Old Merlier’s mill was in high feather, that fine summer evening. In the courtyard they had set out three tables, end to end, ready for the guests…
Read MoreA French boy named G that I’ve been spending time with here calls me Helen of Troy. Then, the strongest woman he’s ever met. Then, a knight — not a damsel — in distress. He says I am waiting to stake my sword into a rock. He doesn’t know about the entry (“Time Away: Modern Day Swords”) I posted a couple of weeks ago.
Read MoreJames Spader and Susan Sarandon, White Palace, Universal Pictures, 1990 by Masha Tupitsyn Seeing love on people’s faces. When these screen lovers see each other again… When any screen lovers see each other again… Do we see (have) these kinds of moments of seeing in real life or do they happen only in camera space?…
Read Moreby Youssef Rakha “The People are asleep my darling” So she’d tell him; He, too, Was careful not to wake the People, To endure its dreams Like a kid’s kicks, To ape its slack tongue like a fool, To crawl before it on all fours That he might tell it the story of creation… —…
Read MoreCartoon c.1918 by James Joyce The bell rang furiously and, when Miss Parker went to the tube, a furious voice called out in a piercing North of Ireland accent: “Send Farrington here!” Miss Parker returned to her machine, saying to a man who was writing at a desk: “Mr. Alleyne wants you upstairs.” The man…
Read Moreby Masha Tupitsyn At my artist’s residency in France. Long bike ride through the birch woods today, then two swims in the Seine river. No one around. I don’t want to live in cities anymore. Not all the time. Or at least not in any American city. And not in soul-sucking New York. Before I…
Read MoreGirl Reading, Winslow Homer, 1879 by Agnes Repplier In reading the recently published Memoirs and Correspondence of John Murray, a very interesting and valuable piece of biography, albeit somewhat lengthy for these hurried days, we are forcibly impressed with one surprising truth which we were far from suspecting in our ignorance namely, that the publisher’s…
Read MoreThe Wrestler, Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2008 by Masha Tupitsyn In a society of consumers, no one can be a subject without first turning into a commodity. — Zygmunt Bauman The problem with fame, or any unanimous praise, is twofold: 1. You are saying exactly what everyone is ready to hear and you are doing exactly…
Read MoreThe 1695 frontispiece to the manuscript pages which, in 1697, were to become the first edition of Perrault’s Histoires ou Contes du temps passé. On the door, behind the old woman telling the tales, is written “Contes de ma mère l’Oye”, Tales of Mother Goose, a subtitle which was to take prominence in the first…
Read MoreMen can’t just write serious songs anymore (Kanye West’s “New Slaves,” which I find arresting, but…) or make serious films or write serious books.
Read MoreFrom The Cubies’ A B C, illustrated by Mary Mills Lyall and Earl Harvey Lyall, 1913. Via by Guy Aitchison Writing in response to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the first systematic attempt by the US government to police the internet, John Perry Barlow – former lyricist for the Grateful Dead – made a celebrated Declaration…
Read MoreFrom cover of The Studio Almanac, illustrated by J. Walter West, 1897 by Louise Imogen Guiney An editor, a person of authority and supposed discretion, requested a friend of mine, the other day, to write an essay with this weird title: “How to Read a Book of Poems so as to Get the Most Good…
Read MoreFigure 1: “The Fly-Catching Macaroni” (1772), engraved by Whipcord, published by M. Darly (from the New York Public Library, not openly licensed) – Source. by Patricia Fara Piece originally published at Public Domain Review. Benjamin Robert Haydon, the artist who helped bring the Elgin marbles to the British Museum, was scathing about portraiture. It is,…
Read MoreView of Greenock, Scotland, Robert Salmon, 1816 From I: There was never a happier day for Elspeth Baillie than the day she was plucked from her old life, the only life she had thought possible, nipped in the bud and transported across oceans to be planted again in the warmth of the sun. She had…
Read MoreSpring Breakers, A24, 2013 From The Chronicle Review: Everyone from Plato and Thomas More to H.G. Wells and Barack Obama has given thought to the question of the fair distribution of labor and fun within a society. This comes with an immediate risk: Too often, the “realist” rap against any such scheme of imagined distributive…
Read MoreBenny’s Video, Michael Haneke, 1992 by Masha Tupitsyn Last week I emailed Laurie Penny’s article “Steubenville: This is rape culture’s Abu Ghraib moment” to my mother. We talked about it. She called it “sexual fascism.” She always has the right words. I asked her how it is possible to raise human beings who are capable…
Read More“Anthony: What Is the Point of All This? The Devil: There Is No Point!”, by Odilon Redon from his “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” series – Source. by Colin Dickey Piece originally published at Public Domain Review. In the fall of 1849, Gustave Flaubert invited his two closest friends—Louis Bouilhet and Maxime du Camp—to hear…
Read MoreThe Centurion’s Servant, Stanley Spencer, 1914 by Joanna Walsh La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams, by Georges Perec, translated by Daniel Levin Becker, Melville House, 272 pp. Along with a poorly identified person (maybe my aunt), I am visiting a sort of colonial trading post. At the very back of one room we come upon a…
Read MoreMonsters University, Walt Disney Pictures, forthcoming 2013 by Eileen A. Joy This time it is not I who seek it out […] it is the element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me. A Latin word exists to designate this wound, this prick, this mark made by…
Read MoreBust of James Clarence Mangan by Oliver Sheppard in St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin by James Joyce ‘Memorial I would have… a constant presence with those that love me.’ It is many a day since the dispute of the classical and romantic schools began in the quiet city of the arts, so that criticism, which has…
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