Reviews and News:
In The New York Review of Books, Barry Yourgrau writes about the “literary intrigues” of Putin’s one-time chief of staff: “In the summer of 2009, a slender novel caused a literary sensation in Moscow. Centering on a poetry-loving gangster-cum-book publisher wracked by Hamletian perplexities over a possible snuff film, it unloaded a darkly absurdist, but caustically knowing, satire on the corruptions and machinations of post-Soviet Russia, with a whirligig of literary remixes and references. What really triggered the sensation, though, over Okolonolya, or Almost Zero (subtitled gangsta fiction, in English, in the Russian edition), was the identity of its author, an unknown named Natan Dubovitsky. Dubovitsky was soon suspected, courtesy of an anonymous tip from the novel’s publisher to the St. Petersburg newspaper Vedomosti, of being a pseudonym for Vladislav Surkov, who was then the Russian presidential deputy chief of staff. At the time, this Kremlin ideologue was, arguably, the second- or third-most powerful man in the country.”
How dance music conquered bros: “Before the 90s, electronic music was held – at least, by straight white US guys – to be the music of girls, gays and Europeans. Somehow, the ‘transglobal gnostic sect’ of techno became the stuff of shirts-off bonding, of easyJet stag dos and Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents.”
Historian Allen Guelzo writes in defense of the Electoral College.
French artists and politicians have called on the government to reject Jeff Koons’s proposed memorial for the victims of the November 2015 terrorist attacks. Koons supposedly donated a sculpture called Bouquet of Tulips, but it turns out he was just giving the idea. He would charge the government for actually making and installing the work, which would cost a little over $4 million. It would also obstruct views of the Eiffel Tower.
Graig Kreindler’s baseball paintings.
William Giraldi praises Denis Johnson’s posthumous collection of short stories.
Essay of the Day:
In the New Statesman, Michael Prodger explains about how Charles I gained and lost some of the Renaissance’s best art:
“In early 1623 the Prince of Wales travelled incognito to Madrid to woo the Spanish infanta, Maria Anna, sister of Philip IV. The aim of the amorous jaunt was to ease the fractious relations between Catholic Spain and Protestant England and bring peace to a Europe wracked by the Thirty Years War. The 22-year-old prince, two years away from being crowned Charles I, was an unprepossessing figure – short of stature and with bandy legs caused by childhood rickets. He nevertheless fancied himself as a character from chivalric romance and decided to speed up the flagging marriage negotiations by his personal intervention.
“Charles’s plan quickly foundered: his arrival with a small group of friends, most notably George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham – James I’s rumoured lover and a figure at the centre of salacious court gossip – embarrassed his hosts; the infanta thought Charles an infidel; Buckingham bickered with the Spanish chief minister; discussions halted, and eight months later the chastened prince was back in London, brideless.
“He did not, however, return empty-handed. In his baggage were, among other items, four paintings by Titian, one each by Veronese and Correggio, a sculpture by Giambologna and possibly a now-lost portrait of the prince by Velázquez. Just as important as the works themselves was Charles’s new understanding of monarchical pomp. What the Habsburg misadventure had taught him was that a prestigious art collection was a prerequisite of dynastic power and display. It was a potent lesson since the Stuarts were relative newcomers, having occupied the English throne for only 20 years. Charles was a natural aesthete but he had also learned that art equalled authority.”
Photo: Cowabunga!
Poem: Chris Fahrenthold, “Winter Storm”
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