{"id":6364,"date":"2010-10-15T13:30:17","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T17:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=6364"},"modified":"2018-12-10T14:14:52","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T19:14:52","slug":"staff-picks-booker-gossip-wittgenstein-gags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/10\/15\/staff-picks-booker-gossip-wittgenstein-gags\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Booker Gossip, Wittgenstein Gags"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two years ago, in honor of the fortieth anniversary of the Booker Prize, <em>The Guardian<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2008\/sep\/06\/bookerprize.40years\">dredged up<\/a> a judge from every single year willing to dish on the behind-the-scenes goings-on: Wives promote their husbands&#8217; books; punches are thrown; Salman Rushdie is insulted. Another Booker-related treat: a funny and surprisingly poignant profile of aging table-tennis great Marty Reisman, written in 1999 by this year\u2019s winner, Howard Jacobson (once a ranked junior table-tennis player in England), published for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/news-and-politics\/46897\/smash\/print\/\">first time<\/a> in the U.S. this week by Tablet Magazine. Sample description of Marty: \u201ca leftover Beat poet about to read to a bunch of contemporary kids in a non-English speaking country.\u201d \u2014<strong>Miranda Popkey<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cA typical Wittgenstein gag was drawing an arrow to the \u2018W.C.1\u2019 in a London address on a letter he was going to mail and writing, \u2018This doesn\u2019t mean \u2018Lavatory.\u2019\u201d If the great man finding amusement in such things tickles you\u2014and it really should\u2014you\u2019ll enjoy the rest of Jim Holt\u2019s little book <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Stop-Youve-Heard-This-Philosophy\/dp\/0393066738\">Stop Me If You\u2019ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes<\/a><\/em>. And oh yes, French children are apparently fond of jokes about the fantastical creature known as the zizi tordu, or \u201ctwisted penis.\u201d Now you\u2019ll read the book, won\u2019t you. \u2014<strong>Mark de Silva<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/History-Love-Novel-Nicole-Krauss\/dp\/0393328627\/\">A History of Love<\/a><\/em>, by Nicole Krauss. I was pulled in by the fluid, experimental structure and kept reading because Krauss, like Roth, gets Jewish families exactly right. Elie Wiesel wrote that the ambivalent \u201cand yet\u201d is the most Jewish of phrases; it is also protagonist Leo Gursky\u2019s constant refrain. \u2014<strong>Kate Waldman<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The novelist Douglas Coupland <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/news\/national\/a-radical-pessimists-guide-to-the-next-10-years\/article1750609\/singlepage\/#articlecontent\">previews<\/a> his upcoming, five-part Massey Lecture on the culture of our near-future in the <em>Globe and Mail<\/em>. And Vaughan Bell <a href=\"http:\/\/mindhacks.com\/2010\/09\/29\/the-murder-club\/\">looks backward<\/a>, to an era in which murder was among our most social and democratic activities. \u2014<strong>David Wallace-Wells<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Zadie Smith has a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/reporting\/2010\/10\/11\/101011fa_fact_smith\">short essay<\/a> in <em>The New Yorker<\/em>&#8216;s money issue about lending funds to a friend. I appreciate her honesty: \u201cUntil this episode, I\u2019d thought of myself as a working-class girl who\u2019d happened upon money, my essential character unchanged. But money is not neutral; it changes everything, including the ability to neutrally judge what people will or will not do for it.\u201d Bonus: Zadie was a young violist, just as I was! \u2014<strong>Thessaly La Force<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two years ago, in honor of the fortieth anniversary of the Booker Prize, The Guardian dredged up a judge from every single year willing to dish on the behind-the-scenes goings-on: Wives promote their husbands&#8217; books; punches are thrown; Salman Rushdie is insulted. Another Booker-related treat: a funny and surprisingly poignant profile of aging table-tennis great [&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":[1078,1077,1081,1049,1080,122,40,1079],"class_list":["post-6364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-douglas-coupland","tag-howard-jacobson","tag-jim-holt","tag-man-booker-prize","tag-money","tag-nicole-krauss","tag-the-new-yorker","tag-zadie-smith"],"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>Staff Picks: Booker Gossip, Wittgenstein Gags by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"October 15, 2010 \u2013 Two years ago, in honor of the fortieth 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