Month: November 2015

Reader’s Corner: ‘City on a Grid’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, HistoryLeave a comment
Before the grid: How 2nd Avenue and 42nd Street looked in 1861. (New York Public Library)
Before the grid: How 2nd Avenue and 42nd Street looked in 1861. (New York Public Library)

Not long after the Revolutionary War, New York was still just a few hundred buildings clustered at the lower end of Manhattan. But the city’s leaders knew that eventually they’d be spreading north and needed to figure out how that would look. So they put together something called the Commissioners’ Plan. It showed an imaginary city spreading north in evenly measured blocks that acted almost as a rebuke to downtown’s (still existing today) hodge-podge of randomly angled thoroughfares and alleys. The grid seemed like a good idea, but had its problems. Among them, almost no green space (Central Park would have to be carved out decades later) and the fact that it stopped at 155th Street (the belief was that it would take “centuries” for people to start building that far north).

Gerard Koeppel’s fascinating urban history City on a Grid is on sale now. My review is at PopMatters:

Order has never been something that most people associate with New York. Among the estranged and jealous family of American cities, the old Dutch trading post that redefined the very idea of what a metropolis could be has always suffered from a reputation for chaos. And not the fun, Lord of Misrule brand of chaos witnessed in places like New Orleans, but a genuine lack of order. There is no other American city so associated with breakdowns in the body politic or general operating principles as New York…

There’s a great, extensive online exhibition about the grid from the Museum of the City of New York here.

Writer’s Desk: Music for Writing

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WritingLeave a comment

In addition to politicians trotting out their newest talking points in between dodging questions, you can occasionally find writers on the Sunday talk shows flogging their newest book. This past weekend, viewers of Face the Nation were treated to the sight of former Reagan speechwriter and current dispenser of fatuous bromides for the Wall Street Journal Peggy Noonan talking about her new collection of columns. She did drop one decent piece of advice, if you need music when writing, try movie soundtracks:

Because other music would take me away from my work but movie music is meant to help the story along. And … when you’re writing a column or an essay, you’re writing a story.

You need to match the music with the material, of course. For a science fiction piece, the otherwordly Daft Punk soundtrack for the Tron remake is a fine choice. For something more fanciful, try Dan Romer’s beautiful music for Beasts of the Southern Wild. And John Corigliano’s lush score for The Red Violin works for just about anything.

Before you sit down and actually write on this fine Sunday, though, waste a little time with Dame Peggington Noonington from the good folks at Wonkette.

Reader’s Corner: What Lemmy Reads on the Bus

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, OmniculturalLeave a comment

jeevesSo what do you do, if you’re Motörhead’s Lemmy and you need to unwind? You’re 69 years old, an aging metal icon, with a string of furiously guitar-slashing albums behind you and the status of somebody whose like will never be seen again. As The Atlantic‘s James Parker puts it, what you do “cannot be counterfeited or repeated“:

Lemmy once roadie’d for Jimi Hendrix; these days, retiring postshow to his tour-bus bunk, he reads P. G. Wodehouse.

We should all be so smart. Jeeves will take care of all. Even after the evening’s encore…

Weekend Reading: November 6, 2015

On By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

Library of congress1

Screening Room: ‘All Things Must Pass’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - New, Film-DocumentaryLeave a comment

allthingsmustpass1

In 1999, Tower Records had $1 billion in revenue. They were bankrupt by 2006.

All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records is playing now in limited release. My review is at PopMatters:

Nobody who ever went into the original batch of Tower Records outlets in California ever said, “What a beautiful space.” In that way, they were axiomatic of the greatest record stores, which understood space pragmatically, slapping up some posters and cardboard displays, but otherwise committing to the mission. That was, of course, to sell records. This dedication is one way record stores were different from bookstores, which usually tried to give their customers a slapdash kind of ambiance: a few sprung couches, a little café, maybe a calico cat curling around your legs while you browsed in Fiction, A–H…

Here’s the trailer:

Quote of the Day: Pope’s Day

On By chrisbarsantiIn HistoryLeave a comment
Guy Fawkes' Night celebrations at Windsor Castle, 1776
Guy Fawkes Night celebrations at Windsor Castle, 1776

Tonight in England is Guy Fawkes Night. It’s one of the island’s more unusual holidays, in that it commemorates that time in 1605 when a group of Catholic terrorists plotted to blow up the House of Lords on November 5, thus killing King James I and (hopefully) returning the country to Catholic rule. It didn’t work out so well. Fawkes and his other conspirators were discovered, convicted, and drawn and quartered. The king instituted laws restricting Catholics’ rights that wouldn’t be revoked for two centuries.

Ever since then, Fawkes has been burned in effigy on this day in a nighttime celebration that includes fireworks, general Halloween-esque revelry, and readings of this verse:

Remember, remember!
The fifth of November…

In the United States, Guy Fawkes Night was celebrated as Pope’s Day. That is, until George Washington was annoyed enough by the anti-Catholic songs his troops were singing—at a time when he was trying to secure French-Catholic support for an invasion of Quebec—that he banned it in 1775. For some years afterward, the celebrations were switched over to burn another despised traitor in effigy: Benedict Arnold.

Reader’s Corner: Umberto Eco’s ‘Numero Zero’

On By chrisbarsantiIn BooksLeave a comment

9780544635081_hresUmberto Eco’s latest novel Numero Zero goes on sale today. It’s a slim fantasy about crackpot conspiracy theories and journalists who play the game of massaging the truth a little too well.

Eco told NPR that he hopes readers of his novel “will become more suspicious and attentive when reading a newspaper.”

My review is at PopMatters:

Beware of stories by hack journalists who are given a chance at doing something greater and in the process discover that the seemingly too-good-to-be-true offer masks something darker that will test the limits of their conflicted ambition and fraying morality. Fortunately, Umberto Eco’s newest crackpot thriller, Numero Zero, is not one of those stories. His hack journalist doesn’t aspire to much more than he is, and he’s in on the big secret from the get-go. Unfortunately, the novel, for all its intellectual zip and brash erudition, never builds into anything more than a trifle…

Here is an excerpt from Numero Zero.

Writer’s Desk: The American Writers Museum

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WritingLeave a comment

Sometime in about 2017, there is going to be a new museum on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue right around Lake Street: The American Writers Museum.

According to Publishers Weekly, the project—which sounds both awesome and awesomely quixotic—has been in the works since 2010. Since there won’t be much that a museum of this sort can resort to in terms of permanent holdings (Mark Twain’s pipe, perhaps? Rooms full of first editions?), it looks like they will be focusing on attention-grabbing experiential and interactive exhibits.

writersmuseum1That will mean including things like an interactive “word waterfall.” Which only makes sense, as they will need to bring in the punters in between their Magnificent Mile shopping jag and stroll through Millennium Park. But that will also apparently mean the prospect of interesting-sounding exhibits like the one asking”Are you a Bukowski or Vonnegut?”

Hopefully they will include writing workshops and other educational functions as part of the museum’s mission.

Now that it’s happening, it’s curious why this kind of museum is only now being created. Earlier this year, Chicago artist Mia Funk raised this point in an interview with the museum’s president Malcolm O’Hagan (who was initially inspired by the Dublin Writers Museum) in Tin House:

It does seem absurd that America has so many museums devoted to fine art–an activity which really doesn’t touch a lot of people’s lives–but in a country composed of so many immigrants and children of immigrants, where stories have played such a part in remembering our pasts and unifying us, that it has taken us so long to honor our writers collectively.

Here’s hoping they do our writers proud.

Perhaps the most important question, though: What are they going to sell in the bookstore?