{"id":86651,"date":"2015-06-12T18:57:01","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T22:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=86651"},"modified":"2015-06-12T19:15:30","modified_gmt":"2015-06-12T23:15:30","slug":"staff-picks-misspelled-marven-messengered-mineral-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/12\/staff-picks-misspelled-marven-messengered-mineral-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Misspelled Marven, Messengered Mineral Water"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A_Pigeon_Sat_on_a_Branch_Reflecting_on_Existence\"<\/a>

A still from A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence.<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n

Say what you will about Tom McCarthy\u2019s novels: they bring out the best in their critics. Few other writers goad us into asking such broad, terrifying questions as, What should fiction do? Who is it for? And how can it undermine authority? In 2008, Remainder<\/em> inspired Zadie Smith\u2019s seminal essay \u201cTwo Paths for the Novel<\/a>\u201d; now McCarthy\u2019s Satin Island<\/a><\/em> has landed a series of reviews offering unusually acute observations on the state of the novel. Read Gideon-Lewis Kraus in Bookforum<\/a><\/em>, James Lasdun in the\u00a0Guardian<\/a><\/em>, Christopher Tayler in the London Review of Books<\/a><\/em>, and William Deresiewicz in The Nation<\/a><\/em>: each unabashedly cerebral, and each proving that seemingly empty-isms\u2014realism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, formalism, antihumanism\u2014have life in them yet. \u2014Dan Piepenbring<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"marvin-gardens-g-spot\"<\/a>The property names in Monopoly are taken from the boomtown ideal that was turn-of-the-century Atlantic City, with one glaring exception: Marvin Gardens<\/a>, which does not, as such, exist. If you consider the game a metaphor for the dreams of the middle class, that absence bodes ill: it\u2019s a coveted place you can never hope to get to. John McPhee\u2019s 1972 essay \u201cThe Search for Marvin Gardens<\/a>,\u201d collected in his Pieces of the Frame<\/a><\/em>, uses Monopoly to examine the significance of Atlantic City in the seventies, when it had fallen on hard times. As McPhee and a partner roll the dice, advancing their pieces and buying properties, a ghostly second narrator walks through the real St. Charles Place, Baltic Avenue, and New York Avenue, reporting that they\u2019re all slums; the two players circle the board and the neighborhoods get worse. When McPhee realizes that his \u201conly hope is Marvin Gardens,\u201d his reportorial counterpart learns that it\u2019s not even in the city at all; it\u2019s one town over in Margate, New Jersey, and it\u2019s spelled Marven<\/em>. Rarely is McPhee\u2019s writing as disjointed as it is in this piece; the essay\u2019s aphoristic, time-traveling, jump-cut style asks so much of its readers that it\u2019s astonishing The<\/em> New Yorker<\/em> published it. I haven\u2019t seen anything as boldly form-defying in its pages for a while. \u2014Jeffery Gleaves
<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ant\u00f3nio Lobo Antunes\u2019s novels feature billowing prose in which past, present, and future all overlap and reality is inseparable from delusion. An Explanation of the Birds<\/a><\/em>, first published in Portuguese in 1982, is no exception\u2014Antunes creates a complex, polyphonic story unraveling the suicide of a defeated scholar, Rui. A series of relatives and acquaintances are called upon to offer their perspectives on Rui\u2019s life; they conjure a rather pathetic portrait of a mediocre man. Rui himself explores repression, regret, and denial as he hurtles toward death. Antunes excels in anatomizing both the fragmented self and a shattered Portuguese society. His disappointment and outrage at everyone\u2014from the former followers of the dictator Salazar to the intellectual leftists of Lisbon\u2014animates his compelling satire of postrevolutionary Portugal. \u2014Charlotte Groult<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"tumblr_mhdimebnhW1qbn461o1_1280\"<\/a>I\u2019ve been rewatching John Berger\u2019s 1972 BBC miniseries, Ways of Seeing<\/em>, which through the miracle of mechanical reproduction you can now find on YouTube<\/a>. In each of the series\u2019 four parts, Berger confronts Western aesthetic culture with a contrarian spirit, taking on everything from the insanity of advertising to the visual hegemony of the male gaze. Berger later adapted the series into a book of essays<\/a>, but I prefer the pleasures of the moving image, not least of which is Berger himself: his wide eyes, his unerringly grave gestures of address, his haircut. The clarity of his criticism becomes the series\u2019 deeper argument. The realm of the simple, the obvious, even the emotional\u2014this is not where criticism goes to die, Berger reassures us, it is where true criticism begins.\u00a0 In a favorite scene, a gaggle of schoolchildren crowd around an image of Caravaggio\u2019s Supper at Emmaus<\/em>, speaking over one another, calling out their interpretations of the painting\u2019s central figure. Berger, sitting among them, grave as ever, inclines his shaggy head and listens. \u2014Oliver Preston<\/strong><\/p>\n

