{"id":88,"date":"2010-06-02T10:34:49","date_gmt":"2010-06-02T14:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=88"},"modified":"2014-01-26T21:27:20","modified_gmt":"2014-01-27T02:27:20","slug":"the-culture-diaries-sarah-crichton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/02\/the-culture-diaries-sarah-crichton\/","title":{"rendered":"A Week in Culture: Sarah Crichton, Book Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Sarah Crichton. Photograph by Joyce Ravid.<\/p><\/div>\n

DAY ONE, Saturday, May 8<\/strong><\/p>\n

3:28 A.M.<\/strong> Up. Always up at 3:28 A.M., on the nose. Before I crashed, I started Jill Lepore\u2019s piece<\/a> on the real historical Tea Partiers in The New Yorker<\/em>. I flip past Lepore and move onto Janet Malcolm\u2019s piece<\/a> on the trial of Mazoltuv Borukhova, the Bukharan Jewish doctor, for hiring a hitman to off her dentist husband. Brilliant. \u201cWe go through life mishearing and mis-seeing and misunderstanding so that the stories we tell ourselves will add up.\u201d Heaven.<\/p>\n

5:21 A.M.<\/strong> Awake again. Magazine\u2019s on my chest; light\u2019s still on. Bukharan killers dance in my head. Continue reading.<\/p>\n

6:43 A.M.<\/strong> Awake again. Get up? Or shoot for more sleep? Return to Malcolm, who dazzles me, the way she weaves in and out of her piece. \u201cI have let Fass run on too long, and have got ahead of my story. Let me go back to my talk in the hallway with the law guardian, who had said yes to an interview\u2026\u201d I\u2019d love to read some of this to someone, but of course everyone\u2019s asleep and my husband is in Bratislava, I think.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>8:50 A.M.<\/strong> A proper weekend wake-up time. Tea, yogurt, weekend Times<\/em>. What\u2019s in there is scary: oil spills, crushing Greek debt. So start with real-estate section. Mean co-op boards can\u2019t scare me! Work methodically through the sections, ending with the book section, which I\u2019ve already read, so I pick up last week\u2019s Book Review<\/em>, which is still on the stack by my chair, and read that instead. Francine Prose on how anti-Semitic Ir\u00e8ne N\u00e9mirovsky<\/a> really was.<\/p>\n

10:00 A.M.<\/strong> Switch on NPR. Car Talk<\/em>. I don\u2019t own a car anymore, but I love those brothers. Would I love them as much if they didn\u2019t have Southie accents?<\/p>\n

11:00 A.M.<\/strong> Wait Wait\u2026 Don\u2019t Tell Me!<\/em> Love that show too, but I\u2019m done chopping vegetables for my soup, and Roy Blount, Jr. isn\u2019t on, so I switch it off.<\/p>\n

11:05 A.M.<\/strong> Boot up PC. Check to see if money has miraculously appeared in my checking account (it hasn\u2019t); if I\u2019ve heard from my husband in Bratislava (I haven\u2019t); if there\u2019s something on 1st Dibs that I should know about and buy. Read somewhere that Gwyneth Paltrow did a cute hip-hop routine with Jimmy Fallon, so track it down on Hulu<\/a>.<\/p>\n

12:30 P.M.<\/strong> Pick up Zipcar, and head to JFK to pick up Oberlin-student daughter, in for quick Mother\u2019s Day visit. On radio: Live from the Met<\/em>. Berg\u2019s Lulu<\/em>. The wonderful Marlis Petersen as Lulu. Reluctant to leave the opera when I get to JFK, so I sit in the parking lot until intermission. Buy Star<\/em> magazine in the terminal. HOUSEKEEPERS TELL ALL<\/a>. Only, they don\u2019t. Daughter arrives. Back in Zipcar, Lulu loses to the new Grizzly Bear CD, which my daughter wants me to hear.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>6:50 P.M.<\/strong> Jean Renoir\u2019s Rules of the Game<\/em> (La R\u00e8gle du Jeu<\/em>) at BAM Rose Cinema in a beautiful fresh print. Couple behind us carp as we sit down. We are tall; they are not. My daughter, sweeter than I, says, \u201cNo problem, let\u2019s swap seats.\u201d As we start to settle into our new seats, the couple now behind grumbles, and my daughter starts, but I make it clear I\u2019m not moving. I haven\u2019t seen the movie on a full-size screen since a Brattle Street Theater\/Janus Film marathon in the early 1970s. The movie is a joy\u2014farce, satire, visually delicious. But the audience is rigid with respect, and when my daughter starts cracking up, you can sense the irritation. I think they think we are drunk. We\u2019re not. I am intimidated and quiet into a chuckle, but Eliza refuses to be muted. Rightfully so.<\/p>\n

