{"id":121664,"date":"2018-02-16T13:00:28","date_gmt":"2018-02-16T18:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=121664"},"modified":"2018-02-16T17:42:01","modified_gmt":"2018-02-16T22:42:01","slug":"staff-picks-tattoos-death-grips-love-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/16\/staff-picks-tattoos-death-grips-love-letters\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Tattoos, Death Grips, and Love Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

 <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve long admired Eddie Martinez\u2019s wild, colorful abstractions, but until now, I\u2019d never seen them in person. This week, I saw half of a show at two New York locations of the gallery Mitchell-Innes\u00a0& Nash<\/a>. In Chelsea, a block from our office, is a suite of big paintings called \u201cLove Letters.\u201d Each of the roughly half dozen canvases are painted on oversize reproductions of personal letterhead: \u201cSam Moyer and Eddie Martinez\u201d lines the top of each \u201cpage,\u201d and their address runs along the bottom. Moyer is Martinez\u2019s wife, so these paintings could be playful messages to her, as though doodled in a moment of affection on a handy piece of paper. Humor runs throughout Martinez\u2019s work: the pun \u201cfine ants\u201d appears in one painting, and his last show at the gallery was titled \u201cSamoneye.\u201d (Get it? \u201cSam and I\u201d? I love puns.) Drawing is also an essential part of his work. These paintings are based on Sharpie drawings (some five hundred such drawings fill a wall in Martinez\u2019s studio) blown up in size and then rendered in layers of form and color. Floral and cartoon figures and bulbous, Guston-y shapes are camouflaged behind scribbles of brushwork and slashes of spray paint in gray-blue, vivid red, and mustard yellow. Admiring the lines and dripping fields of color almost feels like watching Martinez in action. \u2014Nicole Rudick\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Elaine Castillo.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

I’ve been carrying around Elaine Castillo\u2019s novel America Is Not the Heart<\/i><\/a>\u00a0for the past month. I\u2019ve been saying to everyone who will listen that this book is the next big thing\u2014you heard it here first. My new favorite book, and maybe yours, too, is about a Filipino community in the Bay Area. It\u2019s told through the eyes of a rich girl turned insurgent turned prison camp inmate turned American immigrant. When Hero arrives\u00a0in California in her thirties, she is a newly minted person. Formally named Geronima and formerly known by the nickname Nimang, Hero\u00a0is met by her aunt and uncle and their daughter, Roni, an excitable and self-assured seven-year-old covered in eczema. Roni is the gateway into Hero\u2019s new life in the South Bay and kicks off a chain of introductions by which Hero meets Rosalyn, her first friend in town. For three years, we watch Hero repopulate her new self,\u00a0one genuine friend at a time.\u00a0Hero\u2019s first encounter with Rosalyn\u2014she offers to wash Hero\u2019s hair while she waits with Roni at Rosalyn\u2019s salon\u2014is enough to make you melt, as is their ensuing courtship. Rosalyn\u2019s subtle flirtations\u00a0contrast against Hero\u2019s blunt interpretations\u00a0to create a\u00a0refreshing depiction of private queerness. This is Castillo\u2019s first novel, and it is masterful. It has drama and tragedy in spades, but it also has so much love of every kind spilling out of its pages that I closed it each\u00a0night with a huge, warm smile. I might go home and read it again. \u2014Eleanor Pritchett<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Letters to a Young Poet<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cGo into yourself. Examine the reason that bids you to write; check whether it reaches its roots into the deepest region of your heart, admit to yourself whether you would die if it should be denied you to write. This above all: ask yourself in your night\u2019s quietest hour: must<\/i> I write?\u201d A lovely Penguin edition<\/a> of Rainer Maria Rilke\u2019s Letters to a Young Poet<\/i>, translated by Charlie Louth, encased in a light blue cover marked with gold detail, has been sitting on my bedside table since May. The collection consists of ten letters that Rilke sent between 1903 and 1908, \u201cimportant for many people engaged in growth and change,\u201d wrote the young poet who received them, \u201ctoday and in the future.