Roy Andersson\u2019s new film A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence<\/a> <\/em>unfolds like a lighter take on Lynch\u2019s Blue Velvet<\/em>. Andersson\u2019s grim, slapstick comedy is marked by diorama-like sets and pauses held to the point of anxious humor; his bloated, bourgeois characters, made spectral by white face paint and shell shocked from humanity, seem born from the same ilk as Velvet<\/em>\u2019s Yellow Man. Andersson\u2019s characters are ciphers: lonesome diners, befuddled captains trying to make impossible or unplanned appointments, purposeless urbanites moving like chess pieces around comfortable apartments. The film\u2019s bursts of surrealism make it so daring. We see a mass brigade of anachronistic Swiss royal soldiers streaming by a seedy bar, with a weary King Charles XII asking by messenger for a mineral water, then hitting on the shop boy; later there\u2019s a hellish organ straight out of Kafka\u2019s \u201cIn the Penal Colony\u201d that runs on slaves being roasted alive, watched by tired aristocrats drinking champagne. \u2014Casey Henry<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Calling-Card-_-Mezzanine-EP-575x575\"<\/a>It\u2019s mid-June, and so we\u2019re obliged to ask: What will be the song of the summer? CNN<\/a> nominates Wiz Khalifa\u2019s \u201cSee You Again<\/a>\u201d; Jezebel<\/a>, Prince Royce\u2019s \u201cBack It Up<\/a>\u201d; Vulture<\/a>, Fetty Wap\u2019s \u201cTrap Queen<\/a>.\u201d I\u2019m casting a vote for The Galleria\u2019s \u201cMezzanine<\/a>,\u201d the slinkiest piece of bubblegum R&B this side of Nu Shooz\u2019s \u201cI Can\u2019t Wait<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s not exactly a major-party contender. The Galleria, a collaboration between the producer Morgan Geist and the vocalist Jessy Lanza, is maybe the first group I\u2019ve ever heard of to take their name, and their thematic inspiration, from a shopping mall<\/a>; a brief statement from the duo clarifies that the mall in their hearts boasts \u201ca full arcade and food court. Shopping floors are color-coded and accessible from glass elevators and interconnected walkways. Escalators are temporarily out of order and our anchor store has gone out of business. Strawberry lip gloss is on sale. These are your sticky years.\u201d That they are. \u2014D.P.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Say what you will about Tom McCarthy\u2019s novels: they bring out the best in their critics. Few other writers goad us into asking such broad, terrifying questions as, What should fiction do? Who is it for? And how can it undermine authority? In 2008, Remainder inspired Zadie Smith\u2019s seminal essay \u201cTwo Paths for the Novel\u201d; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[438],"tags":[2958,18434,5722,17221,18438,573,8625,18437,18435,18436,5215,14043,1079],"class_list":["post-86651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-antonio-lobo-antunes","tag-christopher-tayler","tag-gideon-lewis-kraus","tag-james-lasdun","tag-jessy-lanza","tag-john-berger","tag-john-mcphee","tag-morgan-geist","tag-roy-andersson","tag-the-galleria","tag-tom-mccarthy","tag-william-deresiewicz","tag-zadie-smith"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStaff Picks: Berger, McCarthy, Antunes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What the staff of The Paris Review is reading this week.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/12\/staff-picks-misspelled-marven-messengered-mineral-water\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Staff Picks: Misspelled Marven, Messengered Mineral Water by The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"June 12, 2015 \u2013 Say what you will about Tom McCarthy\u2019s novels: they bring out the best in their critics. 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