The Paris Review's Blog, page 869
November 28, 2012
The Sporting Life
Discussing the recent damage done to the Poe House and Museum earlier, I mentioned in passing that Baltimore was the only American city to have honored a local literary light. Well, our ever-vigilant readers were quick to remind us of other bookish squads around the globe.
The Toronto Argonauts, we were informed, “just won Canada’s Grey Cup in Homeric fashion.” (One could theoretically make an argument for the Spartans, too.) Edinburgh’s Heart of Midlothian Football Club may have technically been named for a jail, but it was Walter Scott’s 1818 novel, The Heart of Midlothian, that made the title globally famous.
And if we’re really digging deep, it wouldn’t do to ignore the 2012 London Olympic mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville. While, officially, the latter is named for named for Stoke Mandeville Hospital, the estimable Medieval Material Culture Blog makes a compelling case for another (possibly subconscious) motivation:
These mascots would be right at home with all of the fantastical peoples described in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. And he certainly does an amazing amount of international travel for a 14th century Englishman—as far afield as Egypt, Persia, Syria, Ethiopia, Amazonia, and so on.
Granted, he has nothing to do with athletic competition, as far as I recall. And it is a bit, er, fanciful. But I could see these mascots being modern-day descendants, perhaps, of the peoples of the islands around Dondun.
And surely, some of these Dondunese islanders would be strong contenders for medals—the ones with horses’ hooves, who are “strong and mighty, and swift runners; for they take wild beasts with running, and eat them” could win the marathon. The ones “that go upon their hands and their feet as beasts, … all skinned and feathered, and they will leap as lightly into trees, and from tree to tree, as it were squirrels or apes”—well, that sounds like an amazing gymnastic routine right there, doesn’t it?
The Dying Sea
On the road from Jericho to the beaches of the Dead Sea, there is an architectural curiosity, a yellowish abandoned building. My grandmother would tell me its story every time we passed it on our way for a day at the beach. One should bear in mind that “a day at the beach” at the Dead Sea is not “a day at the beach.” It is its evil twin. The day is spent walking on jagged rocks, falling into pits of gooey black mud, and trying to pretend that such an unearthly density of salt sticking to your body is not as painful as it actually is. The adults would further complicate my love-hate relationship with those beach days by tell us terrifying stories about the ghoul who lived in the cliffs and would eat us up if we strayed too far.
This might explain why my favorite moment was the glimpse we got of that yellowish building. I can’t remember when this place used to be a hotel, or what its name was, but I remember the description. It was prewar—pre-1948, or pre-1967, it doesn’t really matter which; we have had as many golden ages as we’ve had catastrophes. Suitably enough, the hotel was a gem of gold and velvet. The people there were rich, they spoke five languages, they were beautiful, and they knew how to waltz. Read More »
Poe House Vandalized
It seems like every week there’s a new indignity, whether it’s the destruction of the church where the Brontës worshipped, the theft of George Eliot’s desk, or, now, the vandalism of the house where Edgar Allan Poe lived and worked in the 1830s.
For the second year in a row, the City of Baltimore has chosen not to grant the Poe House its $85,000 subsidy; as a result, despite efforts of supporters and friends, it may have to close permanently. In any event, the museum has been shuttered since September, and as such left more open to destruction; the front stairs have been stolen and graffiti painted on the door. Nothing that can’t be fixed, but we expected more respect from the officials of the only American city to name its football team after a literary allusion.
Voices Carry: An Interview with Elena Passarello
Elena Passarello is a writer with a confident voice. Her first book is centered around that voice: in Let Me Clear My Throat, Passarello draws from her writing and acting background, and the result is a quirky blend of reportage and some personal narrative. In a recent e-mail interview, we discussed everything from the recent presidential campaign to a Stella screaming contest.
How did you choose your theme for your first book? Did you set out from the beginning to write an entire essay collection devoted to the human voice?
I had a few essays on voices before I began working on the essays that appear in this collection. I didn’t know that they were on voices at the time, however—I was just writing profiles, critical pieces, lyric stuff that all ended up using voice either as an entrance point or as an organizing principle. The first essay that I wrote for the collection was the one on the Wilhelm Scream. I first drafted it not as an essay on the voice, but as a simple unpacking of this very juicy and mysterious piece of pop culture. A few drafts in, however, I saw that I was, once again, threading ideas about the voice throughout it. The essay became about the fact that a human body had made this sound, and in doing so, that body embossed itself into every movie which used the clip. The essay became an exploration of the purposes a human scream serves—both in pre-civilized human life and contemporary culture. Around the time I finished the essay, I started thinking I could do a whole book about the sounds of the human throat.
