The Scots are something else. A bookstore in the small, seaside village of Wigtown has managed to get people to pay them to run their shop while on vacation. Dwight Garner reports. (BTW, if any potential vacationers out there want to know what it feels like to put together a literary newsletter in a garage every morning, contact me for rates.)
Sure, Hemingway was an ambulance driver in WWI and once beat Wallace Stevens in a fist fight in Key West, but then he shuffled off to Cuba to fish. Romain Gary took real risks, with style. He flew with the RAF for the Free French during WWII and was one of only five pilots (out of a thousand) to survive. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’honneur and won the Prix Goncourt twice—even though authors are only allowed to win the award once. How many times did Hemingway win the Nobel? “In photographs Gary can be seen with a fountain pen in one hand and a smouldering cigar held between the ring-covered fingers of the other, or else he’s relaxing at home on a sofa covered with animal hides, dressed in leather pants, a double-breasted blazer and John Lennon specs.”
Pro tip: If you are going to restore 16th-century art, hire a professional. Also, if you are thinking about stealing some art after watching Entrapment for the 30th time, don’t.
Why are Christians reading the Rav? “In 2015, I was invited to a conference held at a Catholic University in Spain, celebrating the first Spanish translation of The Lonely Man of Faith, the seminal philosophical essay of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik (my great uncle), reverently referred to by many Orthodox Jews as ‘the Rav.’ Published 50 years earlier, the essay contrasts two biblical accounts of the creation of man and teases out two personas, known as Adam the First and Adam the Second. In the first chapter of Genesis, humanity is created in the image of God and instructed by the Almighty to ‘fill the world and subdue it.’ Adam the First, Rabbi Soloveitchik suggests, is majestic; through his God-like creative capacities he seeks scientific breakthroughs, to cure disease, to build cities and countries, to advance the health and comfort of mankind. But then there is Adam the Second, who in Genesis 2 is created from the dust of the earth and remains in the sanctity of the garden of Eden, ‘to work and protect it.’ This represents the religious aspect of man, man who is ever aware of his finitude, who finds fulfillment not in majestic achievement but in an intimate relationship with a personal God. These two accounts are given, Rabbi Soloveitchik argued, because both are accurate; both Adam I and Adam II are divinely desired aspects of the human experience.”
What’s next for the Berlin Philharmonic following Simon Rattle’s retirement—a man who was nothing like “the long-held image of the tyrannical, almost godlike maestro”?
Essay of the Day:
In Texas Monthly, Christian Wallace writes about Myrtis Dightman—the Jackie Robinson of rodeo:
“Eight seconds were all Myrtis Dightman needed to make history. It was 1967, the first weekend in April, and the lean 31-year-old cowboy lowered himself onto the back of a 1,700-pound bull. He was at a rodeo in Edmonton, in the Canadian province of Alberta, the farthest he’d ever been from his East Texas hometown of Crockett. The air was thick with the stench of livestock and cigarette smoke as five thousand onlookers packed the concrete grandstands.
“Dightman, dressed in a starched collared shirt and tan chaps with three dark leather diamonds running down the sides, slid his legs around the flesh-and-blood powder keg, careful to keep his spurs turned out. He slipped his right hand into the braided hold behind the Brahman’s muscular hump. Red dust billowed from the bull’s hide as the grass rope—the only thing Dightman was allowed to hold on to—was pulled tight as a hangman’s halter around the animal’s midsection. His hand now strapped in the rigging, Dightman leaned forward until he was nearly looking down between the bull’s horns. He closed his left hand into a fist as he raised it high above his cream-colored cowboy hat.
“To make a qualified ride, a cowboy has to hang on for eight seconds without his free hand touching himself or the bull. If he “makes eight,” judges will give the ride a score, with a total of a hundred possible points—fifty for how hard the bull bucked and fifty for the rider’s ability to stay in control. If Dightman held on, this ride could send him to the top of the standings. He took a breath, then nodded. The chute flung open.”
Photo: Windmills
Poem: Richard Wilbur, “On the Marginal Way”
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