February 17, 2016 Look Unexpected Eisenstein By Rob Sharp Sergei Eisenstein, Set design for act 3 of Heartbreak House (unrealized), 1922, paper, pencil, ink and watercolor on paper. ©Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Moscow In November 1929, the thirty-one-year-old Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was the world’s most notorious film director. Four years earlier, Battleship Potemkin, his euphorically reviewed, highly influential tour de force about mutiny on the eponymous naval vessel, had brought him both acclaim and infamy. Infected with wanderlust, Eisenstein won permission from Stalin to leave Russia on a short research trip. He took off in August 1929, with twenty-five dollars in his pocket. He returned home, reluctantly, just under three years later. During the ensuing whirlwind—to Berlin, Paris, London, then on to Hollywood—Eisenstein met with the world’s leading intellectuals, actors, and avant-garde artists: James Joyce, Jean Cocteau and Robert Desnos in France, George Bancroft in Germany, Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper in the United States. His grand tour often gets overshadowed by his disastrous film collaboration in Mexico with the novelist Upton Sinclair—framed in Peter Greenaway’s 2015 movie Eisenstein in Guanajuato—but British culture was a significant and often neglected long-term source of interest. Read More
February 17, 2016 On the Shelf Fun in Hell, and Other News By Sadie Stein From the cover of Maigret Hesitates, by George Simenon. It is possible that Radiohead was inspired by William Blake in the writing of OK Computer. It is probable that Thom Yorke donated a copy of Songs of Innocence to a local Oxfam thrift store and it had “Airbag” lyrics in it. Either way: good score. Ruth Goodman, who lately taught us how to be Victorian, has undertaken Tudor living for her new book—including hygiene. In the interests of verisimilitude, she duly avoided unwholesome baths and donned linen underthings. The results? “No one noticed! It helps, of course, if you wear natural-fibre clothes over the top of your linen underwear. I used a fine linen smock, over which I could wear a modern skirt and top without looking odd, and I wore a pair of fine linen hose beneath a nice thick pair of woollen opaque tights (these, of course, did contain a little elastane). I changed the smock and hose daily and rubbed myself down with a linen cloth in the evening before bed, and I took neither shower nor bath for the entire period. I remained remarkably smell-free—even my feet. My skin also stayed in good condition—better than usual, in fact. This, then, was the level of hygiene that a wealthy person could achieve if they wished: one that could pass unnoticed in modern society.” Georges Simenon: enigmatic, prolific, and seemingly nihilistic. But was the creator of Maigret as grim as all that? Writes John Gray, “It is true that he holds out no prospect of redemption, whether for his characters or for humankind. Yet there is nothing in Simenon’s work of the horror at the human condition that is expressed in some of the stories of Guy de Maupassant—in other respects a comparable writer. Those of Simenon’s protagonists who are not destroyed in the course of attempting to escape their lives return rid of their illusions and readier to enjoy what the world has to offer.” On the other hand, László Krasznahorkai isn’t called apocalyptic for “letters; then from letters, words; then from these words, some short sentences; then more sentences that are longer, and in the main very long sentences, for the duration of 35 years. Beauty in language. Fun in hell.”
February 16, 2016 Department of Tomfoolery Pun Home: Or, The Double Meaning of Life By Sadie Stein Via: The Telegraph “The only thing harder than crafting a good pun,” wrote Ted Trautman in these pages, “is finding someone to appreciate it.” But as Trautman makes clear, those people who love puns really love puns. They’re the Peeps eaters of the wordplay world: few, proud, and defiant. The stronghold of the pun — besides our own ingenious puzzles, I mean — is, of course, the UK: if not king there, the pun is certainly a minor entry in Debrett’s. And so it should come as no shock that from across the pond comes—wait for it—a history of the world in visual puns. You didn’t know you needed that in your life, did you? You didn’t know you needed, say, a list of ten puns on the assassination of Julius Caesar. And maybe you hear, Why did Julius Caesar buy crayons? He wanted to mark Antony, and think, Wow, that’s really lame. But then, Peeps lovers always do claim that they’re better stale.
