1. Well, America just got dumber. Again. R.I.P Grantland, the last home of intelligent, long form, narrative based journalism on sports. I often marveled how ESPN could support Grantland and the great 30 for 30 documentary series, while at the same time being a harbor for a gaggle of morons and shouting alphas on their miserable, un-watchable sports channel. I guess we are now dependent on the whims of the critics at large of other publications like Harpers, the Oxford American, and the New Yorker to find the occasional great piece on sports. As for ESPN, it is only a matter of time before Stephen A. Smith says something truly unforgivable. Lord knows he has tried.
http://grantland.com/
2. Yale University Press might be the best in America at conceptualizing and executing modest but very interesting series of books and has a knack at finding the right author for the right subject. I reviewed Adam Kirsch on Lionel Trilling here and Arthur Danto on Andy Warhol here, and it looks like I am going to have to get around to Francine Prose on Peggy Guggenheim. The last thing anyone needs is a stuffy, repressed account of Guggenheim, and it looks like Yale agreed. Give us the art and take it seriously, but give us the sex too:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/23/peggy-guggenheim-shock-of-modern-francine-prose-review
3. Wow. Reviews should more often be like this. I found myself clicking over to Amazon, as though in a trance directed to something that I didn't, up to that point, know that I wanted. However, then items of the review started to sound familiar. I live in Culver City. I go to the Kirk Douglas Theater. I then remembered that I've seen the Dogeaters, I was part of a sparse crowd lured with $10 dollars tickets. I remembered that this play was intense, beyond intense. It was violent, cruel, and horrible. That said, however, I will read this novel. It is lingering in the world. Important culture lingers in the world.
http://www.thenation.com/article/her-writing-knows-things-about-us-that-most-of-us-will-never-imagine/
4. Michael Haneke is a tough filmmaker. He does not blink. He is violent, but the violence is usually on the edges of things. He is cruel, and the cruelty is believable right up to the point when it is isn't. I don't think I will ever seen Funny Games, but Cache and The White Ribbon are perhaps of the most powerful and significant films that I have ever seen. The last scene of The White Ribbon might be one of the singular images of my life. Haneke's interview in the Paris Review:
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6354/the-art-of-screenwriting-no-5-michael-haneke
Video of the week:
5. Room 237 is an unauthorized documentary about The Shining. Watch it for few moments and you will know exactly why it is unauthorized. The movie is about interpretation, it is about obsession, it is about the epic wanderings of the mind over the totems of culture. You will, at times, shake your heads in agreement, at other times you will smile because of its pure absurdity. How much evidence is needed to constitute a truth? Some theories have ample evidence and are simply insane. Other theories gloss over mere moments in the movie and are highly probably and very likely true. Here is a link to one of the former:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u4A5tJ2j3o
Poem for the week:
6. Ted Kooser was poet laureate from 2004-2006, and, for his project as laureate, he created the website, American Life in Poetry. It is the type of quiet presence online that is dependable and weighty: one poem a week with a short description. I had not visited the site in a while and then got absorbed again this week. I was amazed to discover that Kooser is now up to his 553rd column. I, however, will link to number 552, perhaps the shortest I've read on the site. The poem is perfect and so is the description. It is a paradox: why do poems about instants often live the longest? Perhaps, it is because the instant is all we have.
http://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/columns/552.html