{"id":128800,"date":"2018-08-24T13:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-08-24T17:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=128800"},"modified":"2018-08-24T13:28:13","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T17:28:13","slug":"staff-picks-documentaries-snapshots-and-glossy-color-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/24\/staff-picks-documentaries-snapshots-and-glossy-color-images\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Documentaries, Snapshots, and Glossy Color Images"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

In his 1962 essay \u2018The Poet and the City,\u2019 WH Auden designs the curriculum of his \u201cdream-day College for Bards.\u201d \u201cThe library would contain no books of literary criticism, and the only critical exercise required of students would be the writing of parodies.\u201d Artful parody, Auden knows, is the most demanding species of critical writing. It requires, simultaneously, an understanding of the parodied work so total that it shades convincingly into empathy (the parodist has to be able to think and create within the boundaries of the parodied work) and an unfaltering critical distance. The parody documentary series Documentary Now!<\/a> <\/em>on the IFC channel\u2014created by Bill Hader, Fred Armisen, Seth Meyers, and Rhys Thomas\u2014is a sustained masterclass in just such artistic acrobatics. The series rambles back and forth through the history of documentary\u2014from 1922\u2019s Nanook of the North <\/em>to 2012\u2019s Jiro Dreams of Sushi<\/em>\u2014producing unpretentious 21-minute gems that crystallize and elaborate some aspect of the source classic.<\/em> They are as much commentary as they are comedy, but they are in fact very funny, and often quite affecting\u2014Bill Hader is, I believe, without qualification one of the best working American actors. These are films that the creators have deep affection for, and they put in astonishing, obsessive, painstakingly loving effort to re-create their look and texture, apparently even going so far as to track down the original lenses that Errol Morris used to shoot The Thin Blue Line<\/em>. Finishing an episode, I want nothing more than to go and immediately watch the original again, to marvel at both the technical and critical achievement of Documentary Now!<\/em> and the fresh light it retrospectively casts. \u2014Matt Levin\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

A handsome new volume of Diogenes Laertius\u2019s\u00a0Lives of the Eminent Philosophers<\/em><\/a>\u00a0provides an opportunity to revisit the biographer and the popular assumptions about him. I am delighted to have acquired Pamela Mensch\u2019s new translation of his major work,\u00a0<\/em>an edition you can\u2019t read on the subway but whose large dimensions are redeemed by the readable translation, glossy color images, and a collection of new accompanying essays (The New School\u2019s James Miller is the editor). Diogenes is the gatekeeper of ancient philosophy, yet who he really was is still a secret. The lengthy chapter on Epicurus is essential reading for those who care, as it reprints several letters by the controversial philosopher that elucidate (albeit densely) some finer points of his worldview that would be lost to us otherwise. \u2018Epicurean\u2019 is still a colloquially misapplied term for self-indulgence, and has been for over two thousand years, diminishing one of the most interesting philosophical schools in world history\u2014the seriousness of Laertius\u2019 treatment of Epicurus suggests he himself may have been one of his followers. Of the scholarly essays, I most enjoyed Glenn W. Most\u2019s \u201cDiogenes Laertius and Nietzsche\u201d for its reassessment of Nietzsche\u2019s study of Diogenes, a largely forgotten element of his oeuvre. Biographies can certainly get far more scandalous than\u00a0Lives<\/em>, but the personal lives of our intellectual ancestors are always juicy, forbidden fruits. \u2014Ben Shields<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve all had bad days. Days with cold showers, stubbed toes, and telemarketers. Days with slow drivers and missed trains and hangovers. Marquis de Sade\u2019s\u00a0Justine\u00a0<\/i>(also known as\u00a0The Misfortunes of Virtue<\/i>) is a satirical ode to all the things you just can\u2019t control. The story of the unfortunate twelve-year-old, Justine, is in short, appalling. She begins her tale as an penniless orphan wrongfully accused of theft and forced to join a gang, and it only gets worse from there. (If you\u2019d like an idea of some of the \u201cmisfortunes\u201d that transpire, take a look at \u2018Sadism Illustrated\u2019<\/span><\/a>). Due to Sade\u2019s reputation as an erotic writer, many have dismissed Justine\u2019s tale as purely pornographic. However, within the horrific sexual scenarios and impossibly unfortunate events is an expertly organized philosophical critique of French society during the Revolution and of humanity in general. Is it in our nature to be vicious or virtuous? The trials of Justine provide arguments for both. The novella is peopled by thieves and abductors who engage in remarkably rational and witty rapport with their victim, not unlike when a Disney villain reveals their entire scheme right before enacting it. Usually, though, the hero manages to escape, while in this case, Justine does not. So the next time you get a hangnail or miss your train, I\u2019d recommend\u00a0Justine<\/i>, a hefty dose of moral despair \u00e0 la Marquis de Sade.\u00a0\u2014Madeline Day<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

