Reviews and News:
Ursula K Le Guin has died.
The finalists for the National Book Critics Circle awards have been announced, as have Oscar nominations.
At the BBC, Joobin Bekhrad writes about an edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám that has over 1000 precious and semi-precious stones, “as well as nearly 5000 pieces of leather, silver, ivory, and ebony inlays, and 600 sheets of 22-karat gold leaf.” It sank with the Titanic.
Also: Birdwatchers can be a selfish and cruel bunch: “The English bird illustrator and publisher John Gould is described as an ‘unscrupulous profiteer.’ The travelogues of Hugo Weigold, a pioneer bird bander in the early 20th century, are described as ‘full of cold-blooded arrogance.’ The pioneering American bird-watcher Phoebe Snetsinger, who traveled the world to observe 8,674 bird species before being killed in a traffic accident during a birding trip in Madagascar, is presented as an example of ‘wealthy people who cut themselves off almost completely from their partners, children and other family obligations …just to add one entry or another to a fervently kept list of bird sightings.’ To make sure his pessimistic message is right up front, a third of Brunner’s 19 chapters focus on famous liars in ornithology.”
A Boeing 787 set a record for a subsonic transatlantic crossing last week. 787s usually cruise at 570 mph, but this one hit 776 riding a 202-mph tailwind.
Gus Bofa’s low-life art.
Essay of the Day:
In The Bitter Southerner, Michael Adno tells the story of Ernest Matthew Mickler’s White Trash Cooking, which took America by storm in 1986:
“In spring of 1986, Ernest ‘Ernie’ Matthew Mickler’s White Trash Cooking landed on bookshelves across America — a 160-page, spiral-bound anthology of Southern recipes, stories, and photographs.
“Oddly enough, damned near everyone loved it. It was immediately revered by literary snobs, Southern aristocrats, Yankees, folklorists, down-home folk, and people on either side of the Mason-Dixon.
“The book stirred a firestorm of publicity — partly serious, partly tongue-in-cheek — landing Ernie on ‘Late Night With David Letterman’ and National Public Radio, in magazines like Vogue and People, and in a litany of newspapers. In The New York Times, critic Bryan Miller deemed White Trash Cooking the ‘most intriguing book of the 1986 spring cookbook season.’ Even the grand dame of Southern literature, Harper Lee, claimed she had ‘never seen a sociological document of such beauty — the photographs alone are shattering.’ She called the book ‘a beautiful testament to a stubborn people of proud and poignant heritage.’
“White Trash Cooking was a staple on The New York Times Best Seller list for weeks as a gift for Southern kin, an eloquent medley of camp and honesty. It was Ernie’s reclamation of the South, as he knew it. And he knew it from a distinctly rural view. Ernie was born on August 23, 1940, in Palm Valley, Florida. Today, the TPC Sawgrass golf resort crowds Palm Valley from the north, but in Ernie’s youth, it was a backwoods haunt on a thumb of land along the Atlantic, about 10 miles south of Jacksonville Beach.”
Photos: Downhill ice cross racing
Poem: W. S. Graham, “To Sheila Lanyon, on the Flyleaf of a Book”
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