Speaking of your essay on the Wilhelm Scream—a sound effect used in hundreds of movies—how did you first hear about it?
I was just Googling around for the correct spelling of Ennio Morricone’s name for a now-defunct project. I landed on an IMDb page for a movie Morricone had scored, and in the roll of facts on the film was “Wilhelm Scream at 88:02!”Read More »
To Be or Not to Be? And Other News
Hamlet, as a choose-your-own adventure.
Writer Andrei Codrescu will be doing a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” live Q&A on December 6.
Small Business Saturday proved a boon for independent bookstores.
Literary drinks to get you through NaNoWriMo.
C. S. Lewis is getting his own plaque in Westminster Abbey’s famed Poet’s Corner.
November 27, 2012
Early Adaptors
Sherlock Holmes Baffled, which Arthur Marvin made in 1900 (and released three years later), is acknowledged to be the sleuth’s first onscreen appearance. However, it would seem that the thirty-second film may also be the very first cinematic literary adaptation. (Although in fairness, it would be hard to say which case the film portrays. One in which Holmes is baffled, presumably.)
Falling Hard
You see things differently when you’re in love. Two outpatients from a methadone clinic slap each other on the corner. A goiter rides the crosstown bus. We attend a dinner party; none of the dogs have tails. Men in the map room of the New York Public Library surveil passing breasts. Nights slip by. I sit on the curb outside a magazine launch and watch a famous author pour cold water down a woman’s arm. “Don’t be jealous,” my companion says impatiently, cupping his own elbows. “He’s only applying a temporary tattoo.”
I was in love and then I wasn’t, and sometime during the drifting gray interim I was told by a bookseller friend to read Renata Adler’s 1976 debut, Speedboat, a novel that had long been out of print but was absolutely, he insisted, worth the trouble of the search. I did not know whether this recommendation was meant to be sympathetic or encouraging, but I found it on eBay in two minutes, for three dollars. My friend was correct, as booksellers usually are; it was as though the novel had outstretched arms and I fell in.
Your Holiday Gift Dilemma: Solved!
Just in time for the holidays! Give the gift of The Paris Review to yourself and a loved one! For a limited time, when you buy a one-year subscription with automatic renewal, you can give a one-year gift subscription for only $25.
Here’s how it works: Include the addresses for the gift subscriptions in the “notes” field when checking out. Each subscription will start with the Winter issue and, of course, includes access to The Paris Review digital edition.
Need more than two gift subscriptions? Just call 866 354 0212 to cover everyone on your list.
Offer available for U.S. addresses only. Gift subscriptions will not be automatically renewed.
Yanet’s Vintage Emporium
While I’m at Yanet’s apartment it begins to pour, packs of chubby raindrops in the tropical afternoon that make the dust in her Havana apartment feel thicker than it actually is. I’m trapped until the storm passes. But every surface in Yanet’s home is coated with objects waiting to be lifted, appraised, perused, felt—at least an afternoon’s worth. So I browse the waist-high tables and rich wood armoires with rows of cut-crystal wine and port glasses, mod carafes with faded metallic polka dots, kitschy ceramic table lamps painted with bright pastoral scenes, and patterned blown-glass globes that once held water and fish. Technically, it’s not legal for any of these objects to be sold. Read More »
Scandal at the (Old) OED, and Other News
“An eminent former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary covertly deleted thousands of words because of their foreign origins and bizarrely blamed previous editors, according to claims in a book published this week.”
It may be intended to kickstart NaNoWriMo, but we think this Random Line Generator could be put to all sorts of interesting social uses.
“They would have loved me to have written fantasy fiction because that would have been easier to sell from a Tolkien, but I wanted to write thrillers.” Simon Tolkien on his famous grandfather’s legacy.
“I hate them. It’s like making believe there’s another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of book. A book is a book is a book.” Maurice Sendak was characteristically wishy-washy on the subject of e-books.
Some less vitriolic takes on the state of print.
The Paris Review's Blog
- The Paris Review's profile
- 305 followers
