{"id":129988,"date":"2018-10-12T13:00:29","date_gmt":"2018-10-12T17:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=129988"},"modified":"2018-10-12T13:13:06","modified_gmt":"2018-10-12T17:13:06","slug":"staff-picks-potters-porridge-bowls-and-pastries-as-existential-truths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/10\/12\/staff-picks-potters-porridge-bowls-and-pastries-as-existential-truths\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Potters, Porridge Bowls, and Pastries as Existential Truths"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Kathy Butterly, Yellow Glow<\/i>, 2018, clay and glaze, 6 1\/2″ x 9 7\/8″ x 7″.<\/p><\/div>\n

There are several things I miss about living in Louisiana, one of them being its proximity to Mississippi and the strange wonder of the Ohr-O\u2019Keefe Museum of Art<\/a>, the Frank Gehry\u2013designed pottery museum across the street from the Gulf in the south of the state. There resides a permanent collection of George Ohr, the Mad Potter of Biloxi, an artist who did strange and amazing things with form (some critics say he anticipated abstraction), wonderful and wonky things with color (see the shimmering multicolor glazes), and generally elevated mud into fine art. Lucky for me\u2014lucky for all of us within spitting distance of West Chelsea\u2014Kathy Butterly\u2019s ceramics are on display at James Cohan Gallery<\/a>\u00a0through October 20 (with an artist talk this Saturday). Citing Ohr as an influence, Butterly takes familiar forms\u2014she starts by pouring clay into casts made from store-bought vessels\u2014then she smashes and smooshes them, layering on more clay, adding arms and antennae and other bits until she\u2019s crafted a different sort of delight. Note the nooks and crannies of her pieces, the piping and edging and little leaflike appendages that dress her human-scale ceramics. And the colors: I held my nose close to a piece that was bubble gum and seafoam and moss, with these little rivulets of Gatorade orange\u2014a swirl of glazes achieved by firing her creations again and again (sometimes upwards of thirty times). Pro tip: don\u2019t miss the nail polish\u2014it\u2019s another way into the head of a master colorist. \u2014Emily Nemens<\/strong><\/p>\n

Inflatable pools, plastic flamingos, tea leaves, and trains: all these objects (and wait, there\u2019s more!) are packed into David Orr\u2019s debut poetry collection, Dangerous Household Items<\/em><\/a>. With his trademark drollery and endlessly perceptive wit, Orr explores the more sinister aspects of suburban life. Abandoned tools are imbued with nefarious appetites. Pastries are parsed into existential truths. With this curious collection, Orr crosses the threshold to his new role as both critic and poet the same way \u201ca coin bears with ease its two faces\u201d (as he describes in his poem \u201cChameleon\u201d). For more than a decade, Orr\u2019s career as a columnist for the New York Times Book Review<\/em> has been dedicated to dismantling the world of poetry the same way one might deconstruct an old piece of furniture or a memory. These objects\u2014abstract or otherwise\u2014must be reexamined, their habits and uses determined (and, afterward, very possibly recycled with the old newspapers). It is an absolute treat to peer out at the world from Orr\u2019s scrutinizing eyes, to reevaluate anything we might foolishly think of as familiar.\u00a0\u2014Madeline Day<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Still from The Night of the Hunter<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Joan Didion, in her 1973 essay \u201cIn Hollywood,\u201d compares the film industry to a casino, writing: \u201cThe place makes everyone a gambler \u2026 The action itself is the art form, and is described in aesthetic terms: \u2018A very imaginative deal,\u2019 they say.\u201d Often abstracted from the actual process of filmmaking, the studios are less invested in the stories they tell than in the financial story of those stories. It is both curse and blessing that Hollywood is guided by a numerical fixation that, while often excising what is most alive in a film, can also grade into a benign neglect, an ecumenical generosity. Somewhat blind in their height to occurrences on the ground, the studios occasionally, unknowingly, sanction strange and wonderful collaborations. Billy Wilder, in his Paris Review<\/em> Art of Screenwriting interview<\/a>, tells of working with the novelist Raymond Chandler on the script for Double Indemnity<\/em>, though \u201cChandler had never been inside a studio.\u201d Chandler\u2019s first pass \u201chad some good phrases of dialogue\u201d but was otherwise \u201cabsolute bullshit.\u201d Yet the studio let them hash out the script for months together until Chandler abruptly quit, and Double Indemnity<\/em> is a masterpiece. William Faulkner, hired by MGM, sat for three bored, lacerating months in a cramped lot office with venetian blinds, contributed to the wonderful adaptation of Chandler\u2019s The Big Sleep<\/em>, then, presumably made soul-sick by the uncrinkled, unlidded, uniform blue of the Los Angeles sky, escaped back to Mississippi. MGM, unaware, continued to send his checks. And my favorite film, 1955\u2019s The Night of the Hunter<\/em>, playing this Saturday at BAM<\/small><\/a>, was the result of an unintuitive collaboration enabled by the anonymized casino atmosphere of Hollywood. It should be unwatchable, at best a curio. Written by the American novelist and journalist James Agee, drinking himself to death that year; directed by Charles Laughton, a jowly, classically trained English actor directing what would be his only film; and starring the film-noir icon Robert Mitchum as an ingratiating, psychotic, itinerant Southern preacher with allegorical tattoos and a rich baritone, it is a menacing fairy tale steeped in backwoods Americana, shot like a German Expressionist silent movie. A beautiful, haunted film, drawing qualities from each of its disparate makers, it hums and pulses like a living thing. And like any living thing, it is a product of blind chance. \u2014Matt Levin<\/strong><\/p>\n

