Let’s talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the newsletter-opener genre, which is that the Washington Review of Books is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about “teaching you how to think.” If you’re like me as a loyal reader, you’ve never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got signed up for a newsletter this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I’m going to posit to you that the Substack cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get reading a newsletter like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of which links to click.
N.B.:
The regular salon discussions organized by the WRB and Liberties Journal will have a session in Manhattan this week, on the evening of Friday, October 18. The topic for discussion will be “Is art more beautiful than nature?” This conversation will be graciously hosted by
. Space is limited; if you would like to attend, please email Chris for more information.Back on the home front: the next monthly D.C. Salon—on the same topic—will take place on the evening of Friday, October 25. If you would like to attend, please email Chris for the details.
Before the Salon that Friday: in honor of dress up season and in concert with the themes art and beauty, vintage popup shop Grift the Rich will have a special selection of costumes, clothing, accessories, and knick knacks for sale—starting at 5:30 p.m.
Save the Date: The next WRB Presents will be November 12, featuring Ralph Hubbell, Johannes Lichtman, Mikra Namani, and Danuta Hinc.
Links:
In Poetry, Daisy Fried interviews August Kleinzahler about a recent collection of his work (A History of Western Music, September):
Fried: Besides changing your line, has putting together this book given you any thoughts about the trajectory of your work?
Kleinzahler: I never think about it. I follow my appetite. I’ve always done that. Whatever interests or moves me. It can be just a word, an experience, it can be, gee, that’s interesting watching the fog come in over the ridge, and that reminds me of a Chinese motif. Each poem is a bit of a romance, a love affair. They don’t resemble one another, and each one is a kind of infatuation. Then once you are into it, like a relationship, it’s unpredictable where it goes. It’s supposed to be, if it’s going to be alive or successful or interesting or exciting. It’s exciting for me. Probably a sad commentary on the rest of my life.
Fried: Some people compare writing poems to having kids. Which never seemed right to me. Wrong relationship. But writing a poem as a love affair . . .
Kleinzahler: It’s more like making kids than having kids.
Fried: You’re going to get a bunch of people to try writing poetry because of what you just said.
Kleinzahler: I hope so. Well, no, I don’t hope so, but I hope it serves to get them away from their fucking screens for 10 minutes.
In Aeon, Matt Alt on Japanese clutter:
He continued: “Consider the teahouse, which so many foreign people associate with Japanese minimalism. It’s a small space with nothing inside, right? But you need to have the space to build a teahouse. You need money to build one. A minimalist space is something only those with space and money can create.”
Tellingly, many of the things intimately associated with Japanese minimalism—such as rock gardens, temples, Noh stage plays, or the “Zen arts” of ink-brush painting or flower arrangement—were once the near-exclusive bailiwick of society’s elite. Many of the foreigners who visited Japan in the nineteenth century encountered the simplicity of this elite world. For Alcock, writing during his time as the British ambassador, the “Arcadian simplicity” in Japan contrasted with the “ostentatious entertainments” that were the source of “misery” in the West. Japanese simplicity represented the antithesis of the West’s industrialized complexity—and embodied philosophical ideals that the West could study and emulate. But Alcock never thought to ask whether the Japanese saw things in such a polarized way.
[Cf. against Marie Kondo:
Besides, it is not true that our collections cannot oppose or defy us. Physical objects are constantly thwarting our aims by proving ill suited to the tasks we try to assign them: The Post-its won’t serve as a doorstop; my old watch no longer even functions as a watch.
But perhaps the crucial truth that Baudrillard overlooks when he dismisses collectors is that we are rarely in complete control of the objects we end up with in the first place.
—Steve]
In Café Américain, David Polansky on the legacy of Rolling Stone:
Thus, we should resist the urge to look back and say, “what happened?” The answer is: nothing happened. The great generational lie wasn’t selling out but believing there had been something to sell out. And yet in spite of itself, Rolling Stone’s legacy is not wholly invalidated. One can mock how celebrating the music quickly became a matter of celebrating oneself; how Rolling Stone glorified an entire generation’s status as consumers and spectators (while concealing that this was what they really were). One can note how faulty and unreliable its critical apparatus proved to be. One can certainly note how Wenner’s own sybaritic excesses that never quite jeopardized the acquisition of wealth made him such an exemplar of all that is detestable in the Boomer generation. Yet the prime of Rolling Stone really did coincide with a period of extraordinary musical efflorescence, even if the magazine’s subsequent history tended more toward the worship of ashes than the preservation of fire. The copies of the magazine that today arrive at my house are reliably directed to a stand in the guest bathroom. But to paraphrase The Big Lebowski’s (1998) paraphrase of Ecclesiastes: the music abides.
[I had some notes on Wenner, his ludicrous self-regard, and Rolling Stone in WRB—Sept. 16, 2023; I won’t reiterate them here, but I will say that it is funny how a lot of the stuff from Rolling Stone that will last longest—Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas comes to mind—has basically nothing to do with the music and even less to do with Wenner. —Steve]
[Behind the paywall: Steve on a poem by Shelley, Shakespearean potentialities at Enron, and confident genius, the zoo, the desert, illness memoirs, recipes, Shirley Hazzard, why the kids aren’t reading, and more links, reviews, news items, and commentary carefully selected for you, just like on Saturdays. If you like what you see, why not sign up for a paid subscription? The WRB is for you, and your support helps keep us going.]
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