{"id":88635,"date":"2015-08-07T14:31:01","date_gmt":"2015-08-07T18:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=88635"},"modified":"2016-04-03T18:19:23","modified_gmt":"2016-04-03T22:19:23","slug":"staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Baseball Cards, Barbarian Days<\/i>, Blow-up Dolls"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"pavese1300\"<\/a>

Cesare Paverse.<\/p><\/div>\n

In the evenings, I\u2019ve been reaching for Cesare Paverse\u2019s 1936 debut collection of poetry,\u00a0Hard Labor<\/a><\/em>, translated from the Italian in 1976 by William Arrowsmith. Finished in exile in the small Calabrian village of Brancaleone, the book is haunted by disenchantment and a sort of muted longing. Pavese\u2019s language is often plain, though nonetheless striking. His poems are short\u2014few run over a page and a half\u00ad\u2014but they read like stories. He takes us into the fields, where frost \u201cmurder[s] the wheat\u201d; into the bedroom, where \u201c[the girls] know how to love. They know more than the men\u201d; to dinner. There\u2019s a cat in heat, a waking country strumpet, a drunk whom he imagines fumbling into the sea. The ease with which Pavese kernels these small narratives\u00a0into every one of his poems has left me in awe, wondering how his countless other works could have followed such a debut. Here are a few of my favorite lines from \u201cTwo Cigarettes\u201d:\u00a0\u201c… If I come up to her room, \/ the woman whispers to me, she\u2019ll show me a snapshot of him\u2014 \/ tanned and curly-headed. He shipped on dirty tramps \/ and kept the engines clean. But I\u2019m better-looking.\u201d \u2014Caitlin Youngquist<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"War_So_Much_War-front_large\"<\/a>I managed to get my hands on an advance copy of War, So Much War<\/a>, <\/em>the first English translation of Merc\u00e8 Rodoreda\u2019s final novel, whose original Catalan version was published in 1980. The last shall be first, I guess: I\u2019ve never read any Rodoreda until now, and hadn\u2019t heard of her until last month, when my sister practically hurled a story of hers at my head. (I didn\u2019t get to it.) So far the book has proven itself a weird but entirely bewitching introduction to the writer. The story follows Adri\u00e0 Guinart, a teenaged boy who leaves his home in Barcelona at the onset of the Spanish Civil War, forging an errant path through the Catalonian countryside, making glancing and baffling contact with the fighting. More than anything, it\u2019s a medieval romance. The first clue is the novel\u2019s elliptical title (in Catalan: Quanta, Quanta Guerra\u2026<\/em>), which suggests romance\u2019s cumulative, episodic, ongoing form. Sure enough, the plot is mostly a list of encounters. But romance is as much about discreteness as it is ongoingness, and each of the book\u2019s short, reliably surreal chapters is like a small, beautiful stone. What is astonishing is that Rodoreda writes without visible contempt for her form\u2014a brave stance, considering that the Western novel arguably had its genesis in the ridicule of medieval romance<\/a>. But the farther I get into War, So Much War<\/em>, the more I realize that Rodoreda\u2019s form is the only one suited for her subject: the interruptions, the absurdities, the frivolities of war.\u00a0\u2014Oliver Preston
<\/strong><\/p>\n

I want to go surfing. This desire stemmed from William Finnegan\u2019s marvelous new memoir, Barbarian Days<\/em><\/a>, which I picked up after reading the excerpt on the Daily<\/em><\/a>. Finnegan, a longtime staff writer for The<\/em>\u00a0New Yorker<\/em>, has an easy, fluid way with description; he moves quickly through his scenes without seeming to stint on the details. In his sixty-three years, having lived in Southern California, Hawaii, South Africa, and San Francisco, and traveled though the South Pacific islands and Portugal in between, Finnegan has more or less always kept surfing. He puts you right there with him<\/a> while he rips inside the hollow tubes<\/a> of huge waves, the golden, late afternoon purple light shining through, the reef visible beneath. It\u2019s the kind of book that makes you squirm in your seat on the subway, gaze out the window at work, and Google Map the quickest route to the beach. In other words, it is, like Jon Krakauer\u2019s Into the Wild<\/em>, a semi-dangerous book, one that persuades young men like myself to trade in their office jobs in order to roam the world, to feel the ocean\u2019s power, and chase the waves. \u2014Jeffery Gleaves<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Don West.<\/p><\/div>\n

Like many \u201990s kids who grew up in suburban Ohio, I often stayed up late watching\u00a0Don West sell baseball cards<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Shop at Home<\/em>. (If you haven\u2019t heard of him, watch the linked video. He\u2019s the consummate\u00a0salesman\u2014and embodies the virtues of television retail.) In retrospect, though, I don\u2019t think I was Don West\u2019s target audience. Many of the players whose cards excited him were people I\u2019d never heard of, people who had long ago retired. One such player was Mike Schmidt, who came up again and again\u2014and who hadn\u2019t played professional baseball for years. For me and my best friend (another Don West fan), Mike Schmidt and his baseball cards became something of an inside joke. When something excited us, we\u2019d mimic Don West and yell, \u201cMike Schmidt!