Archive for March 2013
Judging a cover by its book…
Artist Sharm Murugiah has imagined covers for the (as yet to be published) mass-market paperback editions of Quentin Tarantino’s screenplays. Click here for a zoomable version.
[TotH to GeekTyrant]
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As we confuse our genres and mix our media, we might recall that it was on this date in 1920 that This Side of Paradise was published. Francis Scott Fitzgerald had written a first draft off the novel while stationed in Alabama during World War I; then titled “The Romantic Egotist,” it was rejected. Fitzgerald re-wrote the novel, re-titled it, and got a friend to get it to Maxwell Perkins at Scribners, who took it on and oversaw its polish and publication.
Set in Princeton, This Side of Paradise was the most influential “college novel” of its age, and introduced a new set of perspectives and values that came to characterize a cohort of intra-war writers. Critical reception was ecstatic; sales were strong– and Fitzgerald found instant fame and riches.
Still, the reception of his work wasn’t universally positive: John Grier Hibben, the President of Princeton, lamented “I cannot bear to think that our young men are merely living four years in a country club and spending their lives wholly in a spirit of calculation and snobbishness.”
The Baker of Amherst…
Emily Dickinson is, of course, renown for her verse; but acclaim for her poetry was largely posthumous. In her lifetime, she was probably better known as the quiet-but-kindly lady who would lower baked treats from her kitchen window to Amherst children. Her Rye and Indian round bread won second prize at the 1856 Amherst Cattle Show (though in the spirit of full disclosure, it should be noted that Emily’s sister Lavinia was one of the judges). And when the Dickinson family’s housekeeper quit, Emily took it upon herself to bake the family’s daily bread– a responsibility she retained even after a replacement was hired, in deference to her father’s preference for her bread over all others.
Even as her dough rose in the kitchen, so did her inspiration, which often struck as she baked. So she would draft poems on wrappers and other kitchen papers; her poem, “The Things that can never come back, are several,”
The Things that never can come back, are several—
Childhood—some forms of Hope—the Dead—
Though Joys—like Men—may sometimes make a Journey—
And still abide…
…was first composed on the back of a friend’s recipe for Coconut Cake.
For more on Emily Dickinson’s kitchen connection, see “A Poet in the Kitchen” at History Kitchen. And for Emily’s own recipe for Coconut Cake (or, as she called it, “Cocoanut Cake“) click here.
God gave a Loaf to every Bird —
But just a Crumb — to Me —
I dare not eat it — tho’ I starve —
My poignant luxury —
To own it — touch it —
Prove the feat — that made the Pellet mine —
Too happy — for my Sparrow’s chance —
For Ampler Coveting —
It might be Famine — all around —
I could not miss an Ear —
Such Plenty smiles upon my Board —
My Garner shows so fair —
I wonder how the Rich — may feel —
An Indiaman — An Earl —
I deem that I — with but a Crumb —
Am Sovereign of them all —
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As we reach for the oven mitts, we might recall that it was on this date in 1306 that Robert I (aka Robert the Bruce) was crowned King of Scotland… at Scone.
Robert and his (first) wife, Isabella of Mar
Among the ruins…
Photographer Matthew Christopher has been intrigued by abandoned structures since he was a child. His site Abandoned America collects the fruits of that fascination.
We live in a time where every spare plot of land is being developed and redeveloped, a time when cookie-cutter, prefabricated homes and businesses are the general rule. The failures of the past are being ignored and repeated, and many valuable pieces of our common past are falling to the wrecking ball every year. This process may be considered inevitable but it speaks of a certain carelessness and wastefulness on our part not to acknowledge and explore these fragments together while we still can. There is also a responsibility we all share to confront the horrors some of these sites are witness to. While we teach and reteach certain historical atrocities like the holocaust (and rightfully so), most people are completely ignorant that asylums and institutions on our own soil came close to being as horrific and lethal to those inside. Likewise, every factory complex that is demolished erases a valuable part of the heritage of the community it helped create, and an opportunity to understand the sometimes brutal working conditions, class struggles, and the economic devastation created by its closing is gone forever. While I love archaeology, I am dismayed at the prevailing blindness in scholastic circles that prizes a handful of nails or pottery fragments from an early colonial settlement but ignores sites that are still above ground and critical to preserving the accounts of accomplishments and missteps over the last century.
