Norman Rockwell was an unhappy and enervated man who became iconic by painting scenes of happy, energetic people. He developed a style that became synonymous with idyllic visions of America. At Page-Turner, Lee Siegel reads Deborah Solmon’s American Mirror, a new biography of Rockwell that acknowledges the painter’s contradictions without “mocking or scolding” him for the gulf between his life and his art.
Master of Happy Scenes
Shantih, Shantih, Shantih
It’s time to clear out a little spot on that bookshelf because this one is sure to impress your literary friends. Among a few other incredible books up for sale by a London bookseller is this copy of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. It is one of the original 460 copies hand printed by Virginia and Leonard Woolf, and it is signed by Eliot to the doctor who treated him at the clinic in Laussane where the poem was written. Good thing you’ve been saving up.
“This ghoulish treasure trove”
At one time considered to be the work of demons or incubi, sleep paralysis – the “transition state between wakefulness and rest characterized by complete muscle atonia” – has since become accepted as a well-documented and not very uncommon phenomenon. Still, “the experience can be terrifying,” writes Karen Emslie in her recent piece about making the best of the condition.
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Literary Interference
To celebrate the beginning of football season, read about how Jack Kerouac’s years of high school football might have led to his alcoholism and depression.
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4.7-ish Degrees of Separation
If you use Facebook (if?), the degree of separation from the cute gal sitting next to you at the cafe has shrunk from 6 to 4.7. (via)
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Tell Shorter Stories
“The real world is massive and chaotic beyond the scope of any story, but the novel has always been the storytelling medium that could come closest to capturing it. And the novels that dared to really try – from Hugo to Tolstoy – are often the ones that have endured.” That’s not to say, of course, that bigger is always better, and in an article for The Guardian Damien Walter argues against the current glut of epic, serialized fantasy novels taking their cues from George R.R. Martin‘s A Song of Ice and Fire. As Walter puts it, “There are great fantasy short stories, novellas and single novels that deserve much wider audiences, but are sidelined by the industry’s unhealthy fixation with the serial format. It’s time for the fantasy genre to tell some new – shorter – stories.”
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