{"id":126061,"date":"2018-06-01T13:00:05","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T17:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=126061"},"modified":"2018-06-01T15:46:58","modified_gmt":"2018-06-01T19:46:58","slug":"staff-picks-utopia-lapsed-christians-and-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/06\/01\/staff-picks-utopia-lapsed-christians-and-artificial-intelligence\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Utopia, Lapsed Christians, and Artificial Intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

 <\/p>\n

It may be the humidity this week, but I\u2019ve felt as though in a fever dream while reading R.\u2009O. Kwon\u2019s remarkable novel,\u00a0The Incendiaries<\/em><\/a>. Every page blooms with sensuous language\u2014\u201cpaper-lantern strings pearled the lawn\u201d;\u00a0\u201cplates leaped from the shelves, white fragments like giant teeth gnashing toward us\u201d; \u201clawns floated wide, like magic carpets\u201d\u2014and\u00a0the book\u2019s mood is otherworldly, even if its setting, a wealthy college in the\u00a0Northeast, isn\u2019t. Chapters are distributed among three characters: Will Kendall, a scholarship student and lapsed Christian; Phoebe, a wealthy student guilt-ridden over her mother\u2019s death; and John Leal, a would-be cult leader. Each plays out a different form of fanaticism, one no less dangerous than another, and Kwon weaves her characters\u2019 lives together with one hand while unraveling them with the other. These are characters in quiet crisis, burning, above all, to know themselves, and Kwon leads them, confidently, to an enthralling end.\u00a0\u2014Nicole Rudick<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I have mentioned in staff picks past that\u00a0I love going to the movies<\/a>, and so I recently had the unique and lucky experience of feeling personally addressed by Donna Masini\u2019s new poetry collection,\u00a04:30<\/span><\/span>\u00a0Movie<\/i><\/a>. The overarching metaphors of film and movie-going appear gracefully in Masini’s poems, in which she reckons with the loss of a loved one to terminal illness. We go to the movies for many reasons, and often it is to experience a momentary reprieve, an escape\u2014again, for many reasons. In the moments after we leave the theater, there lingers that feeling of removal from reality. Whether you\u2019ve been grieving or escaping or just passing time, that period is strange and wonderful. Masini\u2019s first poem, \u201cLights Go Down at the Angelika\u201d renders it perfectly:<\/p>\n

You’re almost here. But what you want
\nis the\u00a0after<\/i>. How yourself you are now
\nwalking into the night, full moon over Houston Street,<\/p>\n

at the bright fruit stand touching the yellow
\nmums. Here you are: Woman With Cilantro
\nlistening to the rattle of the wrap,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

the paper sound paper makes after you
\nhave heard movie paper. Apples are more\u00a0apples<\/i>.
\nPaper more\u00a0paper<\/i>. Cilantro, its sweaty green self.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014Lauren Kane<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Tucked somewhere between the true crime, comedy, and true-crime-comedy podcasts on my phone is Gimlet Media\u2019s\u00a0Sandra<\/em><\/a>, a sci-fi-thriller starring the voices of Alia Shawkat, Kristen Wiig, Christopher Abbott, and Ethan Hawke. As I was perusing the farmer\u2019s market last Sunday I began listening to the first episode and by the time I was cooking dinner, I had arrived at the breathless end, still hungry for more. The story centers on Helen, a young woman who aches for a life other than her own. She has just started a new job at Orbital Teledynamics as one of the many people behind the curtain of Sandra, an A.I. akin to Siri or Alexa. Listening to\u00a0Sandra<\/em>\u00a0is like watching a particularly elegant episode of\u00a0Black Mirror<\/em>\u2014there\u2019s a fervent desire to know what comes next, tinged with the queasiness that it can\u2019t be good. I won\u2019t say any more. You\u2019ll have to hear it for yourself. \u00a0\u2014Eleonore Condo<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christ Stopped at Eboli<\/em> is a study in traps: Carlo Levi enters the book in handcuffs as a political prisoner exiled for crimes against a fascist regime. The book is a memoir of Levi\u2019s time as a political prisoner in Gagliano, a town tiny to the point of inanity in which I gleaned a family resemblance to the bleaker hallucination of Fellini\u2019s and Antonini\u2019s Italian countryside and the more dizzying patterns of Calvino\u2019s Invisible Cities<\/em>. The aristocracy of the town all hate each other because of perceived crimes committed in the eighteenth\u00a0century, and the peasants to whom the book is dedicated live in the hopeless cruelty of bureaucracy. They are asked to kill all their goats because the government has decided to focus on the growth of grain, a crop to which their drought-drenched hills are ill-suited. Spells and philters haunt the town, and Levi is warned by many townfolk against the potions of local witches, including his housekeeper. \u201cNew Yorkers\u201d speckle the story. That is, Gaglianos who had gone to New York with hopes and aspirations, who return and slip into the Brigadoon<\/em> of hometown sweethearts, bad harvests, and narrowing horizons. Two years into his exile, Levi is released by distant dictate. The other prisoners are gone by morning. Levi lingers on for ten days\u2014the tiny prison of passions, grudges and poverty had become his home.\u00a0\u2014Julia Berick<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