\u201d My sister gave me the book as a graduation gift. \u201cFor the existential crisis,\u201d she wrote as an ex libris. But something about the sunshine, and then something about the colors of the turning leaves, and then something about the holiday-lit streets distracted me from the state of my existence and pushed the crisis off\u2014until this week. A month and a half into a new year, the trees and the state of my existence laid bare, I opened my shiny little book. Fitting: the first letter is dated February 17. As my New Year\u2019s resolutions dissipated, Rilke put me on the quest for a deeper resolve. \u201cDig down into yourself for a deep answer. And if it should be affirmative, if it is given to you to respond to this serious question with a loud and simple \u2018I must<\/i>,\u2019 then construct your life according to this necessity.\u201d To what question would I answer, I must<\/i>? What must<\/i> I do? Write? Read? Read, for starters. This letter is only the first of ten. \u2014Claire Benoit<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

JPEGMAFIA.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rappers love to claim responsibility for broken rewind buttons. It\u2019s so common a boast as to be a cliche now, this assertion that one\u2019s lyrics are dense and surprising enough to bear repeat listens. This doesn\u2019t quite translate to the iPhone age. But if there were a way to place a heat map on my screen to indicate where my fingers had tapped the most over the past week, the lower-left quadrant of my phone would blaze with the intensity of a red giant. I\u2019ve been obsessed with the rapper-producer JPEGMAFIA\u2019s\u00a0Veteran<\/a><\/i>, which\u00a0is exactly the glorious car crash of an album most rappers could only dream of making. It is so threaded with sound and texture as to be oppressive. Repeat listens are essential. JPEGMAFIA, who sometimes refers to himself with the diminutive nickname Peggy, takes the bit-crushed intensity of acts such as Death Grips<\/a> and combines it with an astute understanding of 2018 rap cadences, flipping Lil Uzi Vert<\/a>\u00a0flows over looping, hypnotic samples and corroded bass hits ripped straight from Yeezus<\/a><\/i>. Elsewhere\u2014and I mean this in the best way possible\u2014you get the sense you\u2019re listening to random files off a hard drive that\u2019s been rotting in someone\u2019s basement for a decade.\u00a0Somehow, the album feels both completely antisocial\u2014the beats click and clank as Peggy spouts lines such as \u201c4chan on my dick \u2019cause I’m edgy \/ Sit your pale ass down, have a Pepsi<\/a>\u201d\u2014and at once utterly tailored for me. Everything I want is right here: that wonderfully ubiquitous\u00a0Roland \u201cahh\u201d sample<\/a>, lyrical callouts to the stealth video game franchise\u00a0Metal Gear<\/a><\/i>, and a liberal use of the repeater button. I will follow this self-described \u201cleft-wing Hades\u201d anywhere. \u2014Brian Ransom<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Still from Manhatta<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Approaching Thirty-Fourth\u00a0Street, I become a danger to myself and others. I have tripped over curbs, crashed into trash cans, body slammed pedestrians, and wandered into oncoming traffic\u2014all for the Empire State Building. I crane my neck and gawk every time it comes into view, and though I\u2019ve lived here most of my life, it remains to me mysteriously unseen. As the tallest skyscraper among surrounding skyscrapers, the building stands in relation to everything around it simultaneously\u2014it exists kaleidoscopically, through a thicket of buildings that shift at each angle. Thin and solitary from the Hudson, double-breasted and imposing from the north, simply tall<\/em> when staring up from its base\u2014it crowds out other adjectives. Sometimes only the spire can be seen, an antenna on the skyline. Sometimes two buildings part like curtains and garland the tapering top. Sometimes a building cuts in front of it, and it becomes a piece of mosaic. Sometimes it is hidden away\u2014a magic trick. Always it imparts to me the strangeness of this island. We walk on the bottom of jagged canyons. Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand\u2019s 1921 film,\u00a0Manhatta<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>captures that strangeness when it was new. Of a piece with the \u201ccity symphony\u201d films of the era, like Man with a Movie Camera <\/em>and Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis<\/em>, it is a ten-minute day in the life of Manhattan, intercut with lines from Walt Whitman\u2019s \u201cMannahatta.\u201d The filmmakers are obsessed with the city\u2019s verticality, its dwarfing of the human. Crowds are shot from above, at strange angles, turning the streets into flower fields of hat tops. Shots look down from tall buildings onto other buildings, revealing a landscape of rooftops, a street above the street. Steam pours from everywhere, as if the city were a single giant machine. One scene stitches together multiple shots to climb a building side, like King Kong. Sheeler and Strand saw that New York and its skyscrapers had created new, inhuman sight lines\u2014buildings gazing at buildings with no thought of people. In an overhead shot of a crowd disembarking a ferry, they look up at the perched camera as they pass\u2014 the only faces we see in the film are those turned up to gawk. Almost a hundred years later, that impulse has not abated. \u2014Matt Levin<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Peter Carey.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Spring is still more than a month away, but the warmer temperatures here in New York have got me itching for change, a trip, a long drive, something to shake off winter\u2019s monotony. Good thing, then, I picked up Peter Carey<\/a>\u2019s A Long Way from Home<\/a><\/em>, a book I can only call, however oxymoronic, a domestic adventure novel. Irene and Titch Bobs, a young couple in 1950s\u00a0Australia, sign up to race in the Redex Trial, a sort of Australian Gumball Rally, as a publicity stunt to promote their would-be Ford dealership. They\u2019ve chosen Willie Bachhuber, their mysterious bachelor neighbor, as a navigator. The novel, narrated alternatingly by Mrs. Bobs and Bachhuber, moves quickly. Titch Bobs\u2019s father, Dangerous Dan Bobs, terrorizes the couple\u2014especially Irene, who sees how much Titch\u2019s father holds him back\u2014by entering the Redex specifically to compete against them. The Bobses are curiously happy, though, and that may be because they are consumed by the present. Irene runs herself ragged trying keep the little crew together, checking in on their children by phone and dealing with her husband\u2019s subterfuge and ineffectual behavior. It\u2019s Bachhuber who notices that something dark and unspoken weaves through their little adventure, or maybe it\u2019s just his<\/i> life: \u201cWe proceeded through desolation, twisting and turning through copper coloured hills. If this was our country\u2019s heart, I never saw anything so stony, so empty, so endless, devoid of life other than predatory kites, circling, while we sat separately contained, our webs of pain and history hidden from each other.\u201d A Long Way from Home<\/em> is On the Road<\/em> meets Mrs. Bridge,<\/em> only funnier and livelier. It\u2019s the perfect antidote for someone with early spring fever. \u2014Jeffery Gleaves<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>

The Life and Opinions of Zacharias Lichter.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Zacharias Lichter is either a philosopher, a madman, a divine prophet, or, most likely, all of the above.\u00a0The Life and Opinions of Zacharias Lichter<\/i><\/a>, originally published in 1969 in Romania and published in English this year by NYRB Classics, utilized a veil of character study and absurdism to slide under the censors of\u00a0Ceau\u0219escu\u2019s\u00a0Communist regime as a sharp critique of the modern world. Such layers now make for an absorbing and, frankly, wild read. The translator, Matei Calinescu, peppers the brief chapters of discourse (such as \u201cOn the Realm of Stupidity\u201d and \u201cRegarding the Devil,\u201d among many other irresistible titles) with the dark, strange poetry of Lichter. Lichter himself is a fool and a beggar, but with his ragged assortment of outcast friends and their persistently skeptical attitude toward convention, he is perceived as a threat to power. The only threat to their own way of life is a psychiatrist, the harbinger of structure to their inner worlds. This book is philosophy with a sly sideways smile and a wink, and concisely smart without ever seeming to try too hard. \u2014Lauren Kane<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Tattoo by Matteo Nangeroni.