Sizing up the Moons, Jason McGuran
8 experts on “Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky?”: ”The question shot straight into my brain and disabled the parietal cortex. There was a sizzle and a puff of smoke, and the smell of sulfur filled the air. I groped in the dark for a 50-kopeck piece and tossed it upwards. It clinked hollowly on the linoleum. The flickering light of the candle from above illuminated the tiny but unmistakable image of the double-headed eagle. Heads up: Dostoevsky, then.”
On “Making Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing”: ”In the late 1970s, bohemian hipsters on L.A.’s west side were getting Wet. Despite its small circulation, it became highly influential among local artists, designers, and architects. And now, “Making Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing,” provides a sampling of its spirit.”
A madcap missive from Werner Herzog to his cleaning lady: ”I will tell you this Rosalina, not as a taunt or a threat but as an evocation of joy. The joy of nothingness, the joy of the real. I want you to be real in everything you do. If you cannot be real, then a semblance of reality must be maintained. A real semblance of the fake real, or ‘real.’ I have conquered volcanoes and visited the bitter depths of the earth’s oceans. Nothing I have witnessed, from lava to crustacean, assailed me liked the caked debris haunting that small plastic soap hammock in the smaller of the bathrooms. Nausea is not a sufficient word. In this regard, you are not being real.”
Sarah Fay on the “Tortured History” of the book review: “As we look to past book reviewers, we must also look around us. Too few newspapers and magazines employ regular book columnists and reviewers. This is done in the spirit of egalitarianism, but in the digital age, where anonymous, poorly written ‘customer reviews’ sway readers, we need to establish relationships with our literary critics. We need to trust them as ‘experts’ hired and trained by the publications that employ them or self-educated and trained as book bloggers or ‘amateur’ reviewers with websites of their own. In either case, we can get to know the reviewer’s tastes and tics and make a more informed decision about the book under review.”
Justin Geldzahler on Edith Warton’s overlooked vulgarity: “Read that name again: Mrs. Peniston… Few things stick out like Peniston. No matter how you cut it, Mrs. Peniston is a hilarious name. It has the word ‘penis’ in it, if you didn’t notice. And the Oxford English Dictionary confirms that the word was in regular usage well before Wharton’s time.”
The Henry David Thoreau Video Game
(Via Galleycat)