11:20 P.M.<\/strong> Home in time to catch Betty White host<\/a> Saturday Night Live<\/em>, who\u2019s been picked because of a Facebook contest<\/a>. She looks damn good for eighty-eight, and she always could talk quasi-dirty, which of course is what they\u2019ve got her doing. I nod off as she\u2019s being a baker, talking about her \u201cbig, dusty muffin.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

DAY TWO<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

3:28 A.M.<\/strong> Wake up. TV\u2019s humming. Watch the rest of SNL, taped on the DVR. Fast forwarding through the ads and the dopiest parts, it only takes twenty minutes. Betty White glows next to Jay-Z as the credits roll.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>8:20 A.M.<\/strong> Sunday Times<\/em>. Lena Horne\u2019s dead. Page One obit<\/a>. As I read, there\u2019s a frame in my head where I watch her slink around the stage singing, sloowwwwlly, the “Surrey with the Fringe on the Top<\/a>” like it was the sexiest damn song ever written. I go upstairs to where I keep my music and theater books and pull out The Hornes<\/em>, by Gail Lumet Buckley, Hornes\u2019s daughter. What a great book. \u2028Obama\u2019s picking Elena Kagan.<\/p>\n

10:12 A.M.<\/strong> The Sunday talks are on. As I listen, I pay bills, order the week\u2019s groceries from Fresh Direct, cruise Epicurious for a Mother’s Day recipe to make for myself, my daughter, and my friend Ruth, who will come over soon. Scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and lemon cream<\/a> from Bon Appetite<\/em>. Four forks.\u2028 Yesterday, I tried another recipe from The New York Times<\/em>\u2019s Melissa Clark\u2014a green goddess dip<\/a>. It was godawful. E. J. Dionne is on the Meet the Press<\/em> roundtable, and he erupts, and properly so, when David Brooks dismissively refers to someone getting \u201clawyered up.\u201d<\/p>\n

11:30 A.M.<\/strong> Plug in iPod shuffle. (\u201cHeebie Jeebie,\u201d Louis Armstrong. \u201cI Heard the Crash on the Highway, But I Didn\u2019t Hear Nobody Pray,\u201d Roy Acuff. \u201cThe Dream Goes on Forever,\u201d Todd Rundgren.) Wake up daughter. (\u201cHe is Such an Understanding God,\u201d The Abyssinian Baptist Church. \u201c100,000 Fireflies,\u201d Magnetic Fields. Gregorian chants.) Ruth arrives. (\u201cWinterlude,\u201d Bob Dylan. \u201cScotland the Brave.\u201d \u201cMavis,\u201d Merciless. Vivaldi: \u201cGloria, Laudamus Te.\u201d \u201cVillanelles,\u201d Gabriel Kahane. \u201cJune in January,\u201d Julie London.) Make the Epicurious recipe: delicious. Serve with a nice ros\u00e9 and warm whole-grain bread and green salad. Very happy.<\/p>\n

2:30 P.M.<\/strong> Quick Brooklyn Museum trip, for a little mother-daughter feminist art action. Kiki Smith<\/a>\u2019s Sojourns<\/em>, Judy Chicago<\/a>\u2019s Dinner Party<\/em>. Also caught American High Style<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

7:00 P.M.<\/strong> Daughter gets on train to the plane, and I head to Brooklyn Heights to meet my friend Paula, and catch Roman Polanski\u2019s The Ghost Writer<\/em> before it leaves the borough.<\/p>\n

10:50 P.M.<\/strong> Get into bed with Terrence Rafferty\u2019s The Thing Happens<\/em>, which contains a very long essay<\/a> he wrote for The New Yorker<\/em> in the early nineties about The Rules of the Game<\/em>.<\/p>\n

