{"id":161133,"date":"2022-08-18T12:38:35","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T16:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=161133"},"modified":"2022-08-19T10:38:25","modified_gmt":"2022-08-19T14:38:25","slug":"barefoot-astroturf-situation-june-in-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/08\/18\/barefoot-astroturf-situation-june-in-new-york\/","title":{"rendered":"Barefoot Astroturf Situation: June in New York"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The Drift launch party on the rooftop at the Public Hotel. Photograph by Meredith Huelbig.<\/p><\/div>\n


\nJune 10<\/b><\/p>\n

I wake up to three missed calls and matching voice mails from a blocked number that turns out to be FedEx Express Heavyweight informing me that since I was not around to receive my thousand-pound skid, it\u2019s on its way to JFK. The delivery in question is Issue Seven of <\/span>The Drift<\/span><\/i>, the magazine I cofounded and co-run, and it was supposed to arrive next Monday or Tuesday in time for our launch party Thursday at the Public Hotel. Evidently it\u2019s early \u2026 and sleeping in was a potentially multithousand-dollar mistake.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kicking myself for how late I stayed out last night\u2014there was a party at Russian Samovar for Joshua Cohen, whose novel <\/span>The Netanyahus<\/span><\/i> won this year\u2019s Pulitzer in fiction\u2014I dial FedEx and shoot an email to our printer. I got through most of <\/span>The Netanyahus<\/span><\/i> in a single sitting last summer, before I\u2019d met its author. It\u2019s mostly a satire based on an anecdote told to Cohen by the late literary critic Harold Bloom, but it\u2019s also pointedly presentist, a self-conscious parable for liberalism in the Trump years. Early on it draws a dichotomy between history and theology that I\u2019ve been mulling over since I encountered it.<\/span><\/p>\n

While I\u2019m on hold with FedEx I receive an email asking me to write a culture diary for this website, and I decide to start right away\u2014no cherry-picking. Not that what I\u2019m doing now is particularly “cultural”: I\u2019m telling the automated system I\u2019d like to \u201cspeak to a representative \u2026 <\/span>speak<\/span><\/i> to a <\/span>representative<\/span><\/i>,\u201d getting transferred to incorrect extensions, hanging up, and dialing the line again. I haven\u2019t even gotten out of bed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally our printer manages to get in touch with their FedEx rep, and we\u2019re told the issues have been successfully rerouted to my coeditor, Kiara, and will arrive at her apartment in fifteen minutes. I pull on some shorts and do my best approximation of a sprint. When the truck materializes, we watch the driver unload the skid and build a makeshift plywood ramp to wheel it up to the sidewalk. With the help of our new editorial assistant, Jordan, we cart all forty-something boxes up Kiara\u2019s stairs. It is more exercise than I\u2019ve had in months. I reward myself with an iced coffee and walk home in a daze.<\/span><\/p>\n

My plans for the day derailed, I deal with the most urgent items in my inbox, and by then it\u2019s already five and I have to shower and head over to Helena Anrather gallery, where the curator and <\/span>Drift<\/span><\/i> contributor Simon Wu has put together a group show.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By the time I make it there, late, the friends I\u2019m meeting are done looking at the art and have located the tub of complimentary Pabst Blue Ribbons in the back. I walk through the main room on my own. The show, \u201cVictoriassecret,\u201d is woven together with a text Simon has written about his family\u2019s immigration from Myanmar when he was a baby, the experience of moving back in with his parents during the pandemic, and what he calls \u201cthe emotional landscape of class aspirationalism.\u201d I read a picture book Simon has written about his family history and watch one of the artists pose for a photo next to her sculpture of a Korean Jindo dog, which people keep whispering weighs two hundred pounds. It\u2019s sitting on what looks like a cardboard box.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My friends are leaving for David Lewis Gallery, where Danny Bredar, a painter I know but haven\u2019t seen in a while, is featured in another group show opening tonight. This one is called \u201cA Mimetic Theory of Desire,\u201d an apparent reference to the Ren\u00e9 Girard thesis that convinced Peter Thiel to invest in Facebook\u2014Thiel understood, from Girard, that the impulse to imitate friends and acquaintances could be a marketable commodity\u2014but I\u2019m not sure I see the connection. One of the works shows a man looking at his phone below a bubble that reads, \u201cOH DOING FINE Y\u2019KNOW JUST BORED & HORNY LOL HOW BOUT YOU.\u201d Danny\u2019s is a striking oil painting of John Coltrane and Miles Davis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Half our group has already departed, and we walk over to Spicy Village to meet them for noodles on a park bench. Danny\u2019s sent us the cryptic invitation to the opening\u2019s after-party, and since we\u2019re a block away, we agree to drop by.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now we\u2019re on an Astroturfed rooftop where buff Nordic-looking men are handing out Aperol spritzes. There\u2019s a DJ playing electronic music, and the ground is shaking as people jump up and down. Danny notes that the ladder to the water tower one roof over is too low.<\/span><\/p>\n

