{"id":131704,"date":"2018-12-14T14:00:09","date_gmt":"2018-12-14T19:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=131704"},"modified":"2018-12-14T15:32:09","modified_gmt":"2018-12-14T20:32:09","slug":"staff-picks-sports-sontag-and-scheherazade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/12\/14\/staff-picks-sports-sontag-and-scheherazade\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Sports, Sontag, and Scheherazade"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

SLASH<\/i>. Image courtesy of Emily Allan and Leah Hennessey.<\/p><\/div>\n

Emily Allan and Leah Hennessey\u2019s play SLASH<\/em><\/a> is so enjoyable it\u2019s like having dessert for two hours with no intermission. One advertisement describes it as an \u201cattempt to transcend the banality of identity and the terror of consciousness,\u201d but I prefer the Instagram promo with an image of Camille Paglia in men\u2019s clothing wielding a switchblade in front of a urinal. That\u2019s much closer to the play\u2019s prankish genius. Every dynamic (or adversarial) duo from popular culture whom you\u2019ve probably been obsessed with at some point appears for a romping ten minutes or so, from Spock and Captain Kirk to Lennon and McCartney to Morrissey and Johnny Marr. The hints of homosexuality in these pairings are the source of a great deal of the comedy: it\u2019s the most fun meditation on the collaboration eroticism since Wayne Koestenbaum\u2019s Double Talk<\/em>. The best bit is probably the one that\u2019s getting the most hype, a reenactment of some shade from the early nineties thrown around by Paglia and Susan Sontag, but take my advice\u2014wait for the real thing and don\u2019t watch the clip of it online from last year. In person, Allan (Paglia) and Hennessey (Sontag) sound so much like their respective muses that if you close your eyes, you\u2019ll have an opinion on The Volcano Lover<\/em> again. SLASH<\/em> runs through Thursday, January 31, at MX Gallery in Chinatown. \u2014<\/strong>Ben Shields\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Spotify just informed me that my most listened to song of 2018\u2014above even \u201cFemmebot\u201d by Charli XCX\u2014is a floaty, almost half-hour-long drone called \u201cBeing Here<\/a>,\u201d by a seventy-five-year-old New Age artist named Laraaji. If you\u2019re writing or studying in a city like New York, playing this song in your earbuds is like activating a force field. A lot of ambient music makes me feel like I\u2019ve woken up in a simulated reality. For me, a defamiliarizing anxiety feels redundant in 2018. But Laraaji\u2019s notes are reassuring\u2014and somehow optimistic. He was a comedian before he became a musician, and he seems like the kind of guy who sleeps flat on his back with an enormous smile on his face. A street musician in the seventies, he happened to be playing in Washington Square Park when Brian Eno, the Socrates of New Age, heard his zither and offered him a record contract. Since I discovered Laraaji\u2019s music, I feel like I see his Jeff Goldblum\u2013like twinkle everywhere I google. He teaches \u201claughter meditation\u201d and recently dropped a new EP, Arrive without Leaving<\/em>. We may live in a distorted, unfunny rendition of Jerzy Kosinski<\/a>\u2019s Being There\u2014<\/em>but at least we also have Laraaji\u2019s \u201cBeing Here.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Brent Katz<\/strong><\/p>\n

As my colleagues are well aware, I\u2019m somewhat obsessed with the work of the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature. While here in the U.S. she\u2019s probably best known for her 1983 novel,\u00a0The Piano Teacher<\/em>, she\u2019s also a prolific playwright and essayist in her native German, exploring such themes as Europe\u2019s asylum policies (The Supplicants<\/em>), the Charlie Hebdo<\/em> shooting in Paris (Anger<\/em>), and even the election of Donald Trump (2017\u2019s On the Royal Road: The Burgher King<\/em>). I\u2019d never read any of her plays until last week, when I picked up\u00a0Sports Play<\/em><\/a>, her 1998 look at the contemporary primacy of sports culture. But even as someone lacking much of a background in theater, I\u2019m now a convert. What\u2019s it about? That\u2019s not entirely easy to say\u2014it\u2019s essentially plotless, composed instead of a dense series of monologues concerning the culture of sports and the obsession with gym-honed human bodies. Sports as war is a reoccurring motif, as is the history of sports and even a few obliquely autobiographical references to the death of Jelinek\u2019s father. Like all of Jelinek\u2019s work, it\u2019s intense, strange, cruel, and at times mischievous. It\u2019s also completely brilliant, even just read on the page, and I\u2019m now intensely curious to see what it\u2019s like performed onstage.\u00a0\u2014Rhian Sasseen<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Elfriede Jelinek.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Come here, beckons the translator Yasmine Seale, as if holding in a secret: \u201cI want to show you some wonderful things.\u201d In her new translation of Aladdin<\/em><\/a>, Seale provides a scintillating lens through which to view \u201cthe tale that has never stopped traveling\u201d: the story of a boy and his magical lamp. Paired with a riveting introduction by Paulo Lemos Horta, Seale\u2019s work acknowledges the tangled history of Aladdin,<\/em> from its initial appearance in French literature in 1709 to its controversial Disney adaptation in 1992. Seale and Horta uncover that Aladdin<\/em> is one of the handful of \u201corphan tales\u201d that snuck into Antoine Galland\u2019s French translation of The\u00a0<\/em>Thousand and One Nights<\/em> after Galland heard it recounted by a nomadic Syrian storyteller. Since then, Aladdin<\/em> has accumulated countless many more layers of voices spanning from Charles Dickens to Salman Rushdie. However, instead of severing or distinguishing herself from Aladdin<\/em>\u2019s complicated origin, Seale approaches her own translation mindful of the story\u2019s Syrian-French hybridity as well as its context in the greater framework of the narratives of Scheherazade. What results is an elaborate poetic tapestry so glamorous and delightful that you can\u2019t help but want to read again.\u00a0\u2014Madeline Day<\/strong><\/p>\n

I walked into a ten-thirty showing of\u00a0Mandy<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>worrying that I might fall asleep. When I left two hours later, I wondered how I could go to bed: even my weirdest dreams can\u2019t compare to the churning beauty of Panos Cosmatos\u2019s new film, in which every shot is a murky molasses nightmare.\u00a0Mandy<\/em> has been pitched as a revenge flick \u00e1 la\u00a0John Wick<\/em>, which it is, as well as as a religious-cult film, which it also is, but neither of these labels is entirely accurate. This is a midnight movie in the classic sense, a howling shaggy dog that\u2019s as much Jodorowsky as it is Sunn O))), and like many midnight movies,\u00a0Mandy<\/em>\u00a0shrugs away labels and demands you meet it on its own terms. The plot is slow, almost as sludgy as the soundtrack\u2019s metal guitars. The camerawork, incredible as it is, crawls, ensuring that every scene lasts a full minute longer than you\u2019re expecting it to. But once you learn the rules of\u00a0Mandy<\/em>, it\u2019s impossible not to be charmed.\u00a0There are chainsaw fights, crossbows with scopes, stupidly huge blades. A good deal of this charm can be attributed to Cage, who gives an incredible performance. He stumbles into a well-lit bathroom, roars as he guzzles vodka straight from the bottle and pours it onto his wounds. He headbutts demon bikers, smears blood on his face, lights cigarettes on flaming skulls. When the final scene rolled around\u2014in which Cage is grinning, drenched in red light\u2014I, too, was grinning just as wildly, and I realized that I was looking in a mirror: seeing this strange beast of a man, unhinged, and recognizing myself in him. Great art lifts you out of yourself, and Cage\u2019s special talent is to lift you out of your own body, yes, but also to place you in his own, to force you to tap into the horrible static of being alive.\u00a0\u2014Brian Ransom<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 floats in happy drone music, considers sports culture, and dreams of Nicolas Cage.<\/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":[5551,8046,13861,44318,44327,13504,26809,44312,44313,10918,32685,44307,1203,44315,16528,9651,19381,44319,21899,44320,18225,44317,44311,15942,1273,44325,9036,12594,11535,3208,44335,44331,44314,44332,6879,13202,44336,46,44310,23246,11510,4279,11770,44323,44333,21515,432,1856,44330,18831,44308,18731,85,44326,44322,3515,44316,44334,501,44324,44321,44329,44309,44,25743,5596,44328],"class_list":["post-131704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-aladdin","tag-alejandro-jodorowsky","tag-anger","tag-arrive-without-leaving","tag-asylum","tag-austria","tag-austrian","tag-being-here","tag-being-there","tag-bodies","tag-camille-paglia","tag-captain-kirk","tag-charles-dickens","tag-charli-xcx","tag-charlie-hebdo","tag-chinatown","tag-donald-trump","tag-drone","tag-drone-music","tag-droning","tag-elfriede-jelinek","tag-ep","tag-femmebot","tag-french-literature","tag-german","tag-gym","tag-horror","tag-jeff-goldblum","tag-jerzy-kosinski","tag-john-lennon","tag-john-wick","tag-lamp","tag-laraaji","tag-mandy","tag-meditation","tag-metal","tag-midnight-movie","tag-music","tag-mx-gallery","tag-new-age","tag-nicolas-cage","tag-nobel-prize","tag-nobel-prize-in-literature","tag-on-the-royal-road-the-burgher-king","tag-panos-cosmatos","tag-paul-mccartney","tag-play","tag-salman-rushdie","tag-scheherazade","tag-slash","tag-spock","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-sports-culture","tag-sports-play","tag-spotify","tag-street-musician","tag-sunn-o","tag-susan-sontag","tag-the-piano-teacher","tag-the-supplicants","tag-the-thousand-and-one-nights","tag-the-volcano-lover","tag-theater","tag-trump","tag-washington-square-park","tag-yasmine-seale"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStaff 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