Frank MacShane (who was my first translation teacher) spends a rainy afternoon in Manhattan with Borges. The piece is in a fifty-year-old New American Review paperback, whose yellowing pages are about to self-destruct:
At a certain point Peggy James complained to her uncle Henry James, then entering the deep thickets of his late style, that his work was too impenetrable. His response:
I find this mid-to-late-1840s daguerreotype of Hawthorne absolutely haunting. The deterioration of the plate is so painterly and seems to capture some of the subject's elusive and anxious mood (he was penniless and would soon be evicted from the Old Manse).
@joshtpm
I once nicked the top of my outer ear (poetically called the helix) while shaving. The amount of blood was phenomenal, but it was a tiny cut. My guess is that Trump's ear was similarly nicked by a piece of glass, which sounds far less heroic and is therefore unmentionable.
Schoenberg disliked Stravinsky, ridiculing him as "kleine Modernsky"--"Little Mister Modern," more or less. Stravinsky was equally leery of his supposed rival. For that reason I'm even more moved by this strange concatenation at the end (from Allen Shawn's study of AS):
And now, direct from the Golden Age of Sideburns, comes the lovely cover for my book (with a tip of the hat to Karl Spurzem for designing it):
Glad to the Brink of Fear | Princeton University Press
In our most recent Review, John Banville praises James Marcus’s portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the warmth with which Marcus illustrates Emerson’s love and loss of his first marriage as an enthusiastic portrayal both endearing and persuasive.
#BookBoost
#BookReview
#Read
One of the fun things in life is making Vivian Gornick laugh. Here I am doing that very thing at McNally Jackson on Monday night, probably telling a Transcendentalist joke of some kind ("So I bit him!"). Good times and a great night.
For the
@TheTLS
I wrote about Robert Boyers's new memoir of Susan Sontag and George Steiner, a vivid, affectionate, and often ambivalent double portrait:
I am so sorry to hear about the death of Lewis Lapham. He was a stellar writer and editor, a marvelous drinking companion (Paul & Jimmy's must be wrapped in black crepe), and a truly kind man. They don't make them like that anymore.
The Paris Review mourns the loss of Lewis Lapham (1935-2024). In celebration of his life and work, we’re unlocking his Art of Editing interview from our archive.
The Washington Post just released its 28 suggested Summer Reads, and I'm delighted to have made the cut! Emerson is of course designed for beach blanket consumption (don't forget the suntan lotion and transparent-eyeball-sized shades):
Dang, I didn't have this sexy graphic when I posted about that McNally Jackson event. It's too nice to waste, even though I'm violating the primary rule of social media by dividing my viral energies. Alas!
On some level I really despise the White House Correspondents' Dinner. The lubricating chumminess between journalists and the people they're supposed to be covering is not helpful. Nor is the queasy sensation that politics is just a good joke among friends--no hard feelings.
I had a lovely time speaking at Boston's First Church last night (despite some unseasonal sleet and wind outside). Since the Second Church merged with the First in 1970, this is both Emerson's congregation and that of his father, William Emerson.
By the way, what household is complete without this Emersonian scented candle, for those special (or ordinary) moments in your human existence? It smells like cedar, like wild fern, like eternity.
Forgive the carnival-barking tone, but as part of a spring sale, Princeton is currently offering my Emerson book for $14.98. Unbeatable price, ladies and germs!
Also, on March 22 I will be appearing at the Harvard Book Store with the excellent Rick Moody. Details below, no registration required, should be a blast!
I don't know why this failed to register earlier, but it seems that my 2000 interview with Czeslaw Milosz has been reprinted in this compendium of his conversations. How thrilling to have my English-languge exchange portaged back into the poet's own Polish!
I was listening to "Into the Mystic" and thinking what a perfect song it was--melody, arrangement, lyrics, singing--and it made me think of the simple and perfect things you find in Yeats. Like here, almost all monosyllables and (aside from "strove") very colloquial and lovely:
Strolling through Sleepy Hollow Cemetery yesterday, a pleasure as always, although I didn't go up to Authors Ridge--was leaving that for this afternoon.
@OsitaNwanevu
@jasoncherkis
Interesting argument, although here is the late Terry Teachout, more of a conservative himself, giving her a semi-flogging in the NYTBR:
Another hilarious moment in the William-and-Henry saga: William James violates decorum by attempting to spy on Chesterton (from Robert D. Richardson's great bio). "This sort of thing was just not done in England."
Please do read this excellent conversation between Scott Sherman and Edwin Frank on publishing, classics, economics, taste, and the intricacies of translation:
Just FYI, I keep listening to this on my fancy headphones and the textures are like a beautiful drug. I get to the end and start over. Unworldly (and lots of people, but not me, consider this one of Mahler's lightweight productions):
Really enjoyed reading at KGB earlier tonight--haven't seen any photos from the actual event yet, but here's the joint before the fun began, which I can hardly believe still exists after 31 years. (It was previously a speakeasy run by Lucky Luciano!)