For a while I eavesdrop on a guy complaining loudly about how he\u2019s in love with an Orthodox Jewish girl who\u2019s turned off her phone for Shabbat. <\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t even text her right now, bro,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s like, a paradox.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Turning around, I see the silhouette of a man who\u2019s climbed the too-low ladder up to the water tower and is now standing at the edge of the even higher roof. For a terrifying second I\u2019m certain he\u2019s going to jump, but then he does a little posturinatory shake and everything\u2019s back to normal.<\/span><\/p>\n

My friends are still chatting\u2014something about the institutions of the art world\u2014but I don\u2019t want to talk anymore. I just want to zone out to the music, run my toes through the fake grass, and watch the spire on the Freedom Tower change color.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nJune 11<\/b><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a gash on the bottom of my foot! Initially I blame the barefoot Astroturf situation, but the culprit turns out to be a little nail poking out of one of the shoes I was wearing last night.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I spend most of the day on the emails I was supposed to send yesterday, scheduling them for Monday so people don\u2019t think I work full-time seven days a week, and then it\u2019s on to fiction submissions. Over the past few months <\/span>The Drift<\/span><\/i> has developed a massive slush pile, which our fiction editor, Emma, has been fighting through valiantly. It\u2019s important to us to read and respond to every submission and pitch we receive\u2014we want <\/span>The Drift<\/span><\/i> to be a place where new writers can publish for the first time\u2014but it does mean we always have a backlog.<\/span><\/p>\n

In theory I enjoy short stories, but today I\u2019m having trouble focusing. It takes a while to get my bearings\u2014decode what the writer\u2019s going for, assess whether or not she\u2019s succeeding\u2014and by the time I\u2019ve done that, the story\u2019s over and it\u2019s on to the next one. Reading slush can get disheartening, but then it’s always a thrill when we find something we love in the pile\u2014something sharp and surprising and funny, at once intentional and light on its feet. <\/span>Still plenty of time before we have to make our Issue Eight selections, I reassure myself.<\/span><\/p>\n

I take a break to read Sam Adler-Bell\u2019s essay on wokeness, which I\u2019ve been saving for a few days in an open tab. I send it along to my family group text to resolve a recent debate about what \u201cwoke\u201d means and whether or not it\u2019s an insult. I like Sam\u2019s definition: \u201c<\/span>Wokeness refers to the invocation of unintuitive and morally burdensome political norms and ideas in a manner which suggests they are self-evident.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

I read some more stories before deciding to clean my apartment, which is cluttered because it\u2019s doubling as a <\/span>Drift<\/span><\/i> storage and mailing facility. My mom always used to tease me about my cleaning method\u2014do one small corner with an unnecessary level of care and attention, then get distracted and forget to clean the rest of the room. She died about a year and a half ago, and I\u2019m missing her especially today. I put on some James Taylor, her favorite, and start with the piles of books that have accumulated on my desk and coffee table. True to form, after about ten minutes and a single shelf tidied up, I remember an email I\u2019ve forgotten to write.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nJune 12<\/b><\/p>\n

