The Literary Life Cynthia Cotts, “Press Clips” columnist for the Village Voice, reports that there’s been a “quiet revolution” at Bookforum, the small but ultra-chic quarterly spinoff of Artforum, the large and venerable quarterly review: Former editor Andrew Hultkrans is out, and Eric Banks is in. THE SCRAPBOOK, a medium-sized weekly feature whose job description does not include any form of the word chic, is unfamiliar with either gentleman–and left to its own devices would consequently be unable to guess what this “quiet revolution” might entail.
But never fear. Cotts has clued us in. Hultkrans, according to one apparently knowledgeable fellow she quotes, had “more of a pop sensibility and an unnecessary preoccupation with first-time fiction, which was not appropriate for a magazine of this stature.” Banks, on the other hand, will bring “more intellectual heft and clout.”
And what, exactly, are the 37-year-old Banks’s qualifications for such highbrow makeover work? Cotts recounts that Banks “switched early on from graduate studies in anthropology and linguistics to freelance editing for university presses and magazines like Men’s Journal and Rolling Stone. Aside from a brief stint at Vogue, he has worked since 1995 at Artforum, where he honed his skills as a book review editor. He buys ties from Paul Smith and Bergdorf Men’s, and is fond of pastels.”
That would explain the “pink-and-chocolate head shots of Italo Calvino” on the cover of the current issue, we figure. But where’s the evidence that Banks is constructing, as Cotts oxymoronically describes it, “a showcase for the kind of rigorous and elegant writing produced and consumed mostly by academics”?
One hint: Bookforum’s current issue also features “a bristling dispatch from Richard Howard, who confirms he is gay, but not, as Alain Robbe-Grillet called him in a previous issue, the kind of homosexual who finds ‘nothing more disgusting than women.'”
This hint sent THE SCRAPBOOK scurrying through Bookforum’s convenient online archives. Where we find, in the Spring 2003 edition, Robbe-Grillet, the celebrated French novelist and filmmaker, being interviewed thusly:
Q: Richard Howard, your translator, has said that he thought this new novel was an anthology of all your previous work, with an interlude for f–ing a teenage girl.
ROBBE-GRILLET: Well, Howard is a homosexual. And to him there’s nothing more disgusting than women. He even announced twenty years ago that he was going to refuse to translate any books in which there’s any sexual activity with women. To dedicate himself entirely to homosexual literature. Even in his translation of Baudelaire, when it gets too sexual, he cuts off Baudelaire’s balls. Anyway, the statement is stupid. Because since “The Voyeur” was written, there have been thirteen-year-old girls getting f–ed in my books.
Now there’s rigor and elegance for you. But we can’t help wondering: How come Bookforum didn’t think to ask Robbe-Grillet where he buys his ties?
Cusack Dodges Draft
They had 5,000 “block captains,” a website praised by Arianna Huffington, mentions in the New York Times, and a former DNC oppo guy running the show–and yet (you can almost hear the American people sighing), the movement to draft John Cusack for president has been abandoned. This urgent news THE SCRAPBOOK learned from last week’s New York Observer, which quoted Dan Carol, the former DNC guy who dreamed up the Cusack campaign as a promotional gag three years ago to attract young lefty voters.
Carol was in a sour mood about the remaining candidates. “People are looking for a perfect candidate,” he told the Observer, “and everyone who’s out there seems like a midget.” So true: Compared with Cusack (or “JC” as fans call him), guys like Dean and Lieberman and Kerry and Gephardt do seem smaller than life.
THE SCRAPBOOK is certainly disappointed. We’ve had high hopes for Cusack, our favorite loony left actor, ever since he became tight with Sidney Blumenthal. Cusack’s work was becoming so political, a run for office just seemed inevitable. Take that movie “Max,” in which Cusack played an imaginary art dealer who dotes on the volatile young painter Adolf Hitler. “You are a hard man to like, Hitler,” the Cusack character says.
But that was as nothing compared with the off-screen insights while Cusack was promoting the film. You see, he told Beliefnet, it was Hitler who discovered that the future was going to be a fusion of art and politics and that “whoever controls images and symbols has the power.”
Cusack said the Taliban also understood the fusion of art and politics: “Look at the Taliban destroying those Buddhist statues.” So did Osama bin Laden: “The reason bin Laden staggered the planes going into the towers was so that every camera would be focused on the second tower as the plane hit. It was not only the murder, . . . but the iconography of murder.” And so did George Bush! “It’s all theater. We all know it. It’s just disgusting. One day Trent Lott says what he says about the South and lo and behold the next day President Bush is reading to multicolored children at the White House. It’s just pure theater; it’s kitsch.”
Yeah, this would have been the perfect candidate. Back to the drawing board guys.
Lots of Blondes, but Few Jokes
A few weeks back, we reprinted on this page a USA Today e-mail soliciting blonde Harvard lawyers on Capitol Hill to critique MGM Studios’ “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde,” in which the bubbly Reese Witherspoon lawyer comes to stodgy Washington. So what’s it like being Capitol Barbie with pink pumps and an amicus brief? Very tough, according to the fair-haired Ivy Leaguers, whose angsty remarks appeared earlier this month in the Gannett national daily.
“Sharing sorority secrets and pooper-scoopers will not move a town where influential individuals participate in a subculture of spite and intolerance,” snarls Annette Lang, a Justice Department attorney. “I struggle with the notion that you can overcome the negative forces of self-interest and entitlement with Elle’s style.” Lore Unt of the Federal Trade Commission was “happy to see a ‘girl power’ movie aimed at teens that applauds success at law, Harvard and the legislative process.” Elle (the Witherspoon character) succeeds by “working hard and adjusting to standards, but never sacrificing her identity.”
Wiley Rein & Fielding LLP attorney Stephanie Denton agrees. “Just because Elle has a penchant for pink and purse-worthy pooches doesn’t mean she can’t have ideals and briefcase-worthy legislation. Elle reminds us people aren’t always what they seem.” Denton proves it by inserting an unlikely but wholly welcome blonde joke of her own in the middle of all the girl-power sermons. “What do smart blondes and UFOs have in common?” she asks. “You hear about them all the time, but you’ve never seen one.” She said it.
Strike Four, He’s Out
While criticizing President Bush’s handling of intelligence, Senator Bob Graham last week raised eyebrows about his own. At the NAACP’s annual convention, a reporter asked Graham if he thought Bush had told a “lie” about Iraq’s attempts to buy uranium in Africa. “I would not use the three-letter word,” said Graham. “I would use the five-letter word: deceit.”
