Alec Soth, Tokyo
1. The New York Times voyages issue has some great photography, but none better than Alec Soth's portfolio of Tokyo. Scroll down and you will find why he is one of the best photographers working today. My guess is that you have never quite seen Tokyo, either in person or in your dreams, in quite the same way that Soth does:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/23/magazine/the-voyages-issue.html
2. The short story seems alive and well. The last 30 years has not suffered from a lack of brilliant storytellers and the list is long. That said, George Saunders may be among the best story tellers of them all and Granta has a long interview between him and Ben Marcus:
http://granta.com/interview-george-saunders-ben-marcus/
3. Only geeks need apply, I can't help but be interested in a new book of the letters of Bernard Berenson and Kenneth Clark. Berenson and Clark were both of a older world, one that is barely recognizable in today's artworld. It is disappointing to hear that Duveen only make cameos in the letters, but I will certainly dip into these letters, if the opportunity presents itself. Kenneth Clark was so polished, so perfectly presented to the world, it would be nice to get a behind the scenes look at the man.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/epistolary-art_1035759.html?nopager=1#
4. Interesting bit of journalism from John Jeremiah Sullivan on the Rolling Stones. Sullivan is one of the best essayists in America and has a knack for drawing out Guy Davenportesque connections from unlikely events and unlikely subjects. I find his writing, at its best, to be thrilling and at a very high, jealousy inducing level:
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/09/28/seeking-jaggers-muse/
and one of those photos from Clearwater, Florida:
http://www.nfagallery.com/catalog/item.php?unid=3683
5. And now for a little fun:
http://blogs.wsj.com/dispatch/2015/09/24/readers-memories-of-meeting-the-pope/
You may have guessed: the young kid in the top picture is me. :)
Video of the Week:
6. To go along with Sullivan's piece from above, this is a link to one of the earliest performances of Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEjkftp7J7I
Poem for the Week:
"I did not walk here all the way from prose
To make corrections in red pencil
I came here tonight to open you up
To interference heard as music."
7. Ben Lerner just won a MacArthur Fellowship, and I've been meaning to put one of his poems on I call it ORANGES for some time. So now is my chance. This poem, from Mean Clear Path, takes a bit of work and a little bit of time to get going, but, ultimately, it is worth the trip. I am not sure I have this poem cracked, but it seems to bounce from literature to life and back again, from the articulate sealed nature of the published page to the awkwardness of speaking and living in real time. "Interference heard as music," isn't always an easy thing, but in Lerner's hands here, it is certainly an interesting thing.
http://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/5870/from-mean-free-path-ben-lerner