In David Byrne\u2019s 2008 Creative Time installation, \u201cPlaying the Building<\/a>,\u201d he reorients an antique organ to \u201cplay\u201d the beams,\u00a0columns, pipes, and other dusty\/rusty architectural elements of the massive Battery Maritime building via a complex system of wires. Having spent some time there\u2014several weeks of Fridays, in fact, as a Creative Time volunteer\u2014trying to discern the organization of wires and keys and what went where, I was surprised to hear that the tour for his most recent album, American Utopia<\/i><\/a>, was wire-free.\u00a0When I first read that, I thought \u201cunplugged,\u201d which made me think Nirvana (I am from Seattle, of a certain era, after all), but American Utopia<\/i> is the opposite of Kurt and his cardigan: a dozen musicians, entirely mobile by way of wireless pickups and a smartly divided drum kit (there were six percussionists, plus the one broad-shouldered man who proudly marched a keyboard for several hours) paraded around the stage. And what a parade it was: through the new album and old favorites, through song and dance (the backup singers had some serious moves), through a smart light show that turned the gray-on-gray set and costumes (matching suits) into a veritable kaleidoscope.\u00a0I caught American Utopia<\/i> in western Canada, of all places, but Byrne and his posse are in Chicago this weekend, and back on the East Coast later this summer. It\u2019s worth seeing him, if you can. Byrne\u2019s might be the only utopia we have at the moment, but it\u2019s a good one. \u2014Emily Nemens<\/strong><\/p>\n

New York Review Books just published the first-ever English translation of The Seventh Cross<\/i><\/a>, a novel by Anna Seghers. It tells the story of seven political prisoners who escape from a concentration camp-like Nazi prison. A multitude of voices gets their turn as the escapees flee across Germany and pass through the rest of their lives. The prison break, and getaway, gives the novel its thriller-style plot but also allows Seghers to slow down, in moments, and climb into the psyche of common German citizens\u2014a gleeful shepherd, a widowed seamstress, an aging paperhanger. In the process, she explores how the era\u2019s groupthink, mass distrust, and pervasive totalitarianism changed the way good people think and react while living under a despotic dictatorial state. \u2014Jeffery Gleaves<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

In the midst of Drake and Pusha T\u2019s muddled post-millenium rap-and-notes-app beef, I would like to offer an alternative to replace Drake altogether:\u00a0Smino<\/a>, a St. Louis\u2013born, self-described \u201ccountry motherfucker\u201d who walks my favorite line between dreamy R&B and demanding hip-hop. From what I can tell, Drake\u2019s music is attractive because it offers relatable, if selfish, emotions over unobtrusive beats and singable hooks. Smino offers complicated and nuanced lyrics, often also about sex and relationships, accompanied by an unfailing insistence on having fun with making music. After a particularly complicated riff at a show last night at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, he paused to say into the microphone, \u201cThat shit feel good, don\u2019t it?\u201d And of course it did, just like it feels good to bounce home listening to \u201cAnita,\u201d one of the most popular absolute jams of the many on last year\u2019s\u00a0blkswn<\/a><\/i>. I\u2019m just trying to offer solutions; I loved \u201cNice for What\u201d as much as the next girl, but the longer this concert last night went on, the less worth it it felt to deal with Drake\u2019s constant whining just for the sake of bounce remixes of Lauryn Hill.\u00a0\u2014Eleanor Pritchett\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  It may be the humidity this week, but I\u2019ve felt as though in a fever dream while reading R.\u2009O. Kwon\u2019s remarkable novel,\u00a0The Incendiaries. Every page blooms with sensuous language\u2014\u201cpaper-lantern strings pearled the lawn\u201d;\u00a0\u201cplates leaped from the shelves, white fragments like giant teeth gnashing toward us\u201d; \u201clawns floated wide, like magic carpets\u201d\u2014and\u00a0the book\u2019s mood is […]<\/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":[34290,34285,34282,34297,34293,34295,34294,34287,34283,1415,34291,20035,34286,34298,34288,34284,34296,34289,34292],"class_list":["post-126061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-430-movie","tag-alia-shawkat","tag-american-utopia","tag-anita","tag-anna-seghers","tag-carlo-levi","tag-christ-stopped-at-eboli","tag-christopher-abbott","tag-creative-time","tag-david-byrne","tag-donna-masini","tag-drake","tag-kristen-wiif","tag-pusha-t","tag-r-o-kwon","tag-sandra","tag-smino","tag-the-incendiaries","tag-the-seventh-cross"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStaff Picks: Utopia, Lapsed Christians, and Artificial Intelligence by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week, the staff of 'The Paris Review' reads poems about movies, listens to podcasts about AI, and finds a suitable substitute for Champagne Papi.\" \/>\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\/06\/01\/staff-picks-utopia-lapsed-christians-and-artificial-intelligence\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Staff Picks: Utopia, Lapsed Christians, and Artificial Intelligence by The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"June 1, 2018 \u2013   It may be the humidity this week, but I\u2019ve felt as though in a fever dream while reading R.\u2009O. 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