“35/10,” by Sharon Olds
As my skin shows
its dry pitting, she opens like a small
pale flower on the tip of a cactus
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Eminent Eggs, Tips for Planning Your Utopic Commune, and more
Excerpts and curios from around the web:
Victorian ornithology for the manliest of men, sex so white you’ll need sunglasses, and tips for planning your paradisiacal collective.
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The Power of Voice in the Case for Audiobooks
Audiobooks obviously rely heavily on voice. And so it is voice that can lift an audiobook well beyond the reaches of the actual book. Voice can be divided into two schools: the school of multiple voices and the school of one, charismatic voice. While the most well known example of the first school is Jim Dale, who read for the Harry Potter series, embodying a wholly unique voice for each character in the series—a number that easily clocks into the hundreds—the major player in my audiobook days was Johanna Parker, who read for the steamy, thrilling Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mystery series.
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Lolo the Donkey and the Avant-Garde That Never Was: Part 1
At the 1910 edition of the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, a messy, muddled painting of a sunset over the sea was exhibited. Titled Et le soleil s’endormit sur l’Adriatique (Sunset Over the Adriatic), the picture was presented by the artist Joachim-Raphaël Boronali from Genoa, and was said to be a part of the “Excessivist” movement. The Excessivist movement did not exist, and neither did Boronali. Both were the invention of writer and critic Roland Dorgelès. Dorgelès and a few friends attached a paintbrush to the tail of a donkey named Lolo, a mascot and entertainer of sorts kept at a Montmartre bar called Le Lapin Agile.
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“Marilyn and the Literati,” by Jeffrey Meyers
Marilyn was a kind of touchstone for writers. Unsure of her own identity, she identified with others. She was warmly responsive to those who showed an interest in her, and the best authors appreciated her human qualities. The Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov was as handsome and sophisticated as Nikita Khrushchev was coarse and crude. He met Marilyn at a Hollywood party while he was working on the screenplay of Lolita in the spring of 1960, and examined her as if she were one of his exquisite butterflies. Stacy Schiff wrote that “in Vladimir’s recollection, ‘She was gloriously pretty, all bosom and rose’—and holding the hand of [her current lover] Yves Montand. Monroe took a liking to Vladimir, inviting the [Nabokovs] to a dinner, which they did not attend.
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California, Here We Come
Swimming pools! Movie Stars! We’re on our way to AWP–and if you are too, remember to stop by (we’re at Table 218) and check out our special deals: save $10 on a one-year subscription—($15 instead of $25), or get two years for the price of one ($25 instead of $45). When you sign up, you’ll also receive a copy of our current issue (a $7 value) for free.
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Garbage People, Mr. Kafka, Hansel and Gretel Get Guns, and more
Excerpts and curios from around the web:
Franz Kafka’s workout regimen, the linguistic history of ‘garbage person,’ classic fairy tales re-imagined by the NRA, and a chance to rip open your shirt and cry ‘STELLLAAA!’ to a throng of cheering spectators in the French Quarter.
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On “Suburban Gospel”: An Interview with Mark Beaver
“There’s a lot of male sexuality in this book, because I knew that if I was going to write about faith, I’d also have to write about the flesh—I think it would be dishonest to write about male adolescence without sexuality being an important component. So given my upbringing, that was the hardest part—it felt difficult, but necessary. When I was shopping the book around, one publisher told me he liked my book but wouldn’t be publishing it because female readers—the largest book-buying demographic—would find all the sexuality off-putting.”
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“A System of Wheels,” by Tennessee Williams
The evenings were ghastly. Miriam fancied that he was persecuting her in all manner of ways. For one thing he was deceiving her about the size of his paycheck. Also he was having affairs with other women. One of these fictitious paramours of Anthony’s was the church-organist. At this suggestion Anthony was particularly horrified, for the musician to whom his wife referred was a stout woman of forty-odd with a goiter.
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Unsolved Histories: A Reverend, A Theory, and the Garden of Eden Found
Though the Bible offers no specific coordinates (hardly unexpected given that the entirety of the world’s creation was summed up in a few deft lines), it does offer a few clues for religious scholars to puzzle over. Such as the Bible’s mention of Eden’s location near the site of four rivers: the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris and the Euphrates. For many, these ancient waterways—two of which still flow throughout western Asia—would confirm Eden’s location in or around modern day Iraq, Syria and Kuwait. Yet Van Slyke had another theory, believing the four rivers referenced were, in fact, the Trempealeau, the Black, the La Crosse, and the Mississippi—thereby confirming Galesville, Wisconsin as Eden’s true locale.
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