I go long periods without checking Anne Boyer\u2019s Twitter feed<\/a>\u00a0in order to make available the pleasure of reading a dozen or two posts at a time, rather than a maddeningly inadequate two or three. But despite the fact that I like all of Boyer\u2019s books and perk up whenever I read a single sentence she\u2019s written, I\u2019m a late arrival to her newsletter, Mirabilary<\/em><\/a>. Something between her diary and her Twitter, it\u2019s an infrequent but essential avenue for Boyer fans\u2014if nothing else for the recommended reading. Boethius\u2019s\u00a0Consolation of Philosophy<\/em>, Djuna Barnes\u2019s Ryder<\/em>, and Ibn \u1e6cufayl\u2019s \u1e24ayy ibn Yaq\u1e93\u0101n<\/em>\u00a0are some of the titles under discussion. (Boyer, currently a fellow at Cambridge, may relate to Boethius\u2019s turn to poetry in isolation.) Here\u2019s what may be my favorite Mirabilary<\/em>\u00a0extract, from the third entry: \u201cThat just anyone can read a book has always been top of my list of the reasons to never write one. What if something I have written delights a Silicon Valley tech-lord or a cruel and boorish person or a narrow, suspicious, puritanical adherent to self-improvement or someone who believes that literature is for some elite class of people to whom they themselves belong?\u201d Now, as I recommend Mirabilary<\/em> on our modestly popular platform, I wonder if I\u2019m betraying what\u2019s good about Boyer\u2019s newsletter, inviting the uninvited, laying it into the wrong hands. Yet what if a boorish puritan, like Saul on the way to Damascus, sees the Mirabilarian light?\u00a0\u2014Ben Shields<\/strong><\/p>\n