February 16, 2016 Really Difficult Puzzles Solve These Thirty Word Puzzles! By Dylan Hicks Bernhard Sprute, Painting Bienenbild, 2010. Ed. Note: The response to our last round of word puzzles was so overwhelming that puzzle correspondent Dylan Hicks has brought you thirty more! This time, we’re demanding total accuracy: the first three correct lists will win a year’s subscription to The Paris Review. You must solve all thirty riddles correctly. Send an e-mail with your answers to [email protected]. The deadline is Thursday, February 18, at noon EST, when we’ll post the answers. Good luck! As a boy, I wasn’t alone in believing there to be a wonderful blue-eyed soul duo out of Philadelphia called Haulin’ Oats. Their music, we hoped, would provide solace during our imminent and futile battles against killer bees. Some of us grew up to be small-batch granolatiers and had to fend of lawsuits from Daryl and John themselves. The answers to the following thirty puzzles are in a similar spirit—of word-bending, that is, not litigation. They employ antanaclasis, homophony, homonymy, rhyme, assonance, and other devices toward paronomasia—okay, they’re puns. The form, I realize, has a mixed reputation. Maybe a few further words of explanation are required. The answers tweak, reframe, or link a variety of sources: titles of books, movies, and other artworks; proper names; famous lines of poetry or political rhetoric; clichés and other well-traveled terms. Many are paragrams—plays built on the alteration of a letter or letters, not always in service to rhyme. To foster challenge and competition, a few of the clues are oblique, but never deliberately obfuscatory, though anachronism and other breaches of logic have been tolerated or encouraged. Mostly the clues try to cover the bases without too much bold-face. For instance, “Ursine Frisco bandleader trucks off to buy bings and maraschinos” might cue “Cherry Garcia.” That one was judged to be off-limits, but the standard for innovation wasn’t set fussily high. Though none of the answers were wittingly plagiarized, a half hour on the leading search engine revealed, to little surprise, that I wasn’t the first or, in some cases, the fourth to arrive at several of these (ingenious) puns. My apologies, then, for that, and for everything. Federal Reserve stocks up massively on Stouffer’s. Boundless w/r/t Yeezy. And as in uffish thought he stood, At peroration of his rapWith mimsy smile he cocked his head And cued the crowd, “Please clap.” Sellout Marxist pitches for OxiClean. MacDougal Street corner spot where Peter Pastmaster, Paul Pennyfeather, and Lady Mary Lygon might have blown in the wind. Khakis coax truth. The Sun now rose upon the right,And parched the sloping mast The Mariner raised his skinny hand, And spake the long forecast Melvillian scrivener conditionally favors Russian pop duo. Thatcher refuses butter-making shift. Shazam, Sergeant Carter, here you are managin’ a Bally Fitness while I’m right next door teachin’ Zumba at Snap. I reckon we’re: After Cunningham, Wright, Carter, Leaf, Stoerner, Hutchinson, Testaverde, Henson, and Bledsoe, Cowboys fan complains with a Yeatsian sigh: Babylonian beau, to minimize riskMight have shunned holey walls for red flying disks Photo-album caption cleverly annotates sunken-eyed, death-defying actor’s trip to Yakushi-ji. Tennyson follows up pathbreaking collection with odes to mostly round, fleshy fruits. Steven Ellison remixes stage name while piloting Air Force One. The Belle of Amherst runs over Rogen. Spanglish bed sized for married grammarians—or serial monogamists. Coates and Steinman coauthor book by dashboard light. Starring opposite Cary Grant, Mae West misquotes “The Canonization” in this little-known Metaphysical romp. Bloodily horrific day at voluminous East Village bookstore. Kafka executor visits Wexler and Abrams. Habitat 67 mastermind takes the wheel of ice-cream truck. Wallace Stevens guides multifocal examination of Clinton e-mails. Edmund Wilson holes up in fortified residence with Symbolist library and truckload of GlaxoSmithKline SSRI. I met him at the concert hallHe plumbed the depths of Schubert songs—you get the picture?(Ja, sehen wir) That’s when I fell for: Sled provides key to ambitious biopic of Family Circus Early in ’61, a very young Declan MacManus sets his sights on Dominican dictator. Under Professor Boyd’s tutelage, Bonzo begins to act according to unconditional moral laws. Patricidal space meanie joins forces with Australian-born pop goddess. Weary of the spotlight, supporting-actor nominee quietly launches spicy-chicken stand. Read More