Beyond that, there is an undeniably artistic element to decayed sites, and an immense number of social, theological, and philosophical questions they pose. Abandoned America’s aim encompasses not only the historical and photographic cataloging of such sites, but also on a larger scale a eulogy for the lost ways of life they represent, a statement of their emotional, spiritual, and metaphoric relevance to our everyday lives, and a sense of the visceral experience of entering a parallel universe of silence, rust, and peeling paint…
Many, many more mesmerizing memorials at Abandoned America (from whence the photos above, all rights reserved to the artist).
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As we tread carefully, we might send a lightly-but-carefully-composed birthday verse to Lawrence Ferlinghetti; he was born on this date in 1919. A translator and writer of fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration, he is best known as an author for his poetry, perhaps especially for A Coney Island of the Mind (1958). He is also justly famed as a pioneering publisher: he initiated the “Pocket Poet” series, publishing his own verse, and works by Kenneth Rexroth, Kenneth Patchen, Marie Ponsot, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, Robert Duncan, William Carlos Williams, and Gregory Corso. He published fiction by the by the William Burroughs and Charles Bukowski; non-fiction from Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn; translations of Bataille, Brecht, and Goethe… and Neal Cassidy’s “memoir,” which might arguably fit into more than one of those categories.
But Ferlinghetti is perhaps best known these days for his base of operations, San Francisco’s famed City Lights Books; established in 1953, it was the first all-paperbound bookshop in the country. Given its stock and its publishing activities, it quickly became the “clubhouse” for the Beats, and a center of challenging thought– a role it occupies to this day.
“Poetry is the shadow cast by our imaginations.” – These Are My Rivers: New & Selected Poems, 1955-1993
Ferlinghetti, reading at City Lights
Traduttore, traditore…
Over at the always-fascinating Langage Log, Victor Mair responds to an amusing– but as he points out, slightly misleading– piece in The Daily Mail. In “Lost in translation: Hilarious advice signs from foreign airports… where their English leaves a little to be desired,” The Mail features a series of Asian signs awkwardly, if not entirely incorrectly, translated– like this one:
But as Mair observes, some of the signs featured are perhaps even more amusing, precisely because they are perfectly accurately translated:
Though the English may sound strange, neither of these signs is mistranslated. That’s what the Chinese really says:
yóuyú mǒuxiē yuányīn yánwù 由于某些原因延误
“delayed due to some reasons”wénmíng jīchǎng 文明机场
“civilized airport”These two signs are examples of what might be called “un-Chinglish”. Technically, their “lost” quality is due not to mistranslation but to unfamiliarity with the sociocultural expectations of the circumstances in which they are found…
… which is all just to remind us that the world is even more wonderfully weird than we know.
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As we treasure our phrasebooks, we might send epic birthday greetings to a man whose work transcended translation, Akira Kurosawa; he was born on this date in 1910. One of the most influential filmakers in cinema history, he directed 30 films in a 57 year career. His Rashomon, a surprise Golden Lion winner at Venice in 1950, went on to commercial success in Europe and the U.S., opening those markets to Japanese film. He went on to make such masterpieces as Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Yojimbo (1961), Kagemusha (1980), and Ran (1985)… a body of work for which he won essentially every major film award offered in Japan, Europe, and the U.S., including a Lifetime Achievement Oscar (1990).
“A library implies an act of faith”*…
For almost 30 years Candida Höfer has photographed interiors, mostly representational spaces accessible to the public– staircases, lobbies, reading halls or exhibition spaces. Rather than staging them, she captures them in as she finds them, with both discretion and humor.
Now, she’s trained her lens on libraries across Europe and the US: the State Archive in Naples (above, via), the Escorial in Spain, the Whitney Museum in New York, Villa Medici in Rome, the Hamburg University library, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, the Museo Archeologico in Madrid, the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, and many, many others.
Luxuriate in these temples of knowledge– and enjoy Umberto Eco’s exquisite introductory essay– in Libraries.
And on a lighter note, from Literary Man, “If Libraries Could Get Any Sexier“…
“What’s New, Pussycat?” (1965): Woody Allen, Romy Schneider, two ladders, and an open book.
* Victor Hugo
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As we remain quiet, please, we might spare a thought for playwright, poet, artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; he died on this date in 1832. Probably best remembered these days for Faust, he was “the master spirit of the German people,” and, after Napoleon, the leading figure of his age.
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