Plus: Sinner and Alcaraz; Stars and Stripes; Firesign Theatre; Steve Stern; Medieval Smut
| Today in The New York Review of Books: an anonymous dispatch from Tehran; Pablo Scheffer watches the new generation of tennis stars; Bill McKibben defends Stars and Stripes from Pete Hegseth; Andrew Katzenstein listens to Firesign Theatre’s comedy records; Cathleen Schine reads Steve Stern; Lauren Kane goes to the Cloisters to look at smutty medieval art; and, from the archives, Michael Kimmelman on Andre Agassi. Anonymous
From the Rooftops of TehranWe in Iran own our grief, mourning all by ourselves. Two young tennis stars have revived the sport by embodying the sort of athletic-aesthetic duality that made Nadal and Federer so fascinating. The attack on the independence of Stars and Stripes is a window into Hegseth’s unaccountable military. The Firesign Theatre, a comedy group formed in the 1960s, created surreal albums that mixed satire and science fiction, and inspired a generation of misfits. In his novel A Fool’s Kabbalah, Steve Stern writes in a manic whirl of disturbing and hilarious images as he follows the great historian of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem on his journey to gather up the remains of a vanished civilization. Medieval ideas about sex and love, both rowdy and reverent, are recorded on objects meant for everyday use. The art of tennis, somewhat less obviously, depends on how players shape points by moving the ball around the court to make it arch and zig, devising patterns that from a spectator’s perch map crisscrossing lines. The fan’s pleasure, after a particularly good exchange of shots, stems from redrawing those lines as a memory, every point, like every creative mark on a page with a pencil, being slightly different. Within sameness, there is variety, artists have proved. Athletes have, too.
Trump’s war of choice in Iran is a performance of horrific military strength that betrays a stark political weakness. “A chief feature of China’s engineering state is its ability to deliver one crucial thing: material improvements through public works.… Guizhou, though one of China’s poorest provinces, seemed to offer better infrastructure than America’s richest regions.” New Subscriber Benefit!Subscribers are now able to share unlocked versions of our articles with friends, family, and social media channels. When signed in to your account, look for this gift box icon in any of our articles. You are receiving this message because you signed up
for email newsletters from The New York Review. The New York Review of Books
207 East 32nd Street, New York, NY 10016-6305 |
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario