july 16–july 31

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Books

  • Victor Pelevin, The Yellow Arrow, translated by Andrew Bromfield
  • Alberto Moravia, Two Friends, trans. Marina Harss
  • Alberto Moravia, Conjugal Love, trans. Marina Harss
  • Charlotte A. E. Moberly & Eleanor F. Jourdain, An Adventure
  • César Aira, The Literary Conference, trans. Katherine Silver
  • César Aira, Ghosts, trans. Chris Andrews
  • Michael Allen Zell, Errata
  • Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles, trans. Jerzy Ficowski
  • Erih Koš, The Strange Story of the Great Whale, Also Known as Big Mac, trans. Lovett F. Edwards
  • Joshua Beckman & Jon Beacham, Porch Light (lamp and chair)
  • Sacheverell Sitwell, Portugal and Madeira
  • Norman Douglas, Some Limericks
  • Datus C. Proper, The Last Old Place: A Search Through Portugal

Films

  • You Can Count on Me, directed by Kenneth Lonergan
  • Laws of Gravity, dir. Nick Gomez
  • Boccaccio ’70, dir. Mario Monicelli, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti & Vittorio De Sica

Exhibits

  • “Last Things & Other Forms: Herbert Pfostl & Jon Beacham,” 222 Roebling Street
  • “The Dawn of Egyptian Art,” Met
  • “Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Drawings,” Met
  • “Paintings on Parchment: Italian Renaissance Illuminations from the Robert Lehman Collection,” Met

sacheverell sitwell on facts & style

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“After Lisbon and Oporto, there are only two considerable towns in Portugal, Coimbra and Évora, and Évora, the smaller of the two, is the more interesting.*

* I find that Braga has a slightly larger population than Coimbra, but leave the remark unchallenged in order not to spoil my argument.”

(Sacheverell Sitwell, Portugal and Madeira, p. 142.)

an unambiguous attitude

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“Sergio envied the few resolute anti-Fascists he knew, Communists and the like, because their attitude was as clear as that of the Fascists. But he was not able to distill his doubts and disgust into an unambiguous attitude, a plan of action. Even though he hated Fascism, he felt that it had wormed its way into his blood, not in the form of political allegiance, but rather as a kind of torpor and mortal passivity, like a poison that slowly intoxicates and weakens the body.”

(Alberto Moravia, The Two Friends, trans. Marina Harss, version A, p. 11.)

july 1–july 15

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Books

  • John Ashbery, April Galleons
  • Julio Cortázar, The Winners, trans. Elaine Kerrigan
  • Erica Baum, Dog Ear
  • Amaranth Borsuk, Handcraft
  • Cees Nootebaum, The Following Story, trans. Ina Rilke

Films

  • Naked Lunch, directed by David Cronenberg
  • Charade, dir. Stanley Donen
  • Magic Mike, dir. Steven Soderbergh
  • Der amerikanische Soldat (The American Soldier), dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
  • Das blaue Licht (The Blue Light), dir. Leni Riefenstahl
  • Lisbon Story, dir. Wim Wenders

loss of recognition

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“There are problems in this for the modern reader. Few of us share the extent and depth of Camões’s knowledge or the classics, and the pleasures of recognition, that agreeable Renaissance game of spotting how the poet has adapted a favourite passage from a classical author and refurbished it to serve a contemporary purpose, plays little part in our reading.”

(Landeg White, introduction to Luis Vaz de Camões’s The Lusíads, p. xiii.)

june 16–june 30

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Books

  • Ben Gocker, The Pisces
  • Anthony Madrid, I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say
  • Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star, trans. Benjamin Moser
  • Mary Gaitskill, Veronica
  • St. Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin

Films

  • Les Vampires, directed by Louis Feuillade
  • M. Butterfly, dir. David Cronenberg

Exhibits

  • “Carl Andre/John Wesley: Serial Forms,” Mitchell-Innes & Nash
  • “Hélio Oiticica: Penetrables,” Galerie Lelong
  • “Rachel Harrison: The Help,” Greene Naftali
  • “Heinrich Kuehn and his American Circle: Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen,” Neue Galerie
  • “Gustav Klimt: 150th Anniversary Celebration,” Neue Galerie
  • “Sharon Lockhart | Noa Eshkol,” LACMA
  • “Children of the Plumed Serpent: The Legacy of Quetzalcoatl in Ancient Mexico,” LACMA
  • “Chris Burden: Metropolis II,” LACMA
  • “Michael Heizer: Levitated Mass,” LACMA

formless

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“As for myself, O Lord, if I am to tell you all that you have given me to understand about this formless matter, and if I am to set it down in this book, I must confess that when I first heard it mentioned, I did not understand what it meant, nor did those who told me of it. I used to picture it to myself in countless different forms, which means that I did not really picture it at all, because my mind simply conjured up hideous and horrible shapes. They were perversions of the natural order, but shapes nevertheless. I took ‘formless’ to mean, not something entirely without form, but some shape so monstrous and grotesque that if I were to see it, my senses would recoil and my human frailty quail before it. But what I imagined was not truly formless, that is, it was not something bereft of form of any sort. It was formless only by comparison with other more graceful forms. Yet reason told me that if I wished to conceive of something that was formless in the true sense of the world, I should have to picture something deprived of any trace of form whatsoever, and this I was unable to do. For I could sooner believe that what had no form at all simply did not exist than imagine matter in an intermediate stage between form and non-existence, some formless thing that was next to being nothing at all.”

(St. Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin, book XII, chapter 6, p. 283.)

june 1–june 15

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Books

  • William Carlos Williams, Paterson
  • Leonard Koren, Making Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing
  • W. G. Sebald, Vertigo, trans. Michael Hulse
  • Stan Mir, Song & Glass
  • W. G. Sebald, The Emigrants, trans. Michael Hulse

Films

  • The Bat Whispers, directed by Roland West
  • The Mission, dir. Roland Joffé
  • Dark Victory, dir. Edmund Goulding
  • The Gay Divorcee, dir. Mark Sandrich
  • Prometheus, dir. Ridley Scott
  • Quatermass and the Pit, dir. Roy Ward Baker

Exhibits

  • “An Accumulation of Information Taken from Here to There,” Sperone Westwater
  • “William Wegman: Artists Including Me,” Sperone Westwater
  • “Hannah Whitaker: The Use of Noise,” Thierry Goldberg Gallery
  • “Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language,” MOMA

the language of the house itself

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“It was the language of the house itself that spoke to him, writing out for him with surpassing breadth and freedom the associations and conceptions, the ideals and possibilities of the mistress. Never, he felt sure, had he seen so many things so unanimously ugly – operatively, ominously so cruel. He was glad to have found this last name for the whole character; ‘cruel’ somehow played into the subject for an article – an article that his impression put straight into his mind. He would write about the heavy horrors that could still flourish, that lifted their undiminished heads, in an age so proud of its short way with false gods; and it would be funny if what he should have got from Mrs. Lowder were to prove after all but a small amount of copy. Yet the great thing, really the dark thing, was that, even while he thought of the quick column he might add up, he felt it less easy to laugh at the heavy horrors than to quail before them. He couldn’t describe and dismiss them collectively, call them either Mid-Victorian or Early – not being certain they were rangeable under one rubric. It was only manifest they were splendid and were furthermore conclusively British. They constituted an order and abounded in rare material – precious woods, metals, stuffs, stones. He had never dreamed of anything so fringed and scalloped, so buttoned and corded, drawn everywhere so tight and curled everywhere so thick. He had never dreamed of so much gilt and glass, so much satin and plush, so much rosewood and marble and malachite. But it was above all the solid forms, the wasted finish, the misguided cost, the general attestation of morality and money, a good conscience and a big balance. These things finally represented for him a portentous negation of his own world of thought – of which, for that matter, in presence of them, he became as for the first time hopelessly aware. They revealed it to him by their merciless difference.”

(Henry James, The Wings of the Dove, book 2, chapter 2)