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Days after filming several intense, violent scenes in which his recurring character on a popular series was ultimately killed off, my friend went from New York to Los Angeles. Before, he had zero tattoos, but then\u00a0he got four in one day and then two a few days later. He would have gotten more, but, like a bartender, the tattoo artist cut him off. Since returning to New York, he\u2019s added\u00a0three\u00a0more. It\u2019s been a spiritual and physical metamorphosis for him. I\u2019ve never seen him happier. But not everyone is able to pull the trigger, just like that. I still can\u2019t decide what to eat for lunch, and few words scare me more than\u00a0expensive<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0permanent<\/em>. Luckily, you don\u2019t need to get a tattoo to enjoy them.\u00a0<\/b>I\u2019ve found a bunch of amazing tattoo artists on Instagram, many through @tattoosnob, which posts images and links to artists\u2019 accounts. Even now that I\u2019ve caught grayscale and look at everything on my phone in black and white, I still enjoy artists like: @losingshape @henbohenning @shouldworry @Sansbavures @seanfromtexas @winstonthewhale @Guillame_smashtattoo @davewahtattoos @vincent_denis @michellemaddison @azamp_ @Otto_dambra\u00a0 @virginiaelwood @joel_soos @Daisydoestattoos @KillingJakob2 @slowerblack @rachelhauer @taticompton @mikerubendall @toothtaker @robertryan @sewp @jakconnollyart @itsjustcavan and a bunch of others. Maybe you\u2019ll never get a tattoo, or maybe you\u2019ll get covered from head to toe in Fleetwood Mac lyrics and not get buried in a Jewish cemetery. Who can say? In the meantime, Instagram is much less annoying when the selfies and targeted advertising are broken up with beautiful tattoos. \u2014Brent Katz<\/strong><\/a>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I\u2019ve long admired Eddie Martinez\u2019s wild, colorful abstractions, but until now, I\u2019d never seen them in person. This week, I saw half of a show at two New York locations of the gallery Mitchell-Innes\u00a0& Nash. In Chelsea, a block from our office, is a suite of big paintings called \u201cLove Letters.\u201d Each of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[438],"tags":[32964,32950,32961,32953,32947,32949,32959,32951,26079,31835,32954,13335,32960,32958,32963,32957,32948,23467,3319,160,32956,32962,32965,32952,264,32955],"class_list":["post-121664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-a-long-way-from-home","tag-america-is-not-the-heart","tag-berline-symphony-of-a-metropolis","tag-death-grips","tag-eddie-martinez","tag-elaine-castillo","tag-empire-state-building","tag-jpegmafia","tag-king-kong","tag-letters-to-a-young-poet","tag-lil-uzi-vert","tag-love-letters","tag-man-with-a-movie-camera","tag-manhatta","tag-matteo-nangeroni","tag-metal-gear","tag-mitchell-innes-and-nash","tag-nyrb-classics","tag-peter-carey","tag-rainer-maria-rilke","tag-roland-ahh-sample","tag-tattoo-snob","tag-the-life-and-opinions-of-zacharias-lichter","tag-veteran","tag-walt-whitman","tag-yeezus"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStaff Picks: Tattoos, Death Grips, and Love Letters<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 discusses JPEGMAFIA\u2019s latest album, Elaine Castillo\u2019s debut novel, and Instagram\u2019s ink artists.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/16\/staff-picks-tattoos-death-grips-love-letters\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Staff Picks: Tattoos, Death Grips, and Love Letters by The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"February 16, 2018 \u2013   I\u2019ve long admired Eddie Martinez\u2019s wild, colorful abstractions, but until now, I\u2019d never seen them in person. 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