{"id":108681,"date":"2017-03-13T09:12:28","date_gmt":"2017-03-13T13:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=108681"},"modified":"2017-03-13T10:18:40","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T14:18:40","slug":"arsenic-and-old-austen-and-other-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/03\/13\/arsenic-and-old-austen-and-other-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Arsenic and Old Austen, and Other News"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_108682\" style=\"width: 970px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/jane-austen.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-108682\" class=\"wp-image-108682 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/jane-austen.jpg\" width=\"960\" height=\"792\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/jane-austen.jpg 960w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/jane-austen-300x248.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/jane-austen-768x634.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-108682\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sort of looks like someone who was poisoned by arsenic, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Look, I want to believe it, too; I want to run through the streets shouting it until I\u2019m blue in the face: Jane Austen was poisoned by arsenic! Janey Goddamn Austen, <em>poisoned<\/em>! Sandra Tuppen, a curator at the British Library, has purported that three pairs of Austen\u2019s eyeglasses\u2014one of which is strong enough to suggest that she suddenly went very nearly blind\u2014could indicate that she suffered from arsenic poisoning, among the symptoms of which is a decline in visual acuity. It would be neat, wouldn\u2019t it? Jane Austen, poisoned. It would spice things up a bit around here. But even though Austen died when she was only forty-one, this arsenic theory doesn\u2019t hold much water, some say: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2017\/03\/11\/health\/jane-austen-eyeglasses-arsenic\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">According to\u00a0Dr. Cheryl Kinney,\u00a0a national board member of the Jane Austen Society of North America, many things contained arsenic during the author\u2019s lifetime<\/a>: \u2018Water, the soil, homemade wine (which Jane Austen refers to in her letters), wallpaper, clothing that had green pigment, glue, and medicines \u2026 People would often take arsenic on their own as they were convinced that arsenic in controlled quantities could improve energy, make you plumper, and more vital. Pots and jars of skin creams also could contain arsenic \u2026 There are many other more likely causes of cataracts than arsenic poisoning.\u2019\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In the midsixties, as America and the USSR were locked in a race to the moon, another contender quietly threw his hat in the ring: Edward Makuka Nkoloso, of Zambia. His methods were unorthodox; his students, untested; his uniforms, unprofessional. But the guy had moxie. Namwali Serpell writes, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture\/culture-desk\/the-zambian-afronaut-who-wanted-to-join-the-space-race\" target=\"_blank\">Nkoloso wore a standard-issue combat helmet, a khaki military uniform, and a flowing cape\u2014multicolored silk or heliotrope velvet, with an embroidered neck and festooned with medals<\/a>. His astronauts sometimes wore green satin jackets with yellow trousers. (They were quick to explain that these were not space suits: \u2018No, we are the Dynamite Rock Music Group when we are not space cadets.\u2019)\u00a0\u2026 He rolled his cadets down a hill in a forty-gallon oil drum to simulate the weightless conditions of the moon. \u2018I also make them swing from the end of a long rope,\u2019 he told a reporter. \u2018When they reach the highest point, I cut the rope. This produces the feeling of freefall.\u2019 \u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dictators don\u2019t care if their homes are Instagrammable; they have no appetite for <em>hygge<\/em> or minimalism or starchitect-designed green buildings; they don\u2019t even really give a shit about antiques. Instead, they reside in ferocious, claustrophobic tributes to their power\u2014the representation of force is their only aesthetic concern. Peter York, who literally wrote the book on \u201cdictator chic,\u201d offers a few insights: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/magazine\/story\/2017\/03\/trump-style-dictator-autocrats-design-214877\" target=\"_blank\">Fascinated by the question of what makes dictators\u2019 houses so recognizably similar, I spent months poring over pictures\u2014from across the continents, from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first<\/a> \u2026 Dictators might work in the grand styles of earlier centuries, but they don\u2019t usually use old materials and furniture. Everything is brand spanking new. Old styles add gravitas, but antiques themselves are too faded and shabby \u2026 Dictators\u2019 homes aren\u2019t for one\u2019s family, friends or private self; they\u2019re not a refuge from the world or the job. Dictators\u2019 homes, in fact, are the job\u2014a place to do business, harangue people and settle scores, all while one\u2019s entourage stays nearby. They are an architectural and artistic means of establishing the power of the occupants, of intimidating and impressing any visitor.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Alex Clark has undertaken a survey of the new generation of protest novel, which prizes a certain situational agility: a speedy turnaround, an unabashed topicality. But for these protests to reach a wide audience\u2014an audience that hasn\u2019t already heard their message a thousand times\u2014we \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2017\/mar\/11\/fiction-as-political-protest-can-a-novel-change-the-world\" target=\"_blank\">need writers who will play the long game; who will bide their time and present us with a more settled view in the years to come<\/a>,\u201d Clark writes: \u201cWhen\u00a0Robert McCrum spoke to American novelists\u00a0in the wake of Trump\u2019s victory, they appeared largely minded to exercise restraint. \u2018We\u2019ll have to see what Trump is going to do,\u2019 said Walter Mosley. \u2018If it\u2019s bad enough, I won\u2019t be writing novels, I\u2019ll be talking and writing about it.\u2019 Others appeared utterly wrong-footed: \u2018I said Trump was an impossibility. The fact that I was so completely wrong has made me doubt what I understand about my country,\u2019 said Richard Ford \u2026 And Don DeLillo, with characteristic phlegmatism, possibly captured the mood best, months before Trump was elected. \u2018I don\u2019t know what the future holds,\u2019 he told a London audience last year, \u2018but I don\u2019t think anybody in the country is looking forward to it very much.\u2019 \u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Cinephiles should have their minds in the gutter. The film critic Melissa Anderson remembers reading \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/metrograph.com\/edition\/article\/46\/homo-alone\" target=\"_blank\">this perfect sentence: \u2018Motion pictures are for people who like to watch women,\u2019 a line I have since repeated endlessly<\/a>. It was written by Boyd McDonald (1925\u20131993); I discovered it while reading\u00a0<em>Cruising the Movies: A Sexual Guide to Oldies on TV<\/em>, a collection of the peerless critic\u2019s columns for\u00a0<em>Christopher Street\u00a0<\/em>and other gay publications that had been recently reissued by Semiotext(e). The observation strikes me as the purest, simplest distillation of cinephilia\u2014or at least one strain of it, mine especially. A master of beautifully and hilariously articulated bawdiness, McDonald advanced an aesthetic principle best encapsulated by this excerpt from his tribute to Steve Cochran, one of the many B- and C-list actors who were the writer\u2019s chief fascination: \u2018But I have digressed from my topic, and digressed so far that it may be necessary to remind the reader what my topic is: the size of Cochran\u2019s meat.\u2019 \u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In today\u2019s roundup: a curator alleges that Austen suffered from arsenic poisoning; Zambia\u2019s space race; and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2512],"tags":[27781,19733,27786,27785,27783,27782,27788,300,8284,27787,27784,20965],"class_list":["post-108681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-shelf","tag-arsenic","tag-boyd-mcdonald","tag-decoration","tag-dictator-chic","tag-edward-mukaka-nkoloso","tag-eyeglasses","tag-film-critics","tag-jane-austen","tag-poison","tag-protest-novels","tag-space-race","tag-zambia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Was Jane Austen Poisoned? 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