{"id":132893,"date":"2019-01-18T13:08:57","date_gmt":"2019-01-18T18:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=132893"},"modified":"2019-01-20T19:25:06","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T00:25:06","slug":"staff-picks-decadence-doodles-and-deep-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/01\/18\/staff-picks-decadence-doodles-and-deep-ends\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Decadence, Doodles, and Deep Ends"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Ana Lu\u00edsa Amaral. Photo: Mattias Blomgren (CC BY-SA 3.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0)), from Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

If you think of poetry as a language at its purest and most distilled, and if you think of a language as, in a sense, a living thing, with a life story as unique and formative as any person\u2019s, then the translation of poetry from one language (whichever) into another (whichever else) seems like the most impossible sort of transplantation: opportunity knocking twice, a miracle that repeats. A good way to see this lightning in a bottle is to pick up What\u2019s in a Name<\/em><\/a>, a collection of work by the Portuguese writer Ana Lu\u00edsa Amaral. (Margaret Jull Costa\u2019s side-by-side translation of the book will be published in March by New Directions.) Amaral has a remarkable gift for making the personal universal and the universal intimate, but for me the real joy of this book is seeing the conversation unfold between the Portuguese and the English, reflecting each other from left to right and back. Like creatures in a myth, nouns become verbs and verbs, nouns; syntax circles back and forth; subjects and voice change. They aren\u2019t the same creature, the English and the Portuguese, but something like each other\u2019s what-if selves. Having the opportunity to hold both before you at once is a truly remarkable gift.\u00a0\u2014Hasan Altaf\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

A doodle of a woman in profile and a painting by Beauford Delaney. A photo of a public execution and another of an afternoon in the garden with friends. An LP playing Take My Hand, Precious Lord<\/em>, a railroad tie, a handful of stones. This motley, meaningful assortment contributes to \u201cGod Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin<\/a>,\u201d on view now at David Zwirner. Curated by Hilton Als (an advisory editor for this magazine), the exhibition amplifies the personal and creative history of one of the twentieth century\u2019s great writers through art, objects, and imaginative inferences. The first section of the exhibition is a creative portrait\u2014a gathering of the biographical details, portraits, and places that give Baldwin dimensionality. Then Als leaps ahead, into an inquiry of Baldwin\u2019s impossible and inevitable future. Here is recent and contemporary art that could not exist without Baldwin\u2019s oeuvre and impact, presented in \u201cplatonic conversation.\u201d Pieces by Kara Walker, Glenn Ligon, Ja\u2019Tovia Gary, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby amplify and reflect Baldwin\u2019s influence not just across generations but also across media.\u00a0\u2014Emily Nemens<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Still from Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

One of my favorite Wendell Berry poems, \u201cFor an Absence,\u201d cocoons its reader in early-morning hush: \u201cAnd when, restless, you wake\u2009\/\u2009and see the room palely lit\u2009\/\u2009by that watching, you will think,\u2009\/\u2009\u2018It is only dawn,\u2019 and go\u2009\/\u2009quiet to sleep again.\u201d The feeling of comfort that Berry creates is one that seems further from our world with every news cycle shouting about our growing proximity to catastrophic environmental change. This week I finally got around to watching the film Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry<\/em><\/a>, which sets images from Berry\u2019s life in Henry County, Kentucky, against interviews with local tobacco farmers to create something between social commentary, moralistic folktale, and a meditation on industrial agriculture. It opens with Berry\u2019s observation \u201cI have grown or aged into difficulty in distinguishing between art and life,\u201d and this echoes throughout the film, which forgoes plot and chronology to portray a dwindling American sensibility that values growth over profit. Much like Berry\u2019s poetry and the cadence of his ongoing voiceover, Look and See<\/em> is quiet and unassuming. This Portrait of Wendell Berry<\/em> is exactly what it claims to be, and an impression of the writer is planted and watered into a narrative of advocacy reflected in the Kentucky farming communities and illustrated through looping footage of each harvest. It is the kind of film that impresses its message without bulldozing, a work of feeling more than fact. In a time that stresses urgency and anxiety, Look and See<\/em> offers an inquiry into our contemporary relationship to nature, and the erasure of American farm life, without demanding immediate action.\u00a0Berry\u2019s diligence allows us to rest, just for a moment, until morning brings fresh eyes to confront the day. \u2014Nikki\u00a0Shaner-Bradford<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019s The Favourite<\/em><\/a> is a comedy of manners as true to the\u00a0bewigged costume design of the eighteenth century as it is to the bawdy absurdity of Restoration theater. I settled into the cinema seat expecting manners, but I didn\u2019t fully expect comedy, and The Favourite<\/em> cracked me up, renewing my faith that there is still smart, satirical work that doesn\u2019t take itself too seriously. The Favourite<\/em>\u00a0is also unafraid to enter entirely into the past, without any of the fussy, mincing presentations most period pieces employ to unbearable effect. Queen Anne wailing about the gout afflicting her legs and vomiting into a pot held out by a footman so that she can continue to eat cake are just two examples of the film\u2019s vivid portrayal of grotesque decadence. The Favourite<\/em> is unique in style, but there\u2019s something else rare about it: the absence of any male lead characters\u2014no male protagonists, no important male love interests. The three main characters, Anne, Sarah, and Abigail (all brilliantly acted), are as uninterested in romance as they are interested in meeting their own needs: for affirmation, for power, for security. Selfish and unapologetic, Lanthimos\u2019s women deliver \u201cunlikable\u201d in spades and, in doing so, become irresistible. \u2014Lauren Kane<\/strong><\/p>\n

