{"id":117320,"date":"2017-10-27T13:00:59","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T17:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=117320"},"modified":"2017-10-27T17:29:41","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T21:29:41","slug":"staff-picks-millepied-monk-mcphee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/10\/27\/staff-picks-millepied-monk-mcphee\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Millepied, Monk, and McPhee"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I knew, when I was a little girl, that I wanted to walk up the steps of Lincoln Center in the gathering dusk.\u00a0Last night, my man and I put on our finery and stepped into the travertine at Lincoln Center to see the American Ballet Theatre<\/a>. The evening\u2019s first dance, \u201cSouvenir d\u2019un lieu cher,\u201d by Alexei Ratmansky, felt like a warm-up for Benjamin Millepied\u2019s world premiere of \u201cI Feel the Earth Move\u201d (others disagree<\/a>). The lights came up after \u201cSouvenir\u201d and we watched a tech cross the floor without cover of a curtain to direct a slow undressing of the stage. Up came the wings and the fly and then, with no music, no light change, no cue discernible to the audience, a\u00a0battalion of dancers crossed the stage. What followed was some of the most beautiful and fully realized dancing I\u2019ve ever seen. An accomplished dancer, choreographer, and former director of the Paris Opera Ballet, Millepied uses everything he knows and everything the dancers do, too. The piece nodded to traditional corps de ballet movement and to synchronized swimming, to sociology and to the high drama of the theater. The principal, Misty Copeland, covered the stage with hovering energy; Herman Cornejo, also a principal, became my second favorite athlete. The music was Philip Glass. At intermission, members of the\u00a0American Ballet Theatre\u2019s Studio Company and of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School took over the Promenade for Millepied\u2019s \u201cCounterpoint for Philip Johnson,\u201d the \u201cfirst work to be performed by ABT outside the proscenium setting of the Koch Theater.\u201d There was contagious delight and many iPhones held outstretched. When we settled back into our seats to watch Millepied\u2019s \u201cDaphnis and Chloe,\u201d I was impressed again by his fluency. When nearly everything had been said, Stella Abrera danced volumes about sexual consent. The curtain came down eventually, of course, but with the feeling that Millepied was back there, still dismantling, in the wings. \u2014Julia Berick<\/strong><\/p>\n

My oldest friend, Elaine, is one of the all-time great book recommenders. She\u2019s the person who turned me on to the work of Barbara Comyns Carr and\u00a0Pictures from an Institution<\/a><\/i>,\u00a0and so when she silently hands me an ancient Penguin paperback (as she did last week in London), I take notice. The novel in question is Jennifer Dawson\u2019s 1961 debut,\u00a0The Ha-Ha<\/a>.<\/i>\u00a0It\u2019s the story of a young woman who\u2019s been hospitalized for schizophrenia. Though\u00a0that premise sounds grim and even lurid, it\u2019s not: the tone is quiet and the narrative is often dryly funny. While the portrayal of the narrator\u2019s illness is sensitive and rings true, this book feels destigmatizing in the true sense of\u00a0the word. Plus, it\u2019s just a charming read. On the other hand, if you\u2019re looking for an altogether more distressing first-person fictional account of an Englishwoman descending into mental illness (and really, who isn’t?), you have to go out right now and buy yourself a copy of Stephen Benatar\u2019s\u00a0Wish Her Safe at Home<\/a>.<\/i>\u00a0It\u2019s funny, it\u2019s horrifying, it\u2019s deeply upsetting, and you won\u2019t be able to stop reading it. In fact, I can\u2019t think of anything better suited to Halloween\u2014although this will stick with you much longer than any ghost story.\u00a0\u2014Sadie Stein<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I started reading Wendell Berry in high school, but I really fell in love with his writing in college. His writing resonated with me in ways words never had before, and it almost single-handedly redirected my course of study to literature. In hopes of giving me a special graduation gift, my mom sent Berry three of his books and asked if he would consider signing them. He went beyond that, returning the books with brief notes on the front page of each, thoughtful and kind in their specificity to me and my stage of life. It was a gesture, from both, that touched me deeply\u2014the combined work of two people in my life, one constantly present and one very remote, that have most shaped how I want to see the world. I\u2019m challenged\u00a0by their fiercely clear eyes and their firm clench on joy, despite all the facts. In Berry\u2019s new book, The Art of Loading Brush<\/i><\/a>, he is a frustrated advocate, speaking out against local wastefulness and distant idealism; he is a gentle friend, asserting as he always has, the hope possible in caring\u00a0for the world, and your specific place in it. As far as I\u2019m aware, The Art of Loading Brush<\/i> is singular in Berry\u2019s corpus, in that it includes essays, stories, and poetry all in one volume. It reads like a summation of his life\u2019s values, as stated elegantly in one of his earlier poems: \u201cwhat I stand for \/ is what I stand on.\u201d \u2014Joel Pinckney<\/strong><\/p>\n

