{"id":43289,"date":"2012-12-07T13:08:05","date_gmt":"2012-12-07T18:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=43289"},"modified":"2013-02-03T03:31:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-03T08:31:00","slug":"what-we%e2%80%99re-loving-captain-kentucky-john-henry-plagues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/07\/what-we%e2%80%99re-loving-captain-kentucky-john-henry-plagues\/","title":{"rendered":"What We\u2019re Loving: Captain Kentucky, John Henry, Plagues"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I picked up Barbara Comyns\u2019s\u00a0Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead<\/em><\/a> when it was first reissued in 2010 but then had to put it aside. I began it again\u2014and finished it\u2014last week, and I\u2019m so glad I did. The novel, originally published in England in 1954, concerns the Willoweed family and their reactions to an outbreak of madness and suicide in their small village. Its humor is by turns black and light, its characters morbid and delightful. An aberrant pastoral as smart as this one could only come from someone with a biography as nutty and wonderful as Comyns\u2019s. A painter by training\u2014she exhibited with the London Group\u2014Comyns married and had two children. To support them, \u201cshe dealt in antiques and vintage cars, renovated apartments, and bred poodles. She later lived in Spain for eighteen years.\u201d \u2014Nicole Rudick<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brain still humming with Elaine Blair\u2019s\u00a0brilliant essay on David Foster Wallace<\/a>, I read his own long 1990 review of Wittgenstein\u2019s Mistress<\/em>, now reprinted in Both Flesh and Not<\/em>. So much has been written about Infinite Jest<\/em>, but for me these two essays together do the best job of describing what\u2019s at stake in that novel\u2014morally, philosophically, artistically. Among other things, Wallace reveals his debt to Stanley Cavell (a teacher whose influence he later played down) and his raw-nerved engagement with feminist criticism. At times, too, \u201cThe Empty Plenum\u201d reads like a sort of preemptive rebuttal to Jonathan Franzen\u2019s elegy in The New Yorker<\/em>. Wallace may not have been the sage we wished for, but as Blair writes, he \u201cworked a reverse-Promethean theft, taking our humble spoken idioms and delivering them to the gods.\u201d \u2014Lorin Stein
<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I Just Hitched in from the Coast<\/a> <\/em>is a wild, frolicking romp of a story collection by Ed McClanahan, one of Ken Kesey\u2019s band of Merry Pranksters who referred to himself as \u201cCaptain Kentucky\u201d back in those hazy psychedelic days. The image<\/a> of Captain Kentucky himself on the cover in full hippie regalia and looking like a total dude was what first captured my interest. What kept me coming back were riotously funny tales of McClanahan\u2019s youth, like the wonderfully titled \u201cFondelle, or: The Whore with a Heart of Gold.\u201d It\u2019s a little Hunter S. Thompson cut with the mellowing influence of a peaceful flower child that makes for one hell of a fun ride. \u2014Graham Rogers<\/strong><\/p>\n

This week I\u2019ve been reading The Year of Dreaming Dangerously<\/em><\/a>, the latest from Slavoj \u017di\u017eek\u2014everyone\u2019s favorite pop-culture-reference-spewing, raunchy, Slovenian, Marxist philosopher-celebrity. Yes, it\u2019s possible he\u2019s the de facto favorite because of the lack of competition, but his signature combination of historical analysis (the book is an examination of the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and other international protests and uprisings) and compulsive allusion-making (to The Wire<\/em>, Jacques Lacan, David Guetta, and Alain Badiou, just to name a few) makes for a book that\u2019s as intellectually addictive as it is timely. \u2014Emma Goldhammer
<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Duchess of Cambridge is having a child! And to explain our indifference to TPR<\/em>\u2019s British intern, we\u2019ve spent the week trying to pick America\u2019s greatest natural aristocrat and throw the stodgy old-world varietal into unflattering relief. This crown (so\u00a0to speak) belongs to John Henry<\/a>, the former slave who steel-drove himself to martyrdom in defiance of the industrial machine. And while Henry\u2019s legend has been extensively celebrated in story and song, it\u2019s utilized to greatest literary effect in a thing we should all be loving: Jason Isbell\u2019s tune \u201cThe Day John Henry Died<\/a>.\u201d Isbell\u2019s Henry is the hero of a long-lost cause: an autoworker in a dead economy or a cowboy up to his holster in the Pacific Ocean. And the song isn’t concerned with the triumph of human over machine or even work over adversity so much as the marvelous futility of triumph itself. So congratulations on the kid, Kate and Will. But remember: though the British monarchy may have invented imperial obsolescence, Americans sing it better. \u2014Samuel Fox<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDisappointed both in love and in friendship, and looking upon human learning as vanity, he had come to a conclusion that there was but one good thing in the world, videlicet, a good dinner.\u201d Who at one time or another hasn\u2019t felt like Christopher Glowry, master of Nightmare Abbey, employer of Diggory Deathshead (Glowry\u2019s servants are selected \u201cby one of two criterions,\u2014a long face, or a dismal name\u201d) and father of young Scythrop (named after \u201ca maternal ancestor, who had hanged himself one rainy day in a fit of tedium vitae\u201d)? Thomas Love Peacock\u2019s 1818 Gothic satire, Nightmare Abbey<\/em><\/a>, is not nearly as well known as its Austenian near-namesake, but it should be. \u2014Charlotte Goldney<\/strong><\/p>\n

The new issue of n+1<\/em> kicks off with an oddly self-lacerating love letter<\/a> to The Paris Review<\/em>, but there\u2019s at least one essay here that I wish we\u2019d published ourselves: Kristen Dombek\u2019s \u201cHow to Quit,\u201d a meditation on sex, substance abuse, and gentrification that I have now read three times, each time with greater amazement: \u201cIf the old neighborhood was real, this building is a steam-powered time machine. If the new neighborhood is real, this building is a dream, or a crypt. In other words, all this building makes me want to do is drink and fuck.\u201d Hallelujah and amen. \u2014L.S.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I picked up Barbara Comyns\u2019s\u00a0Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead when it was first reissued in 2010 but then had to put it aside. I began it again\u2014and finished it\u2014last week, and I\u2019m so glad I did. The novel, originally published in England in 1954, concerns the Willoweed family and their reactions to an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[438],"tags":[7033,154,9438,4158,9437,9436,110,8684,334,9440,9439],"class_list":["post-43289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-barbara-comyns","tag-david-foster-wallace","tag-ed-mcclanahan","tag-elaine-blair","tag-folk-heroes","tag-john-henry","tag-jonathan-franzen","tag-legend","tag-slavoj-zizek","tag-stabley-cavell","tag-thomas-love-peacock"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat We\u2019re Loving: Captain Kentucky, John Henry, Plagues by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"December 7, 2012 \u2013 I picked up Barbara Comyns\u2019s\u00a0Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead when it was first reissued in 2010 but then had to put it aside. 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