Morning

¶ Polish Joke?: We begin the week with news of — drag racing in Łodz, Poland (pronounced “Woodge,” according to the Times). Now with legal status! Nicholas Kulish reports: “Where the Street Racing Is Fast And the Police Aren’t Furious.”

Noon

¶ No, Your Leader:  Below the jump, a picture of HM the Extraterrestrial, pointing to her spaceship, at the RAF Fairford flypast.

¶ Paradise Unpaved: From one little house in Toronto, may a great idea fly throughout the denser parts of suburbia. Franke James’s My Green Conscience.

Night

¶ Cake Wrecks: This just in, from my good friend Y—: Cake Wrecks. Celebrating disasters crafted by professional bakers and paid for with cash American! Blinded by tears of hilarity, I can hardly type. What was I saying about frivolous Mondays?

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One thing that I like very much to do is to find an unheard-of book that has just been turned into a movie. Latest example: Winifred Watson’s Mrs Pettigrew Lives For A Day. The differences are always intriguing, especially when, as in the case of Bharat Nalluri’s adaptation, they’re largely a matter of tone.

Times Center, One Day U’s New York City venue. Couldn’t be nicer.

Perhaps, in some dusty corner of your memory, there lurks the recollection of an institution, named — after the Lyceum, Aristotle’s school in Athens — that was popular in Nineteenth-Century America. The Lyceum was all about what we might be tempted to call “self-improvement,” except that Lyceum programs were more community-oriented. The idea, which I’d give anything to recapture for this country, was that by improving one’s own mind one improved the community’s.

In the wake of World War I, the Lyceum, like most betterment schemes, got swept into the dustbin. After World War II, knowledge was professionalized as never before — and, schizophrenically, popularized as never before, too, in the form of alluring television programs, such as Nova, that created the mirage of learning without pain. Contact between university professors and laymen was mediated, during this benighted period, by bursars.

When I signed up for One Day U a couple of months ago (well in advance, that is), I wondered where the experience of sitting through four lectures on significant topics would stand in relation both to the Lyceums and the Novas. Would it be lite & trite? Would I already know it all?

In its own little way, the prospect of attending One Day U was terrifying. It was very much like wondering how a first date would pan out. First dates? How about first days at school?

You can put me down among the kids who didn’t want to go home when the first day of school was over. I came away convinced that, the more you know about the world, the more you’re going to get out of One Day U. So, although I did, rather, “know it all,” the program was the very opposite of lite & trite.

More anon…

I got to the theatre before almost everybody else, including the box office clerk. Standing there would have been insufferably hot without the scaffolding mounted to protect us from the adjacent building site (the Brompton), not to mention the deeply cool draft that seeped through the cracks from the foundations.

Mamma Mia! is impudent, but likeable, rubbish.

Morning

¶ Mamma: I’m off to the movies — to see Mamma Mia!, if the winds are propitious (if the line, if any, isn’t too long, if the projectionist got a good night’s sleep, &c &c).

A great summer summer weekend to all — stay as cool as you can!

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Morning

¶ Waste: The story is so depressing that I can barely bring myself to read it, much less post about it; but there’s no getting round its importance: In what I hope will turn out to have been the grossest civic failure of this decade, Seattle has scrapped its pay-toilet system.

Noon

¶ Yeastless: Catch up on all the new slang from Sloane Square.

¶ Rope: Jon Stewart’s montage of Talking Heads denouncing The New Yorker cover (you know which one) as tasteless, offensive, &c &c, ought to be enough, my friends, to convince you that watching any news program other than his own is bad for your brain.

¶ Department of Ahem: Just the other day, Perry Falwell of Booksaga, the Internet’s favorite bookselling blogger, solicited guest entries. It seems that “solicited” was the key word, as the last word in the entry’s first paragraph makes clear.

Night

¶ Tacet: What’s interesting about Rachel Cathcart’s story in the Times, “Donation to Same-Sex Marriage Foes Brings Boycott Calls” — aside from the story itself, which is, in the end, depressingly not-so-interesting — is the newspaper’s colossal discretion: the hotels that would be the object of the boycott are not named. Nor is a link provided. Anyone who wants to act on this story is going to have to do a little Googling.