The centennial of Thelonious Monk\u2019s birth has been an occasion to celebrate<\/a>\u00a0not only the storied character\u00a0of Monk himself but the rich, wild jazz scene of an erstwhile New York City as well. Robin Kelley\u2019s biography, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original<\/i><\/a>, truly does both. In Kelley\u2019s thick tome (reissued this year with a new afterword), Monk is depicted not as an island but rather as a brilliant, individual thread woven into the artistic, cultural, and social narrative of New York in the mid-twentieth century.\u00a0However, Kelley\u2019s goal is to tear away the shrouds of mythos in which Monk is veiled; the biographer\u2019s loyalty is to his subject, complex and flawed and brilliant and human, before anything else. He ends the biography with a beautiful passage that does Monk justice by viewing him not from the foot of any musical pedestal, but rather from the perspective of the dance floor at the Five Spot Caf\u00e9: \u201cTo know the man and his music requires digging Monk\u2014out of the golden dustbins of posterity, out of the protected cells of museums\u2014and restoring him to a tradition of sonic disturbance that forced the entire world to take notice.\u201d\u00a0 \u2014Lauren Kane<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Jennifer Egan. Photo: Pieter M. van Hattem \/ Vistalux<\/p><\/div>\n

To exist in this modern, plugged-in age of ours is to be perpetually drowning in wonderful\u2014and terrible\u2014things to read on the Internet. Open tabs swarm my phone like locusts, and when I\u2019m in need of reading material on the train, I swipe my screen and watch all the reviews and Wikipedia entries and poems flicker before me like whirling casino slots. When the magic on the screen has come to a rest and the foam has risen to the top, I tap into whatever article my phone has landed on. I\u2019m glad I decided this week that I should read Alexandra Schwartz\u2019s excellent profile of Jennifer Egan in <\/a>The New Yorker<\/a>. <\/i>Part of the article\u2019s appeal is that Egan might be one of the most charming people on the planet. (About the\u00a01942 American Merchant Seaman\u2019s Manual<\/em>, which Egan used as research for her latest book: \u201cI was lapping this up like it was a chocolate sundae!\u201d) But what really\u00a0carry\u00a0the piece are\u00a0Schwartz\u2019s close readings of her subject\u2019s work, as well as\u00a0her keen eye for the revealing, juicy details that make up a life. This is one of those great literary profiles: In a single sentence, Schwartz articulates what I\u2019ve never been able to tease out about why I like Egan\u2019s writing so much. \u201cShe is a realist with a speculative bent of mind, a writer of postmodern inclinations with the instincts of an old-fashioned entertainer.\u201d I can\u2019t wait to see whom Schwartz\u00a0tackles next. \u2014Brian Ransom<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Somehow, I managed to make it through my college English classes without reading a full-length book by John McPhee. I rectified the situation last week, when I picked up a copy of Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process<\/a><\/i>. The jacket features the sort of praise you would expect to be lavished on one of literary journalism\u2019s most august pioneers: \u201cHe has been for dozens and dozens of nonfiction writers,\u201d says David Remnick, McPhee\u2019s former student, \u201cwhat Robert Lowell used to be for poets and poet wannabes of a certain age: the model.\u201d What\u00a0struck\u00a0me, though, after reading Draft No. 4<\/i>, is just how little of McPhee\u2019s writing process would lend itself to imitation: few readers are likely to adopt his Gordian outlining methods or the floppy disk\u2013era computer program he uses to organize his notes. Yet it\u2019s precisely McPhee\u2019s own authorial quiddities, and the generous sum of attention he pays them, that makes Draft No. 4 <\/i>such a refreshing addition to the genre: he doffs\u00a0that guise of didacticism, common to so many writing guides, under which a writer\u2019s personal\u00a0style and tastes might be gussied up as gospel. That\u2019s not to say that the book is self-regarding: McPhee has a way of putting the subject of his work before its author, even when the two are the same thing. And from McPhee\u2019s pages, writing emerges as a process of slow but undeniable metamorphosis, like a force of nature: less something to mimic, exactly, than to admire. \u2014Spencer Bokat-Lindell<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I knew, when I was a little girl, that I wanted to walk up the steps of Lincoln Center in the gathering dusk.\u00a0Last night, my man and I put on our finery and stepped into the travertine at Lincoln Center to see the American Ballet Theatre. The evening\u2019s first dance, \u201cSouvenir d\u2019un lieu cher,\u201d by 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