\u201d (I think I even bought my friend a card of his, years later, as a Christmas present.) And then yesterday, out of nowhere, I actually\u00a0read<\/em>\u00a0about Mike Schmidt\u2014in a\u00a0beautifully written story by Jeremy Markovich<\/a>. Markovich, it turns out, became weirdly obsessed by a rumor that Schmidt, as a college student,\u00a0had\u00a0hit a five-hundred-foot home run\u2014a nearly impossible feat, as far as sports lore goes. The\u00a0essay, which winds you through his various attempts to verify the feat, finally gave some long-awaited context to my own<\/em> Mike Schmidt obsession\u2014and settles the score on the five-hundred-footer, once and for all. \u2014Stephen Hiltner<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"9781628924770\"<\/a>The rituals of hotel life have been so often fetishized that you\u2019re right to be wary of books about them. But Joanna Walsh\u2019s Hotel<\/a><\/em>, due in September as part of the Object Lessons<\/a> series, isn\u2019t some coded advertisement for luxury living: it\u2019s a slim, sharp meditation on hotels and desire. Walsh worked for a while as a hotel reviewer, so she knows whereof she speaks\u2014from suites around the world, she ponders how the logic of the market has warped hotels not just to accommodate our wants but to teach us what to want, and how. That makes Hotel<\/em> sound like some leaden riff on Veblen; it isn\u2019t. In fact, Veblen never rates a mention: instead, Walsh invokes everyone from Freud to Forster to Mae West to the Marx Brothers. She\u2019s funny throughout, even as she documents the dissolution of her marriage and the peculiar brand of alienation on offer in lavish places. And best of all is her laconic side, as seen in the final chapter, \u201cPostcards from Twenty-six Hotels\u201d: \u201cThe skirting board was chipped. While having sex, I noticed that, as the hotel manager had told me, I could see the Eiffel Tower in the distance through the window.\u201d Or: \u201cI got drunk in this hotel, as in several others.\u201d \u2014Dan Piepenbring<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bukowski\u2019s The Bell Tolls for No One<\/a><\/em>, recently released in a comic book\u2013like paperback, follows the hard-boiled genre bent that reached its surreal apotheosis in his final novel, Pulp<\/em>. The obvious influence is to Hemingway\u2014see: the title\u2014but perhaps more interestingly, the editor David Stephen Calonne notes Bukowski\u2019s debt to the crime writer James M. Cain, who had also, unbeknownst to me, shaped the style of Camus\u2019s The Stranger<\/em>. The book includes some of Bukowski\u2019s roughly drawn illustrations, which fall somewhere close to pornographic Ziggy<\/em> or adult-themed New Yorker <\/em>cartoons. One features an asthmatic customer at an adult bookstore asking the cashier to inflate his blow-up doll for him; another shows an expressionistically drawn party girl surrounded by gawking men with the caption \u201cGod, a woman could get bored.\u201d The subject matter is a more amplified version of the usual Bukowski fare\u2014stalwart, sleazebag protagonists; spectral, deathly women with emphatically described upper legs. As always, the most one can hope for in Bukowski\u2019s universe is \u201ca grim yet comfortable isolation.\u201d \u2014Casey Henry<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"9781616890346\"<\/a>The Electric Information Age Book<\/a><\/em>, by Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Adam Michaels, chronicles the \u201cpublishing revolution\u201d of the late twentieth century by studying three groundbreaking works\u2014The Medium Is the Massage <\/em>and War and Peace in the Global Village <\/em>by Marshall McLuhan, and I Seem to Be a Verb<\/em> by Buckminster Fuller. All were designed (or \u201ccoauthored\u201d) by Quentin Fiore; all were \u201ccoordinated\u201d by the literary innovator\/adman, Jerome Agel; and all used multimedia storytelling to capture the era\u2019s radical changes in media, technology, and environment. Yet despite their originality, these books were decidedly not <\/em>avant-garde\u2014McLuhan and Fuller were essentially intellectual celebrities. Instead, they embraced pop culture, mass appeal, and the fragile paperback, and in this way became instant classics. Schnapp and Michaels call them \u201cInventory Books,\u201d and The Electric Information Age Book <\/em>embraces the same techniques: a narrative collage of text and images, heavy variations on typography and layout. Some might call it messy, but I think it works.\u00a0 \u2014Jane Robbins Mize<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the evenings, I\u2019ve been reaching for Cesare Paverse\u2019s 1936 debut collection of poetry,\u00a0Hard Labor, translated from the Italian in 1976 by William Arrowsmith. Finished in exile in the small Calabrian village of Brancaleone, the book is haunted by disenchantment and a sort of muted longing. Pavese\u2019s language is often plain, though nonetheless striking. His […]<\/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":[19074,19072,19067,1114,19070,19073,19071,1778,19068,19075,19069],"class_list":["post-88635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-adam-michaels","tag-buckminster-fuller","tag-cesare-paverse","tag-charles-bukowski","tag-don-west","tag-jeffrey-t-schnapp","tag-jeremy-markovich","tag-marshall-mcluhan","tag-merce-rodoreda","tag-quentin-fiore","tag-william-finnegan"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStaff Picks: Baseball Cards, Barbarian Days, Blow-up Dolls by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"August 7, 2015 \u2013 In the evenings, I\u2019ve been reaching for Cesare Paverse\u2019s 1936 debut collection of poetry,\u00a0Hard Labor, translated from the Italian in 1976 by William\" \/>\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\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Staff Picks: Baseball Cards, Barbarian Days, Blow-up Dolls by The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 7, 2015 \u2013 In the evenings, I\u2019ve been reaching for Cesare Paverse\u2019s 1936 debut collection of poetry,\u00a0Hard Labor, translated from the Italian in 1976 by William\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-08-07T18:31:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-04-03T22:19:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/pavese1300.