{"id":112316,"date":"2017-07-07T16:24:36","date_gmt":"2017-07-07T20:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=112316"},"modified":"2017-07-07T18:27:42","modified_gmt":"2017-07-07T22:27:42","slug":"staff-picks-candlelight-cellmates-cult-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/07\/staff-picks-candlelight-cellmates-cult-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Candlelight, Cellmates, Cult Leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

From the cover of The Book of Emma Reyes<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Emma Reyes grew up in astonishing poverty in Colombia\u2014illiterate, illegitimate, and abandoned. Remanded to a Catholic convent, where she endured a strange mix of manual labor, religious fear, and wonder, she escaped at age nineteen. This is where her memoir,\u00a0The Book of Emma Reyes<\/a><\/em>, leaves off, but as an adult, she became an artist and an intellectual and befriended a host\u00a0of Latin American and European notables, including Frida Kahlo, Lola \u00c1lvarez Bravo, Guiseppe Ungaretti, and Alberto Moravia. Hers is an incredible biography by any measure, but the book\u2019s most startling element is Reyes\u2019s clear-sighted, unsentimental remembrance of her difficult childhood. The narrative comes in the form of twenty-three\u00a0epistolary sketches\u00a0written by Reyes between 1969 and 1997 to her friend, the critic and historian Germ\u00e1n Arciniegas. (He once showed them to Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez, who effused about them to Reyes herself; furious with Arciniegas\u2019s breach of privacy, she didn\u2019t write him another letter for some twenty years.) Reyes is gloriously unceremonious in her telling: the memoir begins in a garbage heap and ends with a dog sniffing another\u2019s behind.\u00a0\u2014Nicole Rudick<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fans of the Parisians, our softball team, know Tony Hatch as a power hitter and stalwart first baseman. I know him as Cousin Tony\u2014a man of intense enthusiasms, most recently English literature of World War I. Which is how I was slipped a copy of Siegfried Sassoon\u2019s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>the follow-up to his slightly better known Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man<\/em>. I was up reading it most of last night. And if your blood stirs to the grim pluck of young officers reading Thomas Hardy by candlelight, with trench mouth, in months before the Somme, it may keep you up reading, too. \u2014Lorin Stein\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nothing screams \u201cbeach read\u201d like a biography of a cult leader. Really: if you\u2019re schlepping to the Rockaways this weekend, you could do worse than bring along Jeff Guinn\u2019s The Road to Jonestown<\/a>. <\/em>Having been taught to think of Jim Jones as no more than a charismatic lunatic, I was surprised to see him emerge, in Guinn\u2019s deft telling, as a quintessentially American figure\u2014one whose rise to power was bound up in politics, race relations, evangelism, Midwestern social mores, and the postwar economic boom. Jones, who got his start as a preacher in Indianapolis, was a passionate, albeit dogmatic, advocate for socialism and integration; too bad his fervor was the perfect vehicle for his innate sociopathy. As a kid, Jones broke into a casket manufacturer\u2019s warehouse and convinced his friends to nap in the coffins. Years later, he convinced his congregation that a mass of chicken offal was a tumor he\u2019d just ripped out of some guy in the restroom. Guinn\u2019s book is a master class in deception and control; all aspiring cult leaders should read it. For bonus points, pair it with the forty-five-minute recording<\/a> of Jones exhorting his followers to drink that fateful Kool-Aid\u2014the single most disturbing pep talk ever caught on tape. \u2014Dan Piepenbring<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>

