Reviews and News:
Shakespeare’s politics: “From London to Paris to Alexandria, Virginia—to say nothing of Central Park—there is no shortage of drama in politics at the present moment. One cannot help but wonder what the great Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon would make of it—or, more to the point, how he would memorialize it on the stage. Wondering what he thought, however, is probably the best we can do. While we know much of Shakespeare’s life, we know little of his opinions.”
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The Enlightenment’s senses: “As culinary tastes began to change, gastronomy was also transformed out during the Enlightenment. Food became a spectacle of colors rather than bland white and brown-looking dishes at every meal. French master chef Marie-Antoine Carême ‘dispensed with overpowering aromas, which had traditionally hidden the foul odors of improperly stored foods,’ and favored ‘simple and subtle scents like orange, rose and lemon.’ Culinary manuals and newspapers “were available at affordable prices” to middle class families, ‘and eating out was a much more common practice than it was fifty years earlier.’ Carême also started the practice of using pièces montées, or ‘large, sculptural centerpieces made out of edible substances like sugar and marzipan that weren’t actually intended for consumption,’ to make a statement. He argued that ‘the principal branch of architecture is confectionary’ and, as Purnell pointed out, this enabled the dinner table to become ‘the place to display some of the finest arts of humankind.’’
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Johann Sebastian Bach, the “supreme arbiter and lawgiver of music.”
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Katherine A. Powers reviews Benjamin Black’s Wolf on a String: “Black abandons Ireland’s dismal postwar years and steps back to the turn seventeenth century, in Prague — thereby revisiting the scene of his progenitor Banville’s early novel Kepler... A perfidious and highly credible conspiracy emerges, as do shocking revelations, one of which is so creepily described that I shall quote it, as no one who has not read the book will understand what it means: ‘A mandrake root, bristling with tendrils and all caked with marl, its fork entwined about her white and gleaming limbs.’ That is so beautifully horrid that I really do hope Benjamin Black will make this period and its fantastical milieu his own for at least a couple more novels.”
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A.M. Juster on Weldon Kees: “Weldon Kees, a troubled polymath who seemed on his way to becoming America’s T.S. Eliot, disappeared near the Golden Gate Bridge on July 18, 1955 at the age of 41. Save for tenacious advocacy by poets Donald Justice and Dana Gioia, no one would remember him today. Kees was a superb jazz musician and lyricist. He wrote stories, plays, and, for Time magazine, reviews of movies, literature, and art. At the time of his disappearance, critics were increasingly describing him as one of the world’s top abstract painters. A careful student of history, religion, and philosophy, he co-authored a book on nonverbal communication with psychiatrist Jurgen Ruesch.”
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Mary McCarthy and disarming attack words.
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Essay of the Day:
In The Spectator, Lara Prendergast writes about how J.K. Rowling shaped the politics of a generation:
“Which Hogwarts house would you be in? There are four options, and everybody fits into one. The brave and chivalrous are put in Gryffindor. Patient and loyal types head to Hufflepuff. Ravenclaw is for the witty and intelligent. The cunning and ambitious — and potentially evil — are destined for Slytherin. In the Harry Potterbooks, a pugnacious talking hat, known as the ‘Sorting Hat’, carries out the selection.
“If you are like me and under 35, you probably didn’t need that explaining. Almost every young person who can read has read Harry Potter — 450 million copies have been sold worldwide. Not to do so was an act of rebellion. On Monday, fans will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first book’s publication — two decades on and J.K. Rowling’s tales of wizardry and witchcraft continue to bewitch us, even though we are meant to have grown up.
“The ‘Potterverse’ is the millennial universe. It informs the way we see ourselves and the way we look at the world; our moral imagination. If you have ever wondered why young people are often so childish in their politics, why they want to divide the world between tolerant progressives and wicked reactionaries, it helps to understand that.
“Harry Potter may be a literary fantasy but for many it is also a substitute religion in a secular era. The books are about the fight between good and evil, and the power of magic. They teach you that bigotry must be fought at all costs, that tolerance and difference must be celebrated. The great symbol of malevolence is Harry’s nemesis, Lord Voldemort — or ‘He Who Must Not Be Named’. He wants to rid the wizarding world of Muggles (people from non-wizarding heritage) and is obsessed with the idea of blood purity.
“The Harry Potter generation sees real-life Voldemorts everywhere.”
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Photo: Sardines
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Poem: Rachel Hadas, “Heart-Shaped Stone”
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