August 24, 2016 Revisited Alan Watts, This Is It By Clay Byars Revisited is a series in which writers look back on a work of art they first encountered long ago. Alan Watts. In my high school creative-writing class, one day a week was set aside for reading, our choice of material. The hippieish teacher guided those choices, but almost anything worked. It was here, because of her, that I first encountered Alan Watts, specifically his essay collection This Is It. All I remember about the book itself is my teacher dreamily commenting on the title. I picked up a copy because it was short, and because the subtitle—and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience—spoke to me. The idea seemed “cool”—Watts was a forerunner of the counterculture movement—but I must have been too busy with the eternity of high school to focus my attention. I was in college when I was in a car accident that tore a nerve in my shoulder. A botched surgery to repair it severed an artery and released a blood clot that, a week later, caused a massive stroke that left me locked inside my body. I couldn’t move or speak, and the doctors said I would be paralyzed from the eyes down for the rest of my life. Read More
August 3, 2016 Revisited Ulysses S. Grant Repaired My Parents’ Dryer By Bonnie Nadzam Revisited is a series in which writers look back on a work of art they first encountered long ago. He’s always watching. In 1974, when they were honeymooning in Atlanta, my parents bought a portrait of Ulysses S. Grant—not the one pictured above, but something close enough. They spent fifty bucks on it: cash they’d won on a bet with my grandfather, wagering that Nixon would not see out his term. The painting hung above our fireplace in northeast Ohio when I was a girl. It matters only peripherally that Grant was an actual man who lived and died in the nineteenth century; who was the eighteenth president of the United States; and who, as commanding general of the United States Army, led the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy in the Civil War. What matters is how single-minded I found his gaze, his eyes staring down at me—to say nothing of the distinguished crinkle of the eyebrows above them, those bright buttons on his jacket, that thick beard and head of hair, sculpted like cake frosting. Read More
June 20, 2016 Revisited Elliott Smith, Either/Or By Emma Straub Revisited is a series in which writers look back on a work of art they first encountered long ago. Here, Emma Straub revisits Elliott Smith’s album Either/Or. For a little while, starting around 1998, Elliott Smith and I were the best of friends. I was a freshman at Oberlin, making myself depressing mixtapes to match my mood, and there was nothing that matched my mood better than Either/Or. I didn’t know anything about lo-fi music—everything else I’d ever truly loved was glossy and studio perfect: Madonna’s Immaculate Collection and Mary J. Blige’s What’s the 411—but all of a sudden, my sadness was so great that I only could have loved Either/Or more if it had literally been covered with dirt. It was street-level misery, whispered and simple. Read More
June 13, 2016 Revisited Dying on the Toilet By Max Porter Revisited is a series in which writers look back on a work of art they first encountered long ago. Here, Max Porter revisits Francis Bacon’s painting Triptych May–June 1973. Francis Bacon, Triptych May–June 1973, 1973, oil on canvas, 6’6″ x 4’10”. What happens to Ben Lerner, or Ben Lerner’s character in Leaving the Atocha Station, when he has a profound experience of art cannot happen to a person too many times, or it stops being profound. I do not fall in love all the time, and I distrust the cultural vocabulary that insists I should. I’ve looked at a lot of art, and thought deeply about what I’m looking at, how I’m looking at it, and I think only two or three times has it been profound. This might be a failing on my part, and I could strive, like the ecstatic saints, to prolong the jouissance, the sweet heightened encounter. But for now, here is one of those times: Read More
June 7, 2016 Revisited The Necklace By Sloane Crosley Revisited is a new series in which writers look back on a work of art they first encountered long ago. For the first edition, Sloane Crosley revisits Guy de Maupassant’s story “The Necklace.” Illustration by Gil Blas, 1893. In order to discover Guy de Maupassant, I had to read James Joyce first, which is logical only in the sense that you have to fly over Ireland to get to France. As far as I can tell, James Joyce has little to do with Guy de Maupassant. There are some loose parallels between the story “Clay” and “The Necklace” (beautiful woman entrenched in tedium simmers with frustration), both gentleman had solid mustaches, and both had syphilis. But the last is a condition that hardly qualifies as bonding fodder; syphilis is the dead-male-writer equivalent of spelling your name correctly on the SATs. And yet, thanks to a sinfully underqualified eighth-grade English teacher, these two authors are inextricably linked in my memory. Read More