Reviews and News:
Picasso's bulls: "'I frequently went to bullfights with Picasso,' Sir John Richardson remarked, quite casually, as he showed me around the exhibition Picasso: Minotaurs and Matadors, which he was installing at the Gagosian Gallery, Grosvenor Hill. He mentioned this by way of explaining why a large and splendid linocut was inscribed to him by the artist: 'à mon cher ami.' They saw many fights together in the 1950s, either in Nîmes or Arles. Picasso took these occasions seriously. 'If the fight was going well he was silent, concentrating totally. What he couldn't stand was people talking. He would sigh and say, "Oh, I wish they'd shut up." All around him people were shrieking if something went wrong, but he was absolutely cool as can be.'"
* *
Why Czeslaw Milosz still matters: "Someone once said that in his life Milosz had encountered every kind of hell the 20th century could devise, yet also had at times tasted paradise. And, like Dante, he captured both for us."
* *
In defense of the fidget spinner: "Not everything that exists in the time of Donald Trump has to be a metaphor for Donald Trump, and not every silly trinket produced by capitalism is evidence of our decline in intellectual vigor. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
* *
What we'll miss when the circus leaves town for good: "On May 21, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will perform for the very last time, ending a 146-year run."
* *
The benefits of boredom.
* *
The progressive paradox: Early progressives placed their faith in "administration, science, and efficiency—an arrogant and fideistic zeal that justified racism and eugenics...[and] failed to allow for something that should have been obvious: the reality of human nature. And not just the humanity of the poor, immigrants, minorities, and manual laborers, but also of the progressives themselves, whose 'interests and biases' led to errors, misjudgments, and even outright evil... Having abandoned the Gospel of Christ, the mission-minded progeny of various Protestant leaders embarked on a new mission and with a pseudodivine commission: to apply the 'gospel' of science to the poor lost souls in need of order, cleanliness, and regulation." (h/t: Dan McCarthy.)
* *
Essay of the Day:
In The Atlantic, Alex Tizon writes about his family's slave, Lola. She was 18 when his grandfather gave her to his mother, and when the family moved to the United States, she came with them:
"The ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila. From there I would travel by car to a rural village. When I arrived, I would hand over all that was left of the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family's household.
"Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola. She was 4 foot 11, with mocha-brown skin and almond eyes that I can still see looking into mine—my first memory. She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us. No other word but slave encompassed the life she lived. Her days began before everyone else woke and ended after we went to bed. She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house, waited on my parents, and took care of my four siblings and me. My parents never paid her, and they scolded her constantly. She wasn't kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been. So many nights, on my way to the bathroom, I'd spot her sleeping in a corner, slumped against a mound of laundry, her fingers clutching a garment she was in the middle of folding.
"To our American neighbors, we were model immigrants, a poster family. They told us so. My father had a law degree, my mother was on her way to becoming a doctor, and my siblings and I got good grades and always said "please" and "thank you." We never talked about Lola. Our secret went to the core of who we were and, at least for us kids, who we wanted to be.
"After my mother died of leukemia, in 1999, Lola came to live with me in a small town north of Seattle. I had a family, a career, a house in the suburbs—the American dream. And then I had a slave."
* *
Photos: Hong Kong's coffin homes.
* *
Poem: Bruce Bond, "Blackout Starlight"
Get Prufrock in your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribe here.