{"id":139554,"date":"2019-09-13T14:35:36","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T18:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=139554"},"modified":"2019-09-13T15:08:43","modified_gmt":"2019-09-13T19:08:43","slug":"staff-picks-metaphors-messengers-and-melancholy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/09\/13\/staff-picks-metaphors-messengers-and-melancholy\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Metaphors, Messengers, and Melancholy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Jacqueline Novak. Photo: Monique Carboni.<\/p><\/div>\n

Everything about the comedian Jacqueline Novak\u2019s Off-Broadway stand-up show\u2014recently extended through October 6\u2014is clever, beginning with the title: Get on Your Knees<\/em><\/a>. Before the curtain rises in the West Village playhouse, there is the theater within the theater of the audience\u2014on a recent visit, amid the sea of bespectacled, fashionable young women, a famous British television host and an actress from the HBO series Succession<\/em> were in attendance. As the lights go down, it is impossible not to feel a pang of anxiety for Novak, who has promised to entertain this crowd for seventy-five minutes, alone, on a barren gray stage. But she breaks the ice quickly, comparing the moment of approaching the microphone to the palpitating anxiety of moving your way down a lover\u2019s torso until you reach their \u2026 She stands pointedly behind the mic, positioning it at her mouth. \u201cWill she be able to do it?\u201d she asks wryly. The show delivers on its premise: essentially, a dissection of the art of the blowjob, with all the critical faculties and language of a graduate-level seminar. Novak runs through the various words for male anatomy, lingering on the two syllables that make up penis<\/em>, and encourages the audience to whisper the word to themselves. Doggy style, she tells us, should be given a more dignified name: \u201cI prefer to call it the Hound\u2019s Way.\u201d The show is structured around anticipation, the erotic tension of will-she-or-won\u2019t-she, and the ending, an explosion of poetic mania that expands into the profoundly philosophical, is worthy of her buildup. In a moment when the boundaries between high and low culture have all but dissolved, Novak has found one of the few remaining tensions to play with. \u2014Nadja Spiegelman<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

To read a collection by Mary Ruefle is to experience an ideal and intimate conversation. In her latest book, Dunce<\/em><\/a>, as in all her work, she seems to be creating metaphors in real time, appreciating the insights afforded by quotidian objects or small observations of the world around her with a dry and subtle sense of humor. Her poem \u201cMuguet des Bois\u201d begins:<\/p>\n

I was an unopened
\naction figure
\nhidden inside
\nan egg inside
\nan ovary.
\nThe next thing
\nI knew I was
\non the couch
\nreading
\nMadame Bovary<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In another poem, a woman is prompted to consider her own consciousness by \u201cthat sad little oboe note\u201d playing in her heart. In my favorite poem in the collection, she can \u201chear the rain\u2009\/\u2009taking the pins out of her mouth.\u201d Ruefle\u2019s short lines have all the halting thoughtfulness of someone freely associating what they are feeling with concrete and familiar things. She is unafraid of imperfection (\u201cit was simply lying\u2009\/\u2009(laying?) on the floor\u201d) in the way that one can be only when they are saying something to you, something urgent but precious, the way one confides in a friend or a lover. \u2014Lauren Kane<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Ed Clark, Untitled<\/em>, 2008\u201309, acrylic on canvas, 63 1\/2″ x 81″ x 3\/4″. \u00a9 Ed Clark. Photo: Thomas Barratt.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Is it possible that in the second week of September, I\u2019ve already found my favorite art show of the season? Hauser and Wirth has just opened a double whammy, concurrently presenting Ed Clark<\/a> and Amy Sherald<\/a>, on view at the Twenty-Second Street gallery through October 26. Over his long career, Clark, now ninety-three, has mastered his own color-full version of abstract expressionism. In his recent canvases, color and stroke converse. Sometimes it\u2019s a shout\u2014those pops of greens, those sweeps of scarlet (he\u2019s been known to use a push broom when a paintbrush wouldn\u2019t cut it)\u2014sometimes it\u2019s a quiet blend of color, a whisper that has you leaning into the canvas for a long spell. And upstairs there are eight new canvases by Sherald, best known for her portrait of Michelle Obama. Note the two paintings that are considerably larger than Sherald\u2019s usual work. They\u2019re stunning. When asked why she stayed relatively small for so long\u2014the other portraits are a more familiar 54″ x 43″, all three-quarter length, all hung at eye level\u2014she explained that she wanted to paint life-size, and those dimensions would fit into a friend\u2019s SUV. Bad news for feet, good news for the American realist tradition. \u2014Emily Nemens<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes it\u2019s great to be late to the party of an artist\u2019s body of work; the later you show up, the longer the party lasts. This week, I feel the same way I did when I first discovered Wallace Stevens and Homestar Runner<\/a>\u2014overwhelmed, excited, seated hungry before a feast\u2014about Devotion: Songs about Rivers and Spirits and Children<\/em><\/a>, a four-disc box set from the band Hiss Golden Messenger, released in late 2018. Hiss Golden Messenger is really the singer-songwriter M.\u2009C. Taylor, plus backing bank, or it was during the period\u20142010 to 2013\u2014covered by this set, which reissues three of Taylor\u2019s early records and adds a disc of rarities. You could call his music alt-country or indie folk or maybe roots rock. Basically, it\u2019s the kernels inside the loud rock songs\u2014Taylor got his start in a hardcore band\u2014without all the noise: Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, a bunch of other stuff, and now this. Think of these albums\u2014my favorite of the four included here is Poor Moon<\/em>, the first with a backing band\u2014as a no-frills alternative to a contemporary tradition of supposedly unfrilly music that has gotten a bit too fancy for its britches, overcome by ornamentation and ornamented egos; think Ryan Adams without the self-importance and misogyny, or Iron and Wine without all the gilding. Only what\u2019s most necessary in terms of melody and instrumentation is here, and yet it all feels revelatory and surprising. Plus, Taylor is a wonderful lyricist. In \u201cCall Him Daylight,\u201d he sings:<\/p>\n

Hey there, big as night
\nI think I\u2019ll call him daylight.
\nAnd I\u2019ll call him once with a little song.
\nHe\u2019s got nothing on,
\nhe comes naked with the dawn.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In this box is four hours of proof of the old adage that you don\u2019t need to reinvent the wheel to write the perfect song. \u2014Craig Morgan Teicher<\/strong><\/p>\n

My favorite thing to do this time of year is walk until I feel I am about to collapse. The first days of fall lend themselves to melancholy ruminations, and it is more enjoyable to experience them in motion, occasionally catching glimpses of models or lines for shows to which I will never be invited. Vivian Gornick\u2019s 2015 memoir The Odd Woman and the City<\/em><\/a> has been the perfect companion to this mood. She is also a walker, and her observations of the city provide delightful interludes to more in-depth analyses of love, friendship, and loneliness. I was drawn to The Odd Woman and the City<\/em>\u00a0after reading Gornick\u2019s Art of Memoir interview<\/a>, as well as her piece \u201cLetter from Greenwich Village<\/a>,\u201d much of which went on to appear in the book. Here, I thought, is a woman who understands the need to be alone. I am always searching for these women, women with whom I feel a kinship, who I imagine myself to be, or hope I will one day become. She is funny, charming, self-assured. And sure, she is lonely\u2014but who isn\u2019t. \u2014Noor Qasim<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Vivian Gornick. Photo: Mitchell Bach.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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