Kiara has put together a script for the reading we\u2019ll have at our issue launch party, and she sends me a Google Doc to mark up. We both often find literary readings intolerable, so we try to keep ours short\u2014under twenty minutes total, divided among a group of issue contributors, each of whom is limited to a paragraph or two only.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I look through the most recent issue of the <\/span>London Review of Books<\/span><\/i> and read a piece on Tina Brown\u2019s <\/span>The Palace Papers<\/span><\/i>, which I listened to on audiobook last month. Like many people in my demographic, I got hooked on the royal family by watching <\/span>The Crown<\/span><\/i>; unlike many people in my demographic, I watched all four seasons in a single week high out of my mind on painkillers after jaw surgery. When I\u2019ve since discussed <\/span>The Crown <\/span><\/i>with friends, their reactions have led me to believe I absorbed more of its royalist ideology than otherwise accords with my ideas about the world. I turned to <\/span>The Palace Papers<\/span><\/i> hoping to be disenchanted, but the opposite happened. Things I\u2019m now convinced of: Princess Kate is a Trollope heroine, Meghan represents everything wrong with 2010s self-promotion culture, Brown is a fabulous reader.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m still avoiding all the emails I need to write and to-do list items I need to cross off, so I scroll through the Iris Murdoch page on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy<\/em>. I\u2019ve been asked to write a review that has to do with Murdoch, and while I probably don\u2019t have time, I\u2019m tempted. I look through my bookshelf for <\/span>The Sacred and Profane Love Machine<\/span><\/i>, which I was given as a present in high school and have still never read. (An unfortunate thing about me is that I hate receiving books as gifts. Once I\u2019m given a book, it feels like homework and I\u2019d rather read almost anything else. I was given <\/span>Tess of the D\u2019Urbervilles <\/span><\/i>four times, by four different people, before I finally cracked it.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Murdoch is a writer I should like more than I do. An Oxford academic turned novelist, her fiction in some sense extends from her critique of the limitations of analytic philosophy. She believed that philosophers too often neglected psychological complexity, and that without a more nuanced understanding of the psyche, it was simplistic to talk about a freely choosing will. She also saw the internal effort to be more generous in our judgments of others as crucial moral work. In part because I like these ideas so much, I always end up reading her novels programmatically. I find myself mapping her philosophy onto whatever the characters are thinking and doing, which tends to flatten the stories into the kinds of examples you\u2019re given in a course like \u201cIntroduction to Ethics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later on, I\u2019m wasting time online and see that Bernadette Peters has sung \u201cChildren Will Listen\u201d from <\/span>Into the Woods <\/span><\/i>as part of a Sondheim tribute at the Tonys. I click on the clip but it doesn\u2019t scratch the itch, so I watch some YouTube videos of a younger Bernadette singing Sondheim. None of the recordings are very good. What I really want, I realize, is to listen to the original cast album. I grab my headphones and take a walk.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Into the Woods <\/span><\/i>is probably the first work of art I loved as a child that I still think is perfect\u2014encyclopedic, an attempt to interrogate foundational myths while putting a full spectrum of experiences and emotions on display. Sondheim\u2019s is a bleak, if magical, view of the human condition: we\u2019re doomed to not know what we want, to want what we can\u2019t have, to be dissatisfied when we get it, to love the wrong people, then abandon and betray and outgrow them, to make mistakes and cast blame elsewhere, to try and warn our children, to ignore our parents\u2019 advice. Every time I revisit it, a different lyric seems to shout out what\u2019s been preoccupying me. This time it\u2019s: \u201cBut how can you know what you want \/ Till you get what you want and you see if you like it?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On the street I run into the artist David Levine, and he asks if I want to come to his studio to see a short holographic film he\u2019s just finished exhibiting in Paris\u2014I wasn\u2019t free the night of his New York screening a few months ago. He says, \u201cI won\u2019t keep you, you\u2019re probably heading off to dinner,\u201d and I neglect to tell him that what I\u2019m doing is listening to a musical about witches and princes on my phone.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

June 13<\/b><\/p>\n

Today I have to tutor high schoolers over Zoom. I also help prepare the Drift<\/em> issue for online publication tomorrow and send a bunch of emails related to the fundraiser we\u2019re throwing next week.<\/span><\/p>\n

At five, Kiara and I have drinks with Zain Khalid to discuss the possibility of his joining us as fiction editor. (Emma is leaving to focus on her dissertation.) When I met Zain last summer, he gave me a hard time about <\/span>The Drift<\/span><\/i>\u2019s fiction selections, and every time we\u2019ve bumped into each other since then he\u2019s commented on our newest stories. Zain\u00a0<\/span>appears to read everything published everywhere and has seemingly perfect recall and intelligent things to say about all of it. He hands me a galley of his soon-to-be-released novel, <\/span>Brother Alive<\/span><\/i>, and I walk out of the bar excited, a little buzzed, and a few minutes late for our seven o\u2019clock Zoom.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Monday-night remote staff meetings are a <\/span>Drift<\/span><\/i> tradition that started in deep-COVID and has thankfully continued. As an issue deadline approaches, the meetings tend to be logistical\u2014who\u2019s taking an editing pass on what, when various pieces need to be finalized, which ones might be pushed to a future issue. This time, since our most recent issue has just arrived from the printers, we\u2019re thinking about what the next issue should include. Sometimes our staff comes up with ideas, and we approach writers who might be willing to execute what we have in mind. But for the most part, <\/span>Drift<\/span><\/i> pieces result from cold pitches sent to <\/span>editors@thedriftmag.com<\/span>. Each meeting, we go through a Google Doc of the best pitches we\u2019ve received the previous week and discuss the ones we might want to accept. Tonight we also talk over the plan for the party on Thursday\u2014members of our editorial team will take turns manning the door and selling issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

