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Canine Cravings.
”When I was a child, my greatest dream was to find a box full of puppies. And every shoebox, every discarded Manhattan Mini Storage vessel had the potential to change my life…”
In this week’s issue, Lena Dunham reflects on her childhood longing for a dog, and her recent experience adopting her pet mutt, Lamby: http://nyr.kr/YuDNGa
Photograph by Robin Schwartz.
(Source: newyorker.com)
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Read an essay excerpted from “Andy Warhol at Christies,” a catalog of 354 works by Andy Warhol that will be sold at auction at Christie’s New York on November 12th. Images courtesy The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
And Jonathan Lethem writes about his evolving view of the artist.
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I’ve never met the architect Richard Rogers, but this past Yom Kippur, I stopped to pee at his house in London, and, like the Beatles post-Maharishi, I was permanently altered….
Deborah Copaken Kogan on what she learned from a surprise visit to Richard Rogers’s house: http://nyr.kr/WHAbGa
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Understanding Owls
In this week’s issue, David Sedaris reflects upon his search for the perfect gift: a stuffed owl:
The story sounds a bit far-fetched, but there was no denying that the arm was real. The cut had been made two inches south of the elbow, and the exposed end, with its cleanly severed radius and ulna, reminded me of osso bucco. “It was my grandfather who mummified it,” the taxidermist said. “You can see it’s not the best job in the world, but it’s really rather good for a first attempt.”
I leaned closer.
“Touch it,” the taxidermist whispered.
As if I were under a spell, I did, shuddering a little at the feel of the hairs. Equally creepy was the arm’s color, which was not Caucasian flesh tone but not brown, either, the way most desiccated body parts are. This was the same slightly toasted shade as a spray-on tan.
“I think I’ll just take one of those owls,” I said.
Photograph by Richard Barnes.
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"…it worries me, this promiscuity; I often feel as though I’m a bad reader, an unfaithful reader, a reckless literary philanderer."
— Mark O’Connell on promiscuous reading, and why Theodor Adorno kept his attention: http://nyr.kr/RYoPv2(Source: newyorker.com)
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Parking in New York—it sends you to ecstasy or rips your heart out. Which is to say, it’s a natural continuation of family life. Most of the time it is joyous. Joy is an odd word to use in connection with parking, but some of my happiest moments have come in connection with finding a good parking space. Often enough, though, it is hellacious—so it feels like an even balance, and for this reason, parking the car is always an occasion of great suspense…
Click-through to continue reading Thomas Beller on the agonies and the ecstasies of parking in New York: http://nyr.kr/MP9nxY
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The Two-Thousand Dollar Popsicle→
“The Two Thousand Dollar Popsicle,” a story of summer doldrums, familial mishaps, and strange redemption by Thomas Beller: http://nyr.kr/PVGyvn
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"If there was a positive side to the dramatic outage, it was the reminder that darkness is a reality for more than three hundred million Indians, who have no access to electricity. It might also remind the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of the need to reform the power sector and expand the supply of electricity to the millions who live in villages without much basic infrastructure. For we are told that long years ago, Singh himself had no access to electricity, and bent over his textbooks by the light of a candle."
— Basharat Peer on India without power, then and now: http://nyr.kr/MSfylO(Source: newyorker.com)
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…Like no other rock musician—perhaps since the early Bob Dylan—Springsteen builds a wall of friendship and shared longing for American society to come together instead of splintering apart, as it is doing. He temporarily bridges the generation gap, the class divide, and the wealth gap. In other words, his music builds communities of people who want to realize their responsibility to each other. There are several Pakistani pop singers, such as Ali Zafar or Atif Aslam, who could aspire to play such a role if there were the opportunities, the venues, and the support from the state and society.
Ahmed Rashid writes about Pakistan, Bruce Springsteen, and building communities through culture: http://nyr.kr/NSw2HT
(Photograph by Julian Broad.)
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“Always Returning,” an essay by Teju Cole on W.G. Sebald, Thomas Browne, WWII airfields, and coincidence: http://nyr.kr/Q6ylcn
(Photograph by Teju Cole.)