The week I turned thirty ended with wine on the roof and a few friends who are family. Thirty being a monumental kind of birthday, we all wondered together: What is a family? Will we have one of our own? As conversations clotted off into private little pockets, a pal and I spoke about why she had gifted me Love, Nina<\/em><\/a>. She wouldn\u2019t need much of a reason. Being a reader of the London Review of Books<\/em> amounts to me to a kind of religious identification, and Love, Nina<\/em> collects the letters of the\u00a0LRB\u00a0<\/em>editor\u00a0Mary-Kay Wilmers\u2019s onetime nanny. In 1982, Wilmers was the deputy editor of the LRB<\/em> and separated from her husband. Nina Stibbe, who moved to London to nanny for Wilmers\u2019s two young sons, was away from her sister back in Leicestershire and, lucky for us, wrote her quite regularly with tidbits. Young Nina has a charming voice and loves with no small amount of skepticism the urbane world she\u2019s settled into. She loves especially the wee lads in her charge\u2014Sam, ten and a half, and Will, nine\u2014who, when Nina breaks Sam\u2019s porridge bowl, have this exchange:<\/p>\n

Will: Don\u2019t worry, Sam, you can use my porridge bowl.
\nSam: Don\u2019t be stupid\u2014it\u2019s got \u201cWill\u2019s Bloody Porridge Bowl\u201d written on it.
\nMe [Nina]: No one will know.
\nSam: I\u2019m not using it. I\u2019m going back to mashed potato.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or, later on:<\/p>\n

Will got 89% for a science test (The Water Cycle\u2014an annotated illustration).
\nWill: My picture was OK, but I dropped a percent for drawing a smiley face on my sun.
\nMe: What\u2019s wrong with a smiley face on the sun?
\nWill: It\u2019s not scientific.
\nSam: What\u2019s a water cycle?
\nMe: An underwater bike.
\nMK: Don\u2019t tell him that.
\nSam: It\u2019s not scientific.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The best part of the book, though, is Nina, without being overawed, falling in thrall to Mary-Kay\u2019s quiet good judgment and intelligence.<\/p>\n

Me: Right, we\u2019re off to Brian\u2019s.
\nMK: Aren\u2019t you going to put some shoes on?
\nMe: No, I hate my shoes.
\nMK: Well get some nice ones.
\nMe: I never see any.
\nMK: Have a look in Brian\u2019s.
\nMe: Brian\u2019s is only for kids.
\nMK: First bare feet, then kids\u2019 shoes, then adult shoes. One step at a time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Alan Bennett is always around for dinner, and slowly, Nina realizes she\u2019d like to go to university and does, and jokes with the boys are joined by jokes about Sam Shepard. But Love, Nina<\/em> is evidence that an intelligent life can also be family life. How should a person be, really? As my friends and I reach our thirties, I\u2019m putting my vote in for Mary-Kay Wilmers. \u2014Julia Berick<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Nina Stibbe.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 considers the grand roulette of Hollywood, admires casts of smooshed clay, and delights in Anne Boyer tweets by the dozen.<\/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":[2913,35,1684,7973,23084,16791,38724,38720,1987,6479,38723,38716,38725,995,38727,38722,9894,1362,38717,1050,759,38729,38714,20433,5326,5823,38721,38728,38730,38715,16790,4769,26077,38726,964,883,11443,26076,38718,3581,38719],"class_list":["post-129988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-alan-bennett","tag-art","tag-bam","tag-billy-wilder","tag-boethius","tag-ceramics","tag-charles-laughton","tag-dangerous-household-items","tag-david-orr","tag-djuna-barnes","tag-double-indemnity","tag-frank-gehry","tag-german-expressionism","tag-hollywood","tag-ibn-ufayl","tag-in-hollywood","tag-james-agee","tag-joan-didion","tag-kathy-butterly","tag-london","tag-london-review-of-books","tag-love-nina","tag-mad-potter-of-biloxi","tag-mary-kay-wilmers","tag-mgm","tag-mississippi","tag-new-york-times-book-review","tag-newsletter","tag-nina-stibbe","tag-ohr-okeefe-museum-of-art","tag-pottery","tag-raymond-chandler","tag-robert-mitchum","tag-ryder","tag-sculpture","tag-staff-picks","tag-the-big-sleep","tag-the-night-of-the-hunter","tag-west-chelsea","tag-william-faulkner","tag-yellow-glow"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStaff 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