The meeting ends at eight sharp, and I\u2019m out the door for oysters with my friend Gideon. After dinner it\u2019s cooled down and lovely out, so I convince him to join me for another long walk.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

June 14<\/b><\/p>\n

The morning is a mad dash to release the issue\u2014finalizing our newsletter, noticing that an image is too small, getting a broken link to load correctly on social media, etc.\u2014and I\u2019ve conveniently run out of coffee in my apartment. By the time we publish at noon, I\u2019m in outrageous need of a caffeine fix. I look through the early reactions to the issue on my phone at the nearest coffee shop.<\/span><\/p>\n

Almost immediately, it\u2019s clear that the issue is being received more warmly than I\u2019d expected. There are a few pieces I\u2019ve been nervous about\u2014pieces that challenge established progressive wisdom, and that I worried might prompt objections, but, at least so far, they haven\u2019t.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the late afternoon I go over to David Levine\u2019s studio to see his film. I\u2019m not sure what to expect, and as soon as I get there I start to feel how much pressure is involved in letting an artist watch you watch his work. This piece, called Dissolution<\/i>, is a hologram delivering a monologue from the perspective of a woman trapped in, or maybe as, a work of art.\u00a0<\/span>David tells me I can walk around and view it from any angle, so I initially try to indicate my engagement by circling the machine, going up and down, side to side. It\u2019s too hard to focus on the text at the same time as varying my position, though, and eventually I settle on the spot closest to the speaker. Most directly, Dissolution <\/i>is a commentary<\/span>\u00a0on the powerlessness of art in contemporary society\u2014its commodification for and by the rich, its political irrelevance. But the piece is also<\/span>\u00a0a kaleidoscope of topics from the news, a mix-and-match of contemporary idioms filtered through a trippy early video-game aesthetic. There are references to Epstein and cryptocurrency, as well as to the Orpheus myth and the Library of Alexandria. When it\u2019s over, I wish I could watch it again. I\u2019m not lying when I tell David I loved it.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the way home I drop into the new Crown Heights Union Market. Distracted trying to parse David\u2019s argument about commodification and attention, I grab a small bag of cherries without looking at the price and am grateful when the cashier asks if I\u2019m sure I want them. They are nineteen dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in my apartment, I start <\/span>Brother Alive<\/span><\/i>. From the first page, the language is purposeful and evocative, and it soon becomes clear how ambitious the novel is in scope. But at the beginning I\u2019m still getting acclimated to the world of three adopted boys, each with a different skin tone, being raised by a mysterious imam on Staten Island. The narrator, Youssef, might be mad, or haunted\u2014it\u2019s too early to tell.<\/span><\/p>\n

Around two in the morning, Kiara and I realize we\u2019re both up late plodding through the <\/span>Drift<\/span><\/i> email account.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

June 15<\/b><\/p>\n

Kiara, Jordan, and I work together at my place for a while, and then I head out to David Zwirner, where <\/span>The Drift<\/span><\/i> is hosting a fundraiser for the second anniversary of our launch next week. I\u2019m supposed to check out the gallery and go over details with Felice, who has been helping us coordinate the event. It\u2019s the first time we\u2019ve ever organized anything of this sort. Two years ago, Lucas Zwirner, who is head of content at the gallery, sent a cold pitch to our general inbox, and we published his essay on self-consciousness and absorption in modern art in our second issue. When we met him in person this spring, Lucas asked if we might like to use the gallery for a fundraiser.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Upper East Side location of David Zwirner is housed in a Sixty-Ninth Street townhouse with an elegant spiral staircase that twists up five stories. As I\u2019ll later learn, the building used to be the Iranian consulate before the 1980 diplomatic freeze. Even later, I\u2019ll dig up a picture of Princess Ashraf Pahlavi leaning against the fireplace on the second floor\u00a0and wearing what the caption calls \u201ca red Dior.\u201d For now I\u2019m the only person in the gallery, and it\u2019s strange to have a show to myself. \u201cBy Land, Air, Home, and Sea: The World of Frank Walter,\u201d curated by Hilton Als, is an understated exhibition of paintings and sketches. Walter, who traveled to Europe as the first manager of color within the Antiguan Sugar Syndicate, returned to the Caribbean in the sixties as an artist, writer, and critic of racism. As Als writes, viewing the series of small, fragmentary paintings is \u201clike looking through a scrim at someone else\u2019s dreams.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After Felice arrives and we discuss where the toasts should be given and whether or not a microphone will be needed, I walk around the neighborhood in search of a venue for our after-party. I poke my head into a few of the Upper East Side\u2019s more dive-adjacent establishments before making my selection. (As I\u2019ll be informed too late, the one I\u2019ve chosen is the Fox News happy hour spot.)<\/span><\/p>\n

