{"id":54065,"date":"2013-06-07T12:32:16","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T16:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=54065"},"modified":"2013-06-07T16:34:34","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T20:34:34","slug":"what-were-loving-george-packer-joe-carstairs-nick-laird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/07\/what-were-loving-george-packer-joe-carstairs-nick-laird\/","title":{"rendered":"What We\u2019re Loving: George Packer, Joe Carstairs, Nick Laird"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/joecarstairslarge.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-54068\" alt=\"joecarstairslarge\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/joecarstairslarge.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"438\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/joecarstairslarge.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/joecarstairslarge-300x219.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In a virtuosic long poem from his recent collection, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0571288189\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0571288189&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=theparrev0f-20\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Go Giants<\/em><\/a>, Nick Laird inveighs against \u201cthe monotony of always being on a side!\u201d Laird was born in Northern Ireland, but the complaint isn\u2019t aimed only at sectarianism. His poetry, which shuttles between New York, Rome, and Cookstown, in County Tyrone, consistently escapes monotony and one-sidedness (including, in this case, a cricketeer\u2019s pun on the word <em>side<\/em>). His book includes versions of Juvenal, Antoine \u00d3 Raifteir\u00ed\u2014a wandering bard and one of the \u201cgiants\u201d of Laird\u2019s title\u2014and Anglo-Saxon poetry. You can also hear the nimble diction of Muldoon (\u201can atmosphere \/ flecked like emery paper, the finest grade, \/ that whets the seriffed aerials and steeples\u201d) and the more ponderous music of Heaney (a summer job at a meatplant is spent \u201clugging plastic \/ crates of feathercut and paddywhack \/ and prime off the belt and onto palettes\u201d). \u201cProgress,\u201d a long poem that rewrites Bunyun\u2019s allegory, is a gathering of all these voices and ends up sounding like no one except Laird: \u201cA fine baroque example \/ of how successfully the choral template \/ might adjust itself to fit an elliptic \/ non-contiguous life.\u201d <strong>\u2014Robyn Creswell<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I recently visited my parents to help them sort through a lifetime of acquisitions in anticipation of a mammoth yard sale. Looking through boxes of my old books, I came across a favorite, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9781608199204?aff=theparisreview\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Queen of Whale Cay<\/em><\/a>, and promptly reread it. Kate Summerscale\u2019s biography is a vivid picture of Marion Barbara \u201cJoe\u201d Carstairs, a flamboyant figure of the Lost Generation. A boat racer, womanizer, dandy, and, yes, queen of her own island, Carstairs (an oil heiress) was also known for traveling everywhere with a doll, Lord Tod Wadley, who sported an equally dapper wardrobe. Summerscale was working on the <em>Telegraph<\/em>\u2019s obit desk when she ran across the story of this forgotten figure; I\u2019m so glad she did, and that I rediscovered my copy. (The office also acquired, from this foray, a brass whale, a crystal ball, and a harpoon.) <strong>\u2014Sadie O. Stein<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The <i>East Village Eye<\/i>\u00a0is in the process of scanning all seventy-two of its issues (originally published from May 1979 to January 1987) with an eye (no pun intended), one hopes, toward making them available. In the meantime, they\u2019ve posted ten of the magazine\u2019s most fashion-relevant issues <a href=\"http:\/\/www.east-village-eye.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">online<\/a>, to coincide with the Met\u2019s punk exhibition. My favorite so far is the \u201cWar and Fashion\u201d issue, from 1980. All angles and and futurescapes, the clothes and fashion shoots are an odd combination of postrevolutionary Russian clothing design (think <i>Victory Over the Sun<\/i>) and <i>Vice<\/i>\u00a0fashion spreads circa the 2000s (low-budget settings and wonderfully hokey poses). With essays on John Cale and Hiroshima music and the \u201cslum journals\u201d of Richard Hell, the issue also contains a curious yet apropos interview with an NYPD lieutenant on Crisis Relocation Planning (aka evacuation) for New York. The opening question: \u201cWe went to speak with Bob Jones about Crisis Relocation Planning. He believes it is eminently feasible to move nine million people upstate in the event of nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union, and he advised us to get your opinion on that.\u201d\u00a0<strong>\u2014Nicole Rudick<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve spent the last week forcing George Packer\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9780374102418?aff=theparisreview\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Unwinding<\/em><\/a> on everyone I know. Subtitled \u201cA Secret History of the New America,\u201d this is the book Packer was always meant to write. The history he tells has to do with financial deregulation, the growing power of corporate lobbyists, the degradation of public discourse, the decline of manufacturing, the collapse of the housing bubble\u2014stuff you read about in the paper every day. The secret is what it\u2019s done to our lives, how it\u2019s changed the way we think and feel. Packer doesn\u2019t deal in theories. Instead he gives us a series of profiles, mainly of people you\u2019ve never heard of, plus a few you have: Jay-Z, Newt Gingrich, Oprah Winfrey, Colin Powell. Readers of Packer\u2019s reportage (and his book on Iraq, <em>The Assassins\u2019 Gate<\/em>) know his uncanny ability as an interviewer: he gets people to open up who\u2019ve never told their stories to anyone else. But Packer began his writing career as a memoirist and a novelist, and <em>The Unwinding<\/em> is, among other things, an experimental novel, a book that will remind some readers of <em>U.S.A.,<\/em> and others of <em>Infinite Jest,<\/em> in its scope, in its feel for the textures of contemporary life, and in the way it inhabits different minds, from a community organizer in Youngstown to a libertarian Internet tycoon. The biographical essay on Powell would not have been out of place in <em>The Paris Review<\/em>, for this is a work not just of fact, but of wit, irony, and astounding imagination. <strong>\u2014Lorin Stein<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cProse is like glass in this respect. The bigger you go, the more opportunities for cracks. We cut more ambitious works slack not out of pity but in just measurement. There are places, like pressures, to which you can\u2019t go without a little weakening of the structure.\u201d If you have yet to read our Southern editor, John Jeremiah Sullivan, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookforum.com\/inprint\/020_02\/11650\" target=\"_blank\">on James Agee<\/a>, check it out.\u00a0<strong>\u2014S.O.S.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a virtuosic long poem from his recent collection, Go Giants, Nick Laird inveighs against \u201cthe monotony of always being on a side!\u201d Laird was born in Northern Ireland, but the complaint isn\u2019t aimed only at sectarianism. His poetry, which shuttles between New York, Rome, and Cookstown, in County Tyrone, consistently escapes monotony and one-sidedness [&hellip;]<\/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":[11069,11064,11067,9894,4094,11070,11065,1577,11068,11063,7727,11066],"class_list":["post-54065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-colin-powell","tag-east-village-eye","tag-george-packer","tag-james-agee","tag-jay-z","tag-joe-carstairs","tag-john-cale","tag-john-jeremiah-sullivan","tag-newt-gingrich","tag-nick-laird","tag-oprah-winfrey","tag-richard-hell"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What We\u2019re Loving: George Packer, Joe 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