Nothing quite like the Old Manse. I worked on my RWE project in the upstairs study in 2017, with Emerson and Hawthorne peering over my shoulder (or so I imagined):
Cynthia Ozick turns 96 today--an amazing thought! Presenting her with the NBCC award in 2001 was one of the highlights of my professional life. You can see it all here (at 11:13, and wow, my hair was darker then):
Early, beautiful self-portrait by Käthe Kollwitz. Also, I never saw any of her sculptures before, this one being a lamentation for her friend Ernst Barlach (and another self-portrait).
So there I was, perspiring like mad in the Valley of Temples in Agrigento. The one behind me, dating from around 440 BC, was a Greek shrine converted to a Christian basilica about a thousand years later, then hastily (relatively speaking) deconsecrated around 1788.
So apparently the first published computer algorithm was created by... Lord Byron's daughter? Ada Lovelace sounds like one fascinating (if frequently unhappy) person and I'm curious to learn more about her.
Mozartian in its command of shoelaces, staplers, escalators, fast-food bags and containers, industrial design, and the flume ride of the free-associating brain. I mean, he's amazing, always was.
Today's
#WaferThinBook
: The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker (1988, 135p.)
Baker shows us an entire world in the space of a CVS bag and an escalator ride. If you've read it, you probably love it. And if you haven't read it, you've missed one of the best books of the last 40 years.
@emyxter
@NickKristof
The usual student population on campus is about 8,000, but only 1,500 returned for the remainder of the spring semester. And yes, it wasn't business as usual--there were plenty of restrictions imposed by the administration, which seem to have worked.
In other news, I spent a few marvelous days at an off-the-grid dwelling in the San Luis Valley. What more can a city slicker ask than feral horses, wild asparagus, awesome sunsets, and a porch to loll on? https://
SCOTUS is now essentially an anti-democratic council of mullahs, making decisions in complete defiance of popular will and, often, common sense. This lines up nicely with the fetishing of semicolons in the Constitution--scriptural madness. We are in such trouble.
My former student Carrigan Miller has single-handedly resurrected the KGB Lit quarterly for another lap around the track. He's also a big fan of ink, paper, and movable type ("No one’s improved on it!").
Eight months from publication and already
#1
with a bullet in the coveted Nonexistent Books Pertaining to the Nineteenth Century category (although David Walker's "Appeal" definitely exists)! I think this means my Mom put in a preorder.
How can you not love William James? Here he is in a 1905 letter, comparing Santayana's newly published "Life of Reason" to Emerson (unfavorably, even though he loves, and also dislikes, the book). Irresistible!
Am delighted to be making my debut in the current issue of the Times Literary Supplement, discussing (yet again) that Mutt-and-Jeff duo of Emerson and Thoreau!
I just had to retweet this--the amazing and zany Les Paul playing up a multi-overdubbed storm with his equally overdubbed wife Mary Ford. Plus she's attending to the plants at the same time! And the cat is lolling on a chaise longue in the background!
Lidian Emerson (RWE's second wife, activist on behalf of abolition, female suffrage, and other great reform causes of the day): "Save me from magnificent souls. I like a small common sized one."
I enjoyed every moment of this--Roth on Bellow and his "inspired carelessness." This seems to have been the last on-camera interview that Roth ever did, and his pleasure in recollecting his friend (and hero) touches me deeply:
Vivian Gornick, as she prepares to drop the hammer on Geoff Dyer in The Atlantic. My question: are there artists, contra Gornick, who keep harvesting fresh and animating fixations, or are we all essentially one-trick ponies?
@ae_stallings
While we're at it, here are some fragments of Shelley's skull, on display at the New York Public Library (gathered while his remains were being cremated on the beach in 1822):
Good times at Fruitlands--from the 10-year-old Louisa May Alcott's 1843 diary. The utopian community, founded largely by her father Bronson Alcott, lasted only about seven months.
While it LOOKS like Robert Sullivan and myself will be engaged in a cage match, what will transpire is actually a cordial conversation about Transcendental stuff, science, politics, and that goofy eyeball on two legs.
On 3/14 author and journalist James Marcus brings his latest work to the Wagner. Join him as he explores the history and evolution of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the subject of his new book Glad to the Brink of Fear. Register here:
"Give All To Love," Michael Maglaras's marvelous new documentary on Emerson, can now be streamed for free on the 217 Films website. Yes, I'm in it, a one-man peanut gallery and Greek chorus. But the film is crammed with visual delights and Emerson love:
At the Baths of Diocletian this afternoon (see tiny yet imposing figure at lower right). As you will notice, very high ceilings--I suspect this is a prewar building.
Allowing Bill Barr to whitewash his role in Trump's political crime spree is a disgusting move by CNN. Barr: "Joe Biden is not morally superior to Donald Trump." A chimp, a rock, a rotting stump--they are all morally superior to Trump.
May I just reiterate how much I despise "originalism" as a judicial philosophy? It's largely a fig leaf for pedantic cruelty and a crazy attempt to turn the clock back to 1783.