Plus: Ashton Politanoff; Lisa Robertson’s Paris; Gladys Nilsson; The Medicis
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Today in The New York Review of Books: Dan Rockmore checks OpenAI’s math; Anahid Nersessian reads Ashton Politanoff’s Dad Had a Bad Day; Ange Mlinko follows Lisa Robertson around Paris; Walker Mimms looks at Gladys Nilsson’s watercolors; a poem by Yara Zgheib; and, from the archives, Tim Parks on the Medicis.
OpenAI showed that one of the world’s most important math problems can “experience a singularity.” But did we?
Ashton Politanoff’s new novel tells the story of sad dads and washed-up jocks vying for a phantom ideal of masculinity.
The poet Lisa Robertson’s second novel achieves flights of erudition in its loving, archival meanderings around the city of Paris.
The vast, hectic watercolors of Gladys Nilsson are full of celebrations and small tragedies alike.
Free from the Archives
Cosimo de’ Medici, patriarch of the Medici dynasty, was born in Florence 637 years ago today. In the Review’s May 1, 2003, issue, Tim Parks wrote about the banking family’s years in power and the Pazzi conspiracy—an attempt to overthrow them by assassinating the scions Lorzeno and Giuliano de’ Medici.
“Big money has a way of seeking to buy what cannot or should not be bought, be it a place in heaven or power in government. Cosimo wanted both and was charming and generous as well. At the same time the lively interest of humanist scholars in the history of the classical world was turning up a wealth of political figures who had been great leaders without the benefit of royal blood. A heady procession of new historical models was becoming available to men like Cosimo, models for whom the Florentine constitution was quite unsuited.”
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