I first read Kaitlin Chan on The Margins<\/em><\/a>, the online magazine of the Asian American Writers\u2019 Workshop. \u201cDeep End<\/a>,\u201d a graphic fiction, mourns the loss of the photographer Ren Hang and explores \u201cthe relationships we form with people from afar.\u201d The closing image is my favorite: three figures bathing in a rice cooker filled to the brim with perfect white grains. I see a loneliness\u2014the figures are faceless and turned away from each other\u2014but I also see comfort and peace. Perhaps this is the nature of a reader\u2019s long-distance relationship with any artist: one without explicit dialogue but with a sense of intimacy so intense it\u2019s almost as if the person is sitting\u2014or bathing!\u2014right next to you. The fantasy of a rice cooker as the site of that intimacy is important. I can think of few objects that so reliably stir up a sense of home, and there\u2019s something magical and safe about this staple food and the machine designed for its single sacred purpose. Chan\u2019s rice cooker\u2014and specifically this rendering, in clean black ink on white vellum\u2014exemplifies her broader ability to blend the familiar with the sometime starkness of emotional life: the grief that we cannot always speak to or be physically close to those we love, but the relief of knowing their mere presence in the world helps us survive. In fact, I suppose I\u2019m turning to Chan\u2019s work again now because as a recent transplant to New York, I\u2019m looking to those far away (friends, books, art) to stave off the small lonelinesses inherent to moving to a new place. As Chan turned to Ren Hang, so I turn to her now. I am also an avid follower of her Instagram<\/a>\u00a0and have been thrilled to keep up to date on one of her latest collaborative projects, the Queer Reads Library<\/a>, a collection of internationally sourced queer publications and zines that has already traveled far and wide, from Shanghai to Hong Kong. I\u2019m heartened that queer artists like Chan are actively building this kind of resource. And I\u2019m particularly excited by how the \u201cmobile\u201d aspect of the project embodies the queer impetus (and necessity) to seek and shift. Indeed, the library seems to lean into new places\u2014loneliness again and again\u2014but each time with more dexterity, strength, and flair. Such is the spirit of \u201cDeep End,\u201d and such is the bravery necessary to build communities across borders and the Pacific.\u00a0\u2014Spencer Quong<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Panel from \u201cDeep End,\u201d by Kaitlin Chan, originally published in The Margins<\/em>. Image courtesy of author.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 chuckles through \u2018The Favourite,\u2019 nestles into the work of Kaitlin Chan, and visits the new James Baldwin show at David Zwirner.<\/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":[9616,47342,35,47155,47344,4004,131,47334,7985,5498,47331,24546,47327,29709,71,79,47325,47347,47345,47320,47326,465,384,228,47328,47348,47319,10425,1638,687,504,47323,47324,2960,202,47329,1022,5245,47349,2165,47332,46508,1447,165,10796,47335,47321,9990,1870,354,27522,47333,47351,47350,19820,883,47346,47330,47322,23293,47343,530,29788,47341,28265],"class_list":["post-132893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-agriculture","tag-ana-luisa-amaral","tag-art","tag-asian-american-writers-workshop","tag-beauford-delaney","tag-comic","tag-comics","tag-costume-design","tag-david-zwirner","tag-diaspora","tag-emma-stone","tag-exhibition","tag-farm-life","tag-farmers","tag-fiction","tag-film","tag-for-an-absence","tag-glenn-ligon","tag-god-made-my-face","tag-graphic-fiction","tag-henry-county","tag-hilton-als","tag-home","tag-illustration","tag-industrial-agriculture","tag-jatovia-gray","tag-kaitlin-chan","tag-kara-walker","tag-kentucky","tag-language","tag-literature","tag-look-and-see","tag-look-and-see-a-portrait-of-wendell-berry","tag-margaret-jull-costa","tag-movie","tag-natural-world","tag-nature","tag-new-directions","tag-nijdeka-akunyili-crosby","tag-nonfiction","tag-olivia-colman","tag-picks","tag-poet","tag-poetry","tag-portuguese","tag-queen-anne","tag-queer-reads-library","tag-rachel-weisz","tag-recommendation","tag-recommendations","tag-ren-hang","tag-restoration-theater","tag-rice","tag-rice-cooker","tag-rural-life","tag-staff-picks","tag-take-my-hand-precious-lord","tag-the-favourite","tag-the-margins","tag-tobacco","tag-translate","tag-translation","tag-wendell-berry","tag-whats-in-a-name","tag-wigs"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStaff 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