I head to dinner with my cousin and her new fianc\u00e9. They\u2019re in town from Australia and meeting me and my dad before they see <\/span>A Strange Loop<\/span><\/i> on Broadway. I walk past the Park Avenue Armory, where I saw The <\/em><\/span>Lehman Trilogy <\/span><\/i>three years ago (stunning, original, a capsule history of capitalism). I walk past a painting class in which everyone\u2019s copying a cityscape at sunset (not so stunning or original, nothing to say about capitalism). I walk past the Central Park Zoo, and it makes me think back to a scene in Robert Caro\u2019s <\/span>The Power Broker<\/span><\/i>, which I finished<\/span> this winter. Building the zoo as a favor to Al Smith is the nicest thing Robert Moses does in all 1,344 pages. At its opening ceremony, Smith was appointed \u201cHonorary Night Superintendent,\u201d and for the rest of his life, he was allowed to enter the animal houses after hours, any time he liked. When he had dinner guests at his apartment across the street at 820 Fifth Avenue, he\u2019d take them to see the zoo\u2019s largest tiger, whom he knew how to make growl at the name \u201cLa Guardia.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

June 16<\/b><\/p>\n

I try to sleep in so I can make it through our party tonight, but the sidewalk outside my window is being jackhammered. The day disappears into a morass of party prep, and somehow by the time I leave the house I\u2019m running late for our mic check.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the subway ride over to The Public I receive a series of confused-to-alarmed texts from Kiara, who says the hotel is not expecting us. We\u2019ve arranged the event with a PR person who offered us the rooftop for free and had several calls with Kiara to coordinate details. Unfortunately none of that information was passed along to the hotel staff: the roof has been double-and-triple-booked, and there\u2019s some sort of NFT happy hour happening in the space where we\u2019d planned to set up our reading. People are arriving for drinks and dinner reservations, and the staff is saying we\u2019re not in their system. Someone named Paloma promises us no one will be turned away, but of course this is a lie, and soon enough our editors on door duty downstairs are reporting that the bouncer is sending home hundreds of guests, telling them they aren\u2019t even allowed to wait in line. (People are also being denied entry for offenses like wearing Tevas and graphic tees.) I take the elevator down and explain to the bouncer what Paloma had told me only two hours earlier. \u201cI never said that,\u201d she says, after being summoned via walkie-talkie. \u201cDid you get that in writing?\u201d asks the bouncer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back upstairs, the guests who\u2019ve managed to get in seem to have no idea anything\u2019s wrong. The readings went better than we could have hoped\u2014jam-packed room, audience listening attentively and laughing in all the right places\u2014and for the next few days people will keep texting me \u201camazing party!!!\u201d as if it wasn\u2019t an outright catastrophe. By this point in the evening, our group has displaced the NFT crowd from the prime rooftop real estate, and I listen to newcomers describe Caveh Zahedi\u2019s Ulysses<\/em> performance, which they\u2019ve just come from.<\/span>\u00a0It\u2019s Bloomsday on the centenary of <\/span>Ulysses<\/span><\/i>\u2019<\/span>s publication, and I\u2019m sad I\u2019m not doing anything more appropriate. I wonder what Joyce would make of Ian Schrager.<\/span><\/p>\n

Around midnight the staff starts ushering us toward the elevators, which is also contrary to the arrangement we\u2019ve made, but I\u2019m past caring. A few people suggest a bar for an after-party, and Kiara and I decide to tag along. Our friend Ben offers to pick us up empanadas, and someone I haven\u2019t met orders a pizza. It\u2019s the first food I\u2019ve had in many hours.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kiara and I Uber back to Brooklyn together with the leftover box of issues we haven\u2019t sold. She\u2019s locked out of her place, though, so she comes over to mine. It\u2019s late but we\u2019re both still keyed up, and we lie around laughing about the NFT happy hour and \u201cDid you get that in writing\u201d and vowing never to trust a PR person again \u2026 and then it\u2019s four or five and we fall, at last, asleep.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rebecca Panovka is a writer and coeditor of <\/i>The Drift.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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