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Years and years ago, I learned from one of the Silver Palate cookbooks that there’s a very convenient way to make lots of bacon. Simply lay the slices on a rack over a pan and roast them in a 400º oven for twenty minutes. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner, but it’s an excellent* way to make any amount of bacon, even just enough for a  BLT. Oven times differ notoriously, so I wasn’t surprised that mine took half an hour to do the job. It’s also true that, instead of a rack and a roasting pan, I used the more massive, cast iron Victor grill pan. Turning the bacon over after twenty minutes (when I discovered that twenty minutes wasn’t enough time) turned out to be a good idea.

Store any extra bacon in a wrapping of paper towel, tucked into a sealable plastic bag.

* Cooking bacon in the microwave is almost always not only not excellent, but downright disappointing.

Morning

¶ Poll: Behind the brouhaha about The New Yorker‘s Barack and Michelle Obama spoof cover, entitled “The Politics of Fear,” there’s the deepening impression that “race” (skin color) is still a matter about which black and white Americans don’t share a perspective.

Noon

¶ Turner: I took another look at the Turner show at the Met this afternoon. It’s growing on me!

Night

¶ Stone: Incidental to the Museum visit, there as a bit of book-buying, both at the Museum itself and at Crawford-Doyle, the favorite-bookstore that happens to be right around the corner on Madison, between 81st and 82nd. I could have bought this at C-D, but I’d already fallen for it at the Museum.

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As the weeks go by, I wonder when, if ever, the editors are going to get round to William J Bernstein’s A Splendid Exchange, a more important book than any covered in this week’s Book Review.

Morning

¶ Deck Chairs?: Something in Joshua Rosner’s tone, in “Goodbye capitalism,” his piece in the Financial Times,  makes me think of a cranky gent on one of the Titanic‘s lifeboats, complaining that passengers are no longer dressing for dinner.

Noon

¶ CrocEatDog: Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand giggles. All right, ten giggles. Okay, a chuckle.

Night

¶ Lawn: This internal-exile/vacation thing is working so well that, after I dealt with the Book Review, I sat outside on the balcony and read. And read. And read. And then I decided to watch a movie…. But you know that prayer that Jewish men are said to begin the day with? My version goes like this: “Thank God I don’t own a car.” If I’m being really thoughtful, I add, “or a lawn.”
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This morning, I finished the few pages of Rachel Kushner’s Telex From Cuba that I didn’t read last night. I was sorry to say goodbye to K C Stites and Everly Lederer, the first a narrator, the second a viewer*, both of them American adolescents living in a Cuban-American version of the imperial Raj on the eve of Fidel Castro’s seizure of power. I wasn’t nearly as sorry to see the last of Christian de la Mazière, the decayed aristocrat and unsavory arms dealer whose swampy amorality oozes in rich counterpoint to the crispy oddness of the young Americans’ experience.

The Hollywood version: Ms Kushner has imported Scout Finch (of To Kill A Mockingbird) into a novel by Alan Furst.

A few weeks ago, I read one of the most beautiful novels in the world, possibly the most beautiful, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland. Although not a lengthy read, it struck me as too immense for a casual write-up. Novels often do — and I end up writing nothing about them. (Last summer’s read-agog, Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games, is still waiting for a few words from yours truly.) As a rule, I’m quite comfortable dashing off some quick impressions of a book that I’ve liked — in this age of information overload, a sketch seems more than enough. But deeply impressive novels demand more thoughtful, more “worthy” responses. The danger of sounding like an intolerable gasbag is sharply increased.

So here’s my idea: reading Telex From Cuba, I was struck by how I wasn’t struck by the beauty of the prose — and yet there was no denying that Ms Kushner’s prose is extraordinarily effective. I soon saw that the it strengths were the opposite of Netherland‘s. Whereas Mr O’Neill demonstrates an uncanny gift for wrapping up an intense and complex impression in the lace of a few brilliantly chosen words, Ms Kushner creates corners that her characters can’t see around, although we can. Dramatic irony and understatement dictate her language no less rigorously than a fine but very masculine sensuousness dictates Mr O’Neill’s. 