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"620\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"466\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4a14f739935c82f100675b84e220252e\"},\"headline\":\"Staff Picks: Baseball Cards, Barbarian Days, Blow-up Dolls\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-08-07T18:31:01+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-04-03T22:19:23+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/\"},\"wordCount\":1498,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/pavese1300.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Adam Michaels\",\"Buckminster Fuller\",\"Cesare Paverse\",\"Charles Bukowski\",\"Don West\",\"Jeffrey T. Schnapp\",\"Jeremy Markovich\",\"Marshall McLuhan\",\"Merc\u00e8 Rodoreda\",\"Quentin Fiore\",\"William Finnegan\"],\"articleSection\":[\"This Week\u2019s Reading\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/\",\"name\":\"Staff Picks: Baseball Cards, Barbarian Days, Blow-up Dolls by The Paris Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/pavese1300.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-08-07T18:31:01+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-04-03T22:19:23+00:00\",\"description\":\"August 7, 2015 \u2013 In the evenings, I\u2019ve been reaching for Cesare Paverse\u2019s 1936 debut collection of poetry,\u00a0Hard Labor, translated from the Italian in 1976 by William\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/pavese1300.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/pavese1300.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Staff Picks: Baseball Cards, Barbarian Days, Blow-up Dolls\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4a14f739935c82f100675b84e220252e\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c15ccd1e2629bc3b1a8aa1a407e1186742acfaf923abe2addfec0885197794ff?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c15ccd1e2629bc3b1a8aa1a407e1186742acfaf923abe2addfec0885197794ff?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/parisreview\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Staff Picks: Baseball Cards, Barbarian Days, Blow-up Dolls by The Paris Review","description":"August 7, 2015 \u2013 In the evenings, I\u2019ve been reaching for Cesare Paverse\u2019s 1936 debut collection of poetry,\u00a0Hard Labor, translated from the Italian in 1976 by William","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Staff Picks: Baseball Cards, Barbarian Days, Blow-up Dolls by The Paris Review","og_description":"August 7, 2015 \u2013 In the evenings, I\u2019ve been reaching for Cesare Paverse\u2019s 1936 debut collection of poetry,\u00a0Hard Labor, translated from the Italian in 1976 by William","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2015-08-07T18:31:01+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-04-03T22:19:23+00:00","og_image":[{"width":620,"height":466,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/pavese1300.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"The Paris Review","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"The Paris Review","Est. reading time":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/"},"author":{"name":"The Paris Review","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4a14f739935c82f100675b84e220252e"},"headline":"Staff Picks: Baseball Cards, Barbarian Days, Blow-up Dolls","datePublished":"2015-08-07T18:31:01+00:00","dateModified":"2016-04-03T22:19:23+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/"},"wordCount":1498,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/pavese1300.jpg","keywords":["Adam Michaels","Buckminster Fuller","Cesare Paverse","Charles Bukowski","Don West","Jeffrey T. Schnapp","Jeremy Markovich","Marshall McLuhan","Merc\u00e8 Rodoreda","Quentin Fiore","William Finnegan"],"articleSection":["This Week\u2019s Reading"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/","name":"Staff Picks: Baseball Cards, Barbarian Days, Blow-up Dolls by The Paris Review","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/pavese1300.jpg","datePublished":"2015-08-07T18:31:01+00:00","dateModified":"2016-04-03T22:19:23+00:00","description":"August 7, 2015 \u2013 In the evenings, I\u2019ve been reaching for Cesare Paverse\u2019s 1936 debut collection of poetry,\u00a0Hard Labor, translated from the Italian in 1976 by William","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/pavese1300.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/pavese1300.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/07\/staff-picks-baseball-cards-barbarian-days-blow-up-dolls\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Staff Picks: Baseball Cards, Barbarian Days, Blow-up Dolls"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4a14f739935c82f100675b84e220252e","name":"The Paris Review","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c15ccd1e2629bc3b1a8aa1a407e1186742acfaf923abe2addfec0885197794ff?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c15ccd1e2629bc3b1a8aa1a407e1186742acfaf923abe2addfec0885197794ff?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"The Paris Review"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/parisreview\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88635"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96478,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88635\/revisions\/96478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}