless figurehead, who one employee described as “not just the Strand’s brain but also its heart and soul.” Photos of Fred topped the display tables. Some of them showed him bouncing a kid on his knee, or grinning with his arm around a fellow soldier during his two-year stint in the army, but many depicted him hard at work. Fred got his start at the Strand at thirteen years old, sweeping the floors of what was then his father’s store. Nancy Bass Wyden, Fred’s daughter and successor, told me later that her father had usually worked ten hours a day, six days a week, for most of his life. “I want to stop,” he would say with a wink, “but my daughter will not fire me.” Legend has it that Fred was buried at sea in a vintage red Strand sweatshirt. Read More
February 1, 2018 Arts & Culture A Darker Canvas: Tattoos and the Black Body By Bryan Washington One time in New Orleans, during an annual music festival organized by Essence magazine, a lady flagged me down from her car. I was walking through the French Quarter. The air was sufficiently drenched. In a neighborhood that has been steadily losing black folks, the block was suddenly full of us—glowing in bright clothes, and laughing entirely too loud. But this woman was pretty pissed. When I reached her window, she gave me another nod. She squinted at my tattoos, and asked where the nearest parlor was. “But one for us,” she said. “I’ve already been to four today.” I pointed her to a guy I knew, up the road and around the corner. When she asked if he was black, I winced, because he was not. “He’s good though,” I said. “I mean it. He’s done me twice.” The lady looked deeply skeptical. But then she said, “Okay.” “Listen,” she continued. “I don’t know about that. But I’m going to trust you.” Read More
January 31, 2018 Look Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele in Conversation By Katie Hanson Left: detail from Two Studies for a Skeleton by Gustave Klimt; Right: detail from The Pacer by Egon Schiele The year 2018 marks the centenary of the deaths of the Austrian artists Gustav Klimt (born in 1862) and Egon Schiele (born in 1890). Even after a hundred years, their drawings have a compelling immediacy, a sense of energy and presence, of searching and questioning, that still feels fresh. Both artists welcomed deep engagement with their art, a kind of looking that encompassed feeling and seeking. Klimt was nearly thirty years Schiele’s senior, and the younger artist looked up to him, but their admiration and recognition of artistic skill were mutual. When Schiele asked Klimt if he was talented, Klimt replied, “Talented? Much too much.” Schiele proposed an exchange of drawings, offering several of his own sheets for one by Klimt, to which Klimt responded, “Why do you want to exchange with me? You draw better than I do.” Schiele was proud when his work was exhibited opposite Klimt’s in Berlin in 1916. Just a couple years later, upon Klimt’s death, Schiele wrote, “An unbelievably accomplished artist—a man of rare depth—his work a sanctuary.” Read More
January 31, 2018 Department of Tomfoolery Paris, Reviewed By Rosa Rankin-Gee Real life reviews from the City of Light, compiled from TripAdvisor.com Musee d’Orsay MUSÉE D’ORSAY Not worth unless you are into art Only go if you are interested in art history. I love history, but I couldn’t stay here for more than an hour, as its pictures doesn’t make sense to me. EIFFEL TOWER Very not good! We expect from the Eiffel Tower something romantic. But we got—very not good and not clean around the Eiffel Tower! At night you can’t see the city of Paris because there is not enough lighting!!! After visiting the Eiffel Tower, NO body helped us to find the way to go down!!! Read More
January 31, 2018 Arts & Culture The Baby, the Book, and the Bathwater By Heather Abel On female ambition and what gets thrown out. Robert Louis Stevenson’s baby book. Around halfway through writing my novel, I read a book that nearly derailed me. As any writer knows, reading while writing is always a risky pursuit. Cadences are easily stolen; we find ourselves singing a lullaby we don’t remember being sung to us. But there’s something worse than a book that turns us into magpies and mimics: one that squelches our very desire to write. The book that had this censoring effect on me was called, both innocuously and officially, The Baby Book. It was the first book I read after giving birth for the first time, as sleep-deprived and receptive as any cult joiner. I had not read about baby care during my first pregnancy, which ended after eleven weeks, or during the second. Due to an autoimmune illness that could compromise my ability to carry a baby to term, as well as my family’s Judeo-magical thinking that links stillbirths to positive thoughts, I refused to imagine anything beyond the birth. But once my own child emerged, gorgeous and awake, a heart beating beneath her thin skin, I was at a loss. I turned to the book all my friends recommended. Read More