Self-Portraits and Sherry
It’s an Honor
As a tribute to James Salter, who died on Friday at ninety, The Paris Review Daily republished his acceptance speech for their Hadada Prize, back in 2011. In the speech, Salter touches on George Plimpton, Barnes and Noble and his novel A Sport and a Pastime. You could also read our interview with the author.
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Luck Runs Out
Do You?
Whitney Houston, Adele, Kanye West, Prince, and Justin Bieber all share something in common when it comes to the songs they sing. Each one of them rhymes “do” and “you” more often than any other pair of words. In fact, according to Ben Blatt, that duo is the most commonly rhymed pair in the history of pop music.
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Kubrick’s motionless images
You can look at literally thousands of Stanley Kubrick’s photographs online through MCNY. I’m partial to the sets featuring the child boxers, Rosemary Williams, and Betsy von Furstenberg, but there are gems a plenty.
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The Book of the Dead
“Reading the Grateful Dead is not a history of the band; it is a study of the landscape they and their fans created, as surveyed from a caravan that crisscrossed the country, Europe, and even Egypt for roughly 2,300 shows over 30 years.” Dead Head Buzz Poole takes a look at “Grateful Dead studies.” (The song that turned him, it turns out, was ‘Scarlet Begonias.’)
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Medieval Advice
Need to know how to tell if someone is or is not dead? How to leave a party gracefully? How to avoid the plague? Luckily the writers of the Middle Ages had a how-to book for everything, even if that advice does include killing bed bugs by “Spread[ing] Gun-powder, beaten small, about the crevices of your bedstead” and then lighting it.
“You hurry the day when Colum McCann serves you a chalupa”
“Hey, I noticed you checking out my tote bag. I’m sure you see a lot of totes on the train, all about food co-ops or public radio or theater repertory companies. But me, I use this expanse of unbleached cotton-canvas blend to say one thing: I love books.”
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