February 16, 2016 My First Time Ben Lerner on The Lichtenberg Figures By Sadie Stein “My First Time” is a video series in which we invite authors to discuss the trials of writing and publishing their first books. Consider it a chance to see how successful writers got their start, in their own words—it’s a portrait of the artist as a beginner and a look at the creative process, in all its joy, abjection, delusion, and euphoria. This installment stars Ben Lerner, poet and novelist. While an undergraduate at Brown—and later as an M.F.A. student—Lerner wrote the cycle of fifty-two sonnets that would become 2004’s The Lichtenberg Figures. At the time, he and roommate Cyrus Console were, says Lerner, “always writing under the sign of crisis … now when I look back, we had a kind of really intense practice.” He discusses the process of imposing form, his thematic inspirations, and the challenges of taking one’s place in the creative universe. “With the first book, you don’t really know if you can do it. You have a kind of constant anxiety about whether or not you have something to contribute to the conversation. And that anxiety—it can ruin your life, but it’s also really generative. Like, it’s a kind of discipline.” This series is made by the filmmakers Tom Bean, Casey Brooks, and Luke Poling; we’re delighted to collaborate with them. Be sure to watch the previous interviews in the series: Katori Hall, on Hoodoo Love, her first play Donald Antrim on Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, his first novel Sheila Heti on The Middle Stories, her first collection Tao Lin on Bed, his first collection Christine Schutt on Nightwork, her first collection Branden Jacobs-Jenkins on his play Neighbors Gabrielle Bell on The Book of … series, her early cartoons J. Robert Lennon on his debut novel, The Light of Falling Stars
February 16, 2016 On the Shelf Spoiler Alert, and Other News By Sadie Stein Henry Wallis, The Death of Chatterton, 1856, oil paint on canvas. To die in literature is to achieve fictional immortality, argues John Williams. “Just a cursory list of memorable deaths (spoilers ahead) can make all of literature seem like one long Edward Gorey strip: Cathy in Wuthering Heights; Beth in Little Women; Piggy in Lord of the Flies; Cordelia in King Lear; more or less everyone in Hamlet; Leonard Bast in Howards End; Anna Karenina; and perhaps most agonizingly, the small children in Jude the Obscure.” Conversely: “15 Books to Read if You Love a Shocking Plot Twist.” (At some point, Hamlet would have made this list.) Stéphane Heuet’s controversial—but wildly popular—graphic novelization of À la recherche du temps perdu has finally hit the UK. One reviewer—a Proust virgin—finds it “a good and gentle place to start. Sumptuous, elegant and beautifully paced, it is completely absorbing. Will it send me to the real thing? Maybe, one day. But whatever happens, this volume is a work of art in its own right. I’ll be forever glad to have spent so much time bent over it.” The following link is not included at all because it is illustrated by an image of a dollhouse. On the contrary, that is of no interest to us whatsoever. What is: a tribute to the late novelist Margaret Forster (she died February 8th) and her memoir, My Life in Houses. “As Forster moves from room to flat to house so the progress of her life reflects the pattern woven by childhood, academia, love, marriage, a career as a writer and then motherhood while a series of individuals who have marked her life inhabit the shadows within the structure of the bricks and mortar of the book. From her hard-working mother, her altruistic grandfather George, her two Oxford landladies, the imperious lace-capped Mrs. Brown, ‘straight out of Jane Austen’ and her tiny, deceptively smiley sister Fanny, who ran the house in a state of ‘suppressed fury’, to Sixties dinner parties at home with three of the four Beatles, each character takes up position fleetingly.” Let’s just get it out of the way: you are about to read the words Mahler grooves. Besides everything else, this is sort of false advertising; Mahler does not groove so much as write a Sixth Symphony which has been widely interpreted—and reordered—by any number of conductors. The oiid app is pretty groovy, though: it allows you to effectively “step inside a performance,” exploring the recordings of a number of conductors against the score and, in the process, learn a new appreciation for the complex work. As Leonard Bernstein wrote, the Sixth contains “basic elements (including clichés) of German music, driven to their furious ultimate power. Result: Neurotic intensity, irony, extreme sentimentalism, despair … ” In other words, Tuesday.