The New Yorker on Facebook

La rinnovata pagina Facebook del New Yorker è carina! E' un modo per curiosare nella rivista mese dopo mese e anno dopo anno.  E per rivedere le barzellette, anche se spesso non si capiscono! newyorker.

David Foster Wallace

Gli amanti di David Foster Wallace possono leggere una scena inedita di The Pale King su The Millions. "Charles Lehrl grew up not in Peoria but in nearby Decatur, home of Archer Dentists Midland and Lehrl said a city of such relentless uninteresting squalor and poverty that Peorians point with genuine pride at their city's failure to be as bad as Decatur, whose air stank either of hog processing or burnt corn depending on the wind, whose patrician class distinguished itself by chewing gum with their front teeth. ..." themillions.

Radical Chic

"The expression 'radical chic' was coined by Tom Wolfe in his essay 'Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's', published in 1970. Wolfe's satirical text deals with Leonard Bernstein's fundraising party for the Black Panther Party in his 13-room Park Avenue penthouse duplex – shortly after the shooting of the 21 year-old Black Panther-activist Fred Hampton. This is Wolfe's 'funniest and sharpest essay', as critics remark". Johan Frederik Hartle, su eurozine.

Se volete leggere l'articolo di Tom Wolfe del 1970 cliccate qui.

Chi legge che cosa negli USA

La mappa dei giornali  letti negli Stati Uniti, aggiornata al gennaio scorso. flowingdata.

Che bacio!

Riporto una bellissima foto che ho trovato sul blog Nine hours of separation della traduttrice Silvia Pareschi. Si tratta di Paul Newman e Joanne Woodward, la coppia più bella e duratura di Hollywood, secondo Silvia. E sono perfettamente d'accordo. Colgo l'occasione per segnalare questo interessante blog che si occupa di traduzione e osserva l'Italia dall'America (San Francisco) e l'America dall'Italia (lago Maggiore).

Anche la mia prima lunga tappa in America è stata a San Francisco - più di trent'anni fa. Ho abitato un paio di mesi a Bush Street, in un monolocale infestato, di notte, dagli scarafaggi. E poi per due anni a Page Street. La mattina andavo a correre al Golden State Park, a volte raggiungendo la spiaggia su cui si vedevano le foche che prendevano il sole.

Edith Wharton, Again

Un altro profilo - molto interessante anche nella scrittura e nell'organizzazione, non per caso l'autrice è Francine Prose - di Edith Wharton, della sua genialità, delle sue contraddizioni. "When Edith Wharton - then Edith Jones - was a little girl, her favorite game was called 'making up.' 'Making up' involved pacing around with an open book and (before she could read) inventing and then later half reading, half inventing stories about real people, narratives that she would chant very loud and very fast. The constant pacing and shouting were important parts of the game, which (according to Wharton's memoir, A Backward Glance) had an enraptured, trance-like, slightly erotic aspect. Her parents spied on her, and it made them nervous. Edith's Old New York, old-money-society mother tried to transcribe what Edith was saying, but she spoke too fast; Mrs. Jones's anxiety increased when Edith asked her to entertain children who came to play because she was too busy making up". nybooks.

Sophie Cabot Black: una lezione di poesia

La poetessa Sophie Cabot Black discute di due sue poesie con Rebecca Foresman. Vi invito a leggere l'articolo, perché è interessante.

I’m fascinated by the way you manage to invoke the infamous Jersey turnpike with ecumenical language. Take the opening lines of the first stanza: Three miles off the interstate is whatever
Heaven might be to those who dream
Of a better return.

... these poems appeal to an element of the American psyche that stretches back to Plymouth Rock: I stake a claim in my land, defend it, grow it, and thereby steer my own destiny. It’s basic, bold tenet of the American Dream: venture capital and real estate are means for spiritual exploration and existential validation. newyorker.

Innocents Abroad. Come scrivere libri di viaggio

Come Mark Twain, possibilmente. "Twain writes simultaneously with contempt and fondness, and we're left to puzzle out what he's trying to do, and where in the mess we should stand. What he's doing, it seems, is deploying a constantly changing mix of both sincerity and irreverence, making his position on things hard to pin down". 

"I have camped with the Indians," Twain writes. "I have been on the warpath with them, taken part in the chase with them…I have roamed with them, scalped them, had them for breakfast. I would gladly eat the whole race if I had a chance." themillions.

Why Finish Books?

Ho trovato interessante, thought provoking, questo articolo di Tim Parks sul perché spesso non finisce di leggere un libro, anche se gli piace (accade anche a me), e sul perché uno scrittore spesso non finisce un libro. Le due cose sono collegate. "Kafka remarked that beyond a certain point a writer might decide to finish his or her novel at any moment, with any sentence; it really was an arbitrary question, like where to cut a piece of string, and in fact both The Castle and America are left unfinished, while The Trial is tidied away with the indecent haste of someone who has decided enough is enough. ... All these writers it seems to me, by suggesting that beyond a certain point a book might end anywhere, legitimize the notion that the reader may choose for him or herself, without detracting anything from the experience, where to bow out (of Proust’s Recherche for example, or The Magic Mountain)".nybooks.

The Urban Dictionary History of Western Literature

Urban Dictionary è un dizionario di slang composto, come wikipedia, dagli utenti. Recentemente il New York Daily News ha fatto notare che spesso gli adolescenti usano in senso traslato i nomi degli scrittori. Per esempio Kerouac, per significare: "to wander aimlessly for the giddy thrill", oppure Walt Whitman per cocaina: Whitman was known for his long poetic lines; o, ancora, Hemingway: Verb. Writing a paper under the influence of alcohol, ecc. nydailynews.