{"id":111367,"date":"2017-05-31T09:04:13","date_gmt":"2017-05-31T13:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=111367"},"modified":"2017-05-31T10:37:06","modified_gmt":"2017-05-31T14:37:06","slug":"were-all-molded-by-the-pizza-gods-and-other-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/05\/31\/were-all-molded-by-the-pizza-gods-and-other-news\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re All Molded by the Pizza Gods, and Other News"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_111368\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/pizzaad.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-111368\" class=\"wp-image-111368 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/pizzaad.jpg\" width=\"1000\" height=\"731\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/pizzaad.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/pizzaad-300x219.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/pizzaad-768x561.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-111368\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">From a seventies-era ad for Straw Hat Pizza.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You may want pizza. I grant you that. But it may be that pizza wants you. It may be that the pizza gods have shaped the very essence of your desire, pulling you aside at every possible moment to whisper <em>pizza, pizza, pizza<\/em>. You want pizza because you can order pizza from a pull-down menu full of fun customizable pizza options. David Rudin argues that our computers and phones, with their machine logic, are an ideal vehicle for pizza, which is widely understood and easy to assemble. After all, he explains, Domino\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/reallifemag.com\/the-domino-effect\/\" target=\"_blank\">now offers a series of apps, chatbots, and even the option of tweeting an order using the pizza emoji<\/a>. Some of these ordering options may exist primarily as marketing gimmicks, but their aggregate effect remains notable: any interface to which you have access can likely be used to order pizza. This in part stems from pizza\u2019s popularity, but taste is only a small part of the story: the delivery pizza is highly adaptable to the logic and formatted language of communication interfaces. The typical consumer\u2019s mental model of a pizza\u2014dough with sauce, cheese, and toppings baked in an oven\u2014is quite similar to a machine\u2019s conception of pizza, which is quite similar to how a pizza is actually made. The algorithm for pizza is not complex \u2026 All parties in the transaction are imagining the same simple process and speaking from the same restricted phrase book.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Toni Morrison remembers a childhood job cleaning another woman\u2019s house and the lessons it taught her about separating work and identity: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2017\/06\/05\/the-work-you-do-the-person-you-are\" target=\"_blank\">A larger part of my pride was based on the fact that I gave half my wages to my mother, which meant that some of my earnings were used for real things\u2014an insurance-policy payment or what was owed to the milkman or the iceman<\/a>. The pleasure of being necessary to my parents was profound. I was not like the children in folktales: burdensome mouths to feed, nuisances to be corrected, problems so severe that they were abandoned to the forest. I had a status that doing routine chores in my house did not provide\u2014and it earned me a slow smile, an approving nod from an adult. Confirmations that I was adultlike, not childlike \u2026 I suspect that children aren\u2019t needed in that way now. They are loved, doted on, protected, and helped. Fine, and yet\u00a0\u2026 \u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Christian Lorentzen embarks on a whistle-stop tour of sex in American literature, which is, today, as fraught an enterprise as ever: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/bookforum.com\/inprint\/024_02\/17947\" target=\"_blank\">Sex is always with us. But in our literature it is subject to cycles of repression and liberation, ecstasy and shame, arousal and quieting<\/a>. The history of the American novel is a history of sex, as Leslie Fiedler showed in\u00a0<em>Love and Death in the American Novel<\/em>. It may be subtext\u2014Huck and Jim on the raft; Ishmael and Queequeg in bed aboard the\u00a0<em>Pequod<\/em>\u2014or it may be an all-too-obvious source of shame, as in\u00a0<em>The Scarlet Letter<\/em>. (You could always count on the Puritans to have sex on the brain.) Sex is the impossibility that makes\u00a0<em>The Sun Also Rises\u00a0<\/em>possible: if his equipment worked, Jake Barnes would have settled down with Lady Brett Ashley and soberly made babies. Where\u2019s the fun in that? As Thomas Powers recently pointed out in <em>The<\/em>\u00a0<em>New York Review of Books<\/em>, the big thing on William Faulkner\u2019s mind was \u2018the great submerged obsessive guilty burden of slave times, when all whites knew but few said that slaves were not only unpaid laborers but unpaid sexual servants.