DAY THREE<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

3:28 A.M.<\/strong> Finish Rafferty essay, which is very smart.<\/p>\n

6:30 A.M.<\/strong> Morning Edition. Oof. Kakutani<\/a>: \u201cThis remarkably tedious new novel by Martin Amis\u2026\u201d \u2028Set DVR to record Ric Burns\u2019s documentary, Into the Deep<\/a><\/em>, about whaling, which will air tonight, because I\u2019ll be out and I think Ric Burns is a brilliant filmmaker.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>9:00 A.M. <\/strong> On subway. Should read the proposals in my bag that I was supposed to read over the weekend, but instead play Brickbreaker on my Blackberry the whole way. One of the best scenes in Andrew Ross Sorkin\u2019s Too Big to Fail<\/em> is when the bankers all gather at the New York Fed, waiting for Lehman to collapse, and they whip out their Blackberries and start competing over Brickbreaker scores. The action on my Blackberry ball is getting jagged. It\u2019s like playing tennis with a warped racket.<\/p>\n

10:00 A.M.<\/strong> At office, watch Obama and Kagan in the Rose Garden, streaming over computer, from CNN.com. \u2028\u2028All day: open e-mails; reply to e-mails; delete enough e-mails to enable more, fat e-mails to clog the queue.<\/p>\n

7:00 P.M.<\/strong> Literacy Partners fundraiser at Lincoln Center. Very Texan. Lot of Texans. Ball gowns and hairdos and faces. Barbara Taylor Bradford, who seems like a nice woman, is honored for her generosity. \u2028Four writers read before dinner. Sara Gruen reads from the forthcoming novel, Ape House<\/em>. Next up, my author, David Finkel, who reads a wrenching scene from The Good Soldiers<\/em> in which a young wife tries to comfort her very young husband, who has been profoundly injured in Iraq. The Giffords are visibly moved and lean in to each other. Mary Karr reads a funny, angry part of Lit<\/em>, in which her mother falls off the wagon the night of Karr\u2019s rehearsal dinner. And last, Norris Church Mailer, radiant and frail in layers of autumnal velvet, floats to the podium to read a section from her memoir about how she sweetly tricked Norman Mailer into buying her a full-length red fox coat, and how, in gratitude, as a gift one Christmas, she had photographs taken of herself in that coat and nothing else. There were those who were appalled by the tale, but I found it charming, and it was the right story to tell to such a Texan crowd. \u2028I walked up to Tommy Tune<\/a> and told him I\u2019d always wanted to dance with him. In my party heels I was about six foot four and he towered over me. He was very gracious and very tan. \u201cWehll,\u201d he said, \u201cone of these days we may just get our chance.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>10:40 P.M.<\/strong> What to do, what to do? Had too much fundraiser wine to read much of anything, and I\u2019m not in the mood for a whaling documentary, however brilliant. I flip through stacks of magazines\u2014Time Out<\/em>, New York<\/em>, Food and Wine<\/em>, Elle D\u00e9cor<\/em>, Rolling Stone<\/em>\u2014and rip out pages, of recipes I\u2019ll never make, songs I\u2019ll never download, tickets I\u2019ll never order.<\/p>\n

11:20 P.M.<\/strong> Turn on the final episode of Damages<\/em>, which I recorded a few weeks back and never watched. When the episode is over, and all the random storylines are supposed to have been woven together, I sit on my bed and try see how the pieces all fit. Who was Glenn Close yelling at? \u201cNo, no, I told you not to do that!\u201d she screams. Can someone explain this to me?<\/p>\n

Check back tomorrow for the second installment of Sarah Crichton’s Culture Diary. Crichton, a former editor of <\/em>Seventeen and <\/em>Newsweek, is the publisher of Sarah Crichton Books<\/a> at Farrar, Straus and Giroux.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAY ONE, Saturday, May 8 3:28 A.M. Up. Always up at 3:28 A.M., on the nose. Before I crashed, I started Jill Lepore\u2019s piece on the real historical Tea Partiers in The New Yorker. I flip past Lepore and move onto Janet Malcolm\u2019s piece on the trial of Mazoltuv Borukhova, the Bukharan Jewish doctor, for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[35,43,17,41,42,46,39,40,45,44],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-culture-diaries","tag-art","tag-blackberry","tag-books","tag-elena-kagan","tag-janet-malcolm","tag-music","tag-sarah-crichton","tag-the-new-yorker","tag-the-news","tag-theater"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPart One of a Week in Culture with Sarah Crichton, Book Editor<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"June 2, 2010 \u2013 DAY ONE, Saturday, May 8 3:28 A.M. Up. Always up at 3:28 A.M., on the nose. 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