Still from Le trou<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

The other evening, I wandered into the theater to catch Jacques Becker\u2019s 1960 film,\u00a0Le trou<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(The Hole<\/em>), and was left in stitches. It\u2019s an adaptation of the eponymous novel by Jos\u00e9 Giovanni, which is itself based on a true account from 1947: five cellmates (Gerard, Manu, Roland, Monseigneur, and Geo) in Paris\u2019s La Sant\u00e9 Prison spend their days plotting their getaway\u2014a scheme that involves jury-rigged dummies and digging through to the sewer beneath them. The film stars one of the men involved in the 1947 jailbreak,\u00a0Jean Keraudy<\/a>,\u00a0a locksmith\u00a0whom Giovanni knew well from\u00a0his<\/em>\u00a0time inside. And, like the rest of the cast, he\u2019s brilliant.\u00a0As one might imagine, not much happens in\u00a0Le trou<\/em>\u2014there\u2019s plenty of hammering and sawing and buffoonery with the guards\u2014but the moments I enjoy most are those in which\u00a0the men quietly chat among themselves: of popping lovers\u2019 blackheads after sex, of making ties out of blankets.\u00a0With the exception of one, they never speak of the crimes committed before their incarcerations, nor how long their sentences are, but I hardly care to know: by the film\u2019s end, I adored them all. \u2014Caitlin Youngquist<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s no surprise that Alexander Calder, credited with inventing the \u201cmobile,\u201d studied mechanical engineering in college and began his career\u2014after brief stints in hydraulics and mechanics\u2014making toys. His playfulness, as well as his mastery of force, space, color, form, and movement, are all on display in the Whitney Museum\u2019s exhibition\u00a0\u201cCalder: Hypermobility<\/a>,\u201d open through October. The show features a selection of Calder\u2019s kinetic sculptures (which incorporate motors), stabiles (self-supporting abstract works), and his famous mobiles, which hang in delightful arrangements of wire and metal. Many of his works haven\u2019t been activated in decades, but the Whitney\u2019s art handlers bring these pieces to life once a day. One favorite: Blizzard (Roxbury Flurry)<\/em>, a suspended splash of white circles balanced in an airy swirl. I say \u201cairy,\u201d but what stuns me about this piece\u2014and most of the works in\u00a0Hypermobility<\/em>\u2014is its uncanny weight. The force of\u00a0Blizzard<\/em>\u00a0gathers heavily in the sculpture\u2019s center, despite the round sheet-metal flurries playing in space round the wires, where you would expect the weight to be. Even when the mobile is static, its potential energy overwhelms one enough to leave you hanging, like the work, in suspense. \u2014Caitlin Love<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Alexander Calder, Parasite<\/em>, 1947, sheet metal, rod, wire, and paint, 41″ \u00d7 68″ \u00d7 28″. \u00a9 2017 Calder Foundation, New York \/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.<\/p><\/div>\n

I know I\u2019m reading a good book when it makes me mutter, What\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0this? Eugene Lim\u2019s slim and very weird\u00a0Dear Cyborgs<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>evoked that response in me plenty of times. It\u2019s a novel that seems to agree with the theory that reality is an illusion. It has superheroes debating subversive philosophies, monologuing stories of failed\u2014and lame\u2014artistic endeavors, and considering the merits of ecoterrorism. Midway through, we read an excerpt of the thriller novel\u00a0Inspector Mush Tate and the Case of the Missing Daughter<\/em>, in which a Bond-esque chase scenes ends with a sushi dinner downtown. All the while, our protagonist recounts encounters with his archnemesis Ms. Mistleto, who has her own stories of resistance. If that\u2019s not enough, all this is bookended by the mysterious specter of the protagonist\u2019s childhood friend Vu\u2014after he reappears, the two collaborate on a series of comics until he suddenly vanishes again, this time for good\u2014and a book whose plot predicts the future.\u00a0Dear Cyborgs<\/em> is like the image inside a kaleidoscope, especially if that image comes from the midnineties cyberpunk-tinged dream of a middle-aged vegan asleep in Zuccotti Park circa 2011. In other words: it certainly keeps you on your toes. \u2014Jeffery Gleaves<\/strong><\/p>\n

Luis Negr\u00f3n\u2019s\u00a0slim, tragicomic debut,\u00a0Mundo Cruel<\/em><\/a> (2013), casts an unflinching eye on gay men in the developing world. Comprising nine experimental stories, the collection bursts with intellectuals and hustlers, setbacks and triumphs, all set on the author\u2019s home island of Puerto Rico.\u00a0In \u201cThe Vampire of Moca,\u201d\u00a0a particularly witty story,\u00a0our narrator is\u00a0equally frustrated with his unrequited love, despite considerable effort, as he is with his lack of air conditioning.\u00a0Negr\u00f3n\u2019s\u00a0fiction pops with an authenticity\u00a0not often afforded to marginalized people living in the Caribbean. Gay life isn\u2019t exclusively filled with depressing narratives set to the backdrop of uplifting Whitney Houston songs; it\u2019s much messier than that, and\u00a0Mundo Cruel\u00a0<\/em>captures that complexity brilliantly. \u2014Ryan Strong<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this week\u2019s staff picks: Emma Reyes, Siegfried Sassoon, Eugene Lim, the cult leader Jim Jones, and 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