The children fleeing the Northern Triangle\u2014Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala\u2014only to end up in legal purgatory and detention hell here in the States are refugees. Valeria Luiselli establishes this early in her book-length essay,\u00a0Tell Me How It Ends<\/i><\/a>, and though the assertion seems obvious, the misery burns on. The book\u00a0is a searing indictment of the mishandling of the Central American child migrant crisis.\u00a0Luiselli\u00a0insists that the ways we frame narratives and the devices we use to tell stories have a meaningful impact on the world.\u00a0\u201cIn the media and much of the official political discourse, the word \u2018illegal\u2019 prevails over \u2018undocumented\u2019 and the term \u2018immigrant\u2019 over \u2018refugee,\u2019\u201d she writes. \u201cHow would anyone who is stigmatized as an \u2018illegal immigrant\u2019 feel \u2018safe\u2019 and \u2018happy\u2019?\u201d\u00a0Language matters. In the hands of the oppressor, it divides, dehumanizes, and constricts. Just imagine what could happen if we paid attention and used words and stories for good.\u00a0\u2014Brian Ransom\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not next week but the week after, Wave Books will publish a reissue of Danielle Dutton\u2019s 2010 novel\u00a0SPRAWL<\/em><\/a>\u00a0with an afterword by Renee Gladman. I\u2019ve read Dutton\u2019s short fiction (most recently her excellent story \u201cSomehow<\/a>\u201d in our Spring issue), but I picked up the new edition of\u00a0SPRAWL<\/em>\u00a0just this Tuesday. It\u2019s a cousin of Woolf\u2019s stream of consciousness, focused almost entirely outward, and constructs, in the mundane setting of an unnamed suburb, a world of unexpected intensity. Formally,\u00a0SPRAWL<\/em>\u00a0treads deftly and deliberately, operating, for the most part, in the present tense. The vibrancy of the narrator\u2019s exterior world is punctuated by brief moments of interiority expressed with succinct lucidity. The eerie, atmospheric prose eschews even paragraph breaks, reading as one long scroll; the spare formal structure clears space for Dutton\u2019s language to stretch. The novel, in Gladman\u2019s words, is \u201cthe most tactile of all other possible architectures \u2026 I was moving through a world where every nominal thing, every act, every observation, every shift in time, every body passing the window and every body occupying a room in the house of this neighborhood was also an aggregation of marks on a surface\u2026they flattened without hierarchy.\u201d One of the novel\u2019s many successes is that its narrator never succumbs to the malaise baked into the trope of the suburban housewife. Although she is often affectless, she is always keenly aware of her project: \u201cMost of the time I\u2019m pretty much anywhere \u2026 In some sense I\u2019m madly in love, or I\u2019m transformed into a kind of habitat, or I match the wallpaper with my eyes. It\u2019s confusing to have so many plausible alternatives. So I measure our range, our suppleness.\u201d This novel is a captivating exercise of language as a medium, a still life in just over a hundred pages. It ends with an enigmatic last line, an almost apologetic sigh from the narrator telling us she ultimately cannot hold everything at once: \u201cIt takes a long time, maybe eighty-five years, and it is the opposite of a snapshot.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Lauren Kane<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his 1962 essay \u2018The Poet and the City,\u2019 WH Auden designs the curriculum of his \u201cdream-day College for Bards.\u201d \u201cThe library would contain no books of literary criticism, and the only critical exercise required of students would be the writing of parodies.\u201d Artful parody, Auden knows, is the most demanding species of critical writing. […]<\/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":[35164,8691,35168,35163,35165,24031,35169,26830,35167,35166,35170,35171,13781,8700,35162],"class_list":["post-128800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-bill-hader","tag-danielle-dutton","tag-diogenes-laertius","tag-documentary-now","tag-fred-armisen","tag-james-miller","tag-lives-of-the-eminent-philosophers","tag-pamela-mensch","tag-rhys-thomas","tag-seth-meyers","tag-sprawl","tag-tell-me-how-it-ends","tag-valeria-luiselli","tag-wave","tag-wh-auden"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStaff Picks: Documentaries, Snapshots, and Glossy Color Images by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 reads books, watches TV, and reads books.\" 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