\u2019 \u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Ursula Lindsey celebrates the work of the Egyptian writer Waguih Ghali, who died in 1969, and whose diaries are soon to be published. His editor once described him as \u201c\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/blog\/2017\/05\/26\/ursula-lindsey\/i-hate-tragedy\/\" target=\"_blank\">\u2018a libertine, a hanger-on, a sponger, a political dissenter, a depressive, an alcoholic, a gambler, and probably a menace to everyone who let him into their lives<\/a>,\u2019 \u201d Lindsey explains: \u201cGhali\u2019s wonderful (and only) novel,\u00a0<em>Beer in the Snooker Club<\/em>, was published by Andr\u00e9 Deutsch in 1964 \u2026 <em>Beer in the Snooker Hall<\/em>\u00a0was eventually translated into Arabic, but never became part of the Egyptian canon. Like its hero, the novel is a misfit. Ram is a Coptic Christian in love with an idealistic Jewish heiress; a penniless would-be Communist who enjoys luxury and is surrounded by wealthy relatives and school friends; an English-educated Egyptian alienated from his homeland but also ill at ease in London. He views the hypocrisy of his wealthy relatives with disgust and Nasser\u2019s revolution with cynicism, but most important he refuses to take either of them seriously. \u2018I hate tragedy,\u2019 he says.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Inspiration comes from unlikely\u00a0places. The next time the deck is stacked against you, when it seems that nothing will ever go your way and that failure is your due, think of <em>Baywatch<\/em>. Chris Lee spoke to Douglas Schwartz and Michael Berk, the show\u2019s cocreators, and learned that it took years of perseverance to turn the series into a global phenomenon: \u201c <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/05\/04\/movies\/how-baywatch-went-from-an-early-belly-flop-to-the-big-screen.html\" target=\"_blank\">\u2018The odds were against us \u2026 Network executives didn\u2019t think there was a series there. \u201cHow many times can lifeguards run out and do CPR?\u201d<\/a> We got canceled. You don\u2019t come back from cancellation! So we created first-run syndication just to survive\u2019 \u2026 Berk and Mr. Schwartz are first cousins who had worked together on TV projects as far back as 1958 (they shot their first as kids). Although they had regrouped after the failure of <em>Baywatch<\/em>, setting up new pilots at different networks, their uncle Sherwood Schwartz\u2014the syndication savant behind sitcoms like <em>The Brady Bunch<\/em> and <em>Gilligan\u2019s Island<\/em>\u2014gave them crucial advice. \u2018Uncle Sherwood said, This is your <em>Gilligan\u2019s Island<\/em>,\u2019 Mr. Schwartz recalled. \u2018Don\u2019t blow it! Go and buy back your rights\u2019 \u2026 As <em>Baywatch<\/em> began to take off, the show became singularly identified with its frothy visuals: surf spray licking against lifeguards\u2019 tanned and toned physiques. In another of the show\u2019s defining ironies, partial credit for that motif goes to Mr. Schwartz, who directed more than forty episodes despite a diagnosis of retinitis pigmentosa that means he is legally blind.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In today\u2019s roundup: how food apps shape our desire, the changing tenor of sex in American literature, lessons from Baywatch, 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":[16689,29008,29011,8892,29007,1773,29010,9790,4901,12632,179,224,3829,29009],"class_list":["post-111367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-shelf","tag-american-literature","tag-assembly-lines","tag-baywatch","tag-childhood","tag-dominos","tag-egypt","tag-egyptian-literature","tag-inspiration","tag-jobs","tag-pizza","tag-sex","tag-technology","tag-toni-morrison","tag-waguih-ghali"],"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>Do You Desire Pizza, or Does Pizza Desire You?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In today\u2019s arts and culture news: how food apps shape our desire, 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