Compare and contrast. When I get around to it.

* as in, “owner of one of the novel’s points of view.”

This week’s images were taken one afternoon not too long ago; they show the storefronts and other edifices on the south side of 86th Street between Second and Third Avenues.

Morning

¶ Rental: From Sam Roberts’s story in the Times, this morning, about the dodginess of “1625” as the founding date of our fair city (Nieuw Amsterdam):

The first settlers apparently arrived in 1624 (or 1623) and encamped on Governors Island. In 1625, they shipped their cattle to Lower Manhattan, where more land and water were available, and a fort was planned there. In 1626, Peter Minuit made his famous purchase of Manhattan (except that he bought it from Indians who did not own it and that in their view, he was, like many subsequent residents of Manhattan, merely a renter, not an owner).

You gotta love it.

Noon

¶ Supreme: Try to make some time — this evening, perhaps, or first thing tomorrow morning — to read the envoi of Times Supreme Court commentator, Linda Greenhouse. After nearly thirty years on the beat, she is retiring (to Yale).  

Night

¶ Warrant: Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, has submitted a warrant for the arrest of Omar Hassan al-Bashir, president of Sudan, charging him with genocide. It’s a first.
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Kate Christensen’s fourth novel is, in my opinion, her best to date. It’s good to have gotten round to writing one up! In the Drink came out before I had a Web site, and Jeremy Thrane before I had a Web log. I don’t know what happened with The Epicure’s Complaint, but I remember finding it puzzling, as though something were going on beneath the straightforward-seeming surface. No such confusion clouded my reading of The Great Man. I was reminded, for what it’s worth, of Diane Johnson, Brian Morton, and even, a bit, Alice Adams. A great New York read.

412 Eighth Avenue, Park Slope

No sooner do the happy chords of I Puritani‘s happy ending die out than the mysterious opening mood of Macbeth insinuates itself into the apartment (music that foreshadows the Sleepwalking Scene). And we’re off! (more…)

Kathleen doesn’t remember reading Harlen Coben’s book, Tell No One, but it was in the house at one point, and I tried to read it. But I had to quit at the fourth page. The prose was just awful. So I can’t compare the adaptation to the original, which is disappointing, as that’s one of my favorite things to do.

Morning

¶ Beady: Is there any language quite so jaundiced as the English in which the British discuss the French Revolution? In the Telegraph, Anthony Peregrine conducts readers on tour of Parisian Revolutionary sites, from Tobias Schmidt’s harpsichord shop (home of the guillotine) to La Fayette’s tomb.

Americans in contrast, might be less informative on the subject, but much more interesting, as, for example, La Maîtresse.

Bon week-end a tous!

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Mars attacks!

Morning

¶ AntErnauts: It looks fussy, with the capital ‘E’ and all, but it’s easy to say: anternauts. It’s my coinage to describe people who don’t know enough about the Internet to be able deal with it intelligently. Combine such ignorance with police power and watch out!

Librarian William Hallowell, sadly for him, knows a thing or two about the type. He was held for thirty hours, among other affronts, because police officers lacked the basic Internet competence to know that they had picked up the wrong man. Benjamin Weiser reports.

 Noon

¶ Cool: I just bought one of these. Now I wonder if I needed it.  

Night

¶ Patience: How did flounder evolve, with both eyes on one side of their head? Slowly but surely, that’s how.

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Morning

¶ Yet More Mad Max: I may have spoken too soon yesterday. Now I’ll seem obsessive. But I really have to had it to Britain’s most interesting plaintiff.

Unlike many high-profile figures caught in embarrassing sexual adventures, Mr. Mosley has chosen to make a fight of it.

Noon 

¶ Bizarre Attack: Unidentified assailants attacked the police detachment outside the US consulate in Istanbul, leaving three dead on each side.

Night

¶ Temps Perdu: Good grief! I’ve spent the past half hour trying to locate a swimming hole in New Hampshire! It was a favorite spot — twenty-nine years ago.

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