Fwd: Book Club: Texas wants books rated for sex, and Steinbeck's cottage is saved
Mark Kohut
mark.kohut at gmail.com
Fri Jul 28 15:01:30 UTC 2023
Ron Charles reminds everyone it is Pynchon's world, we just try to live in
it.....!
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: The Washington Post <email at washino livgtonpost.com>
Date: Fri, Jul 28, 2023 at 10:26 AM
Subject: Book Club: Texas wants books rated for sex, and Steinbeck's
cottage is saved
To: <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
29 rules for reading: Take two books on vacation, mark your books with a
pencil, and more. ; 10 staff picks for July; Brando Skyhorse’s satire
imagines a wall around a ‘perfect’ life; Shorts, tees and a corporate
culture of sleaze; He stole more than 300 artworks — and left us with big
questions; Smithsonian literary fest flagged ‘sensitive’ topics before
cancellation; A bumbling man-child, it turns out, can still be a funny
antihero ; An artist gives David Simon’s breakthrough book, ‘Homicide,’ a
new look
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[image: Book Club]
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Reviews and recommendations from critic Ron Charles.
[image: Ron Charles] By Ron Charles
<ron.charles at washpost.com?subject=Book+Club%20feedback>
Email <ron.charles at washpost.com?subject=Book+Club%20feedback>
[image: (Photo illustration by Ron Charles/The Washington Post)]
(Photo illustration by Ron Charles/The Washington Post)
*People are sizzling all across America, but it’s not the heat, it’s the
inanity. *This summer’s feverish news sounds like something Thomas Pynchon
might have dreamed up:
- Testifying before Congress, former Air Force intelligence officer *David
Grusch*
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suggested that the government is hiding alien spacecraft and an
extraterrestrial corpse. (*Americans respond: **Meh**.*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33e5/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/11/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
)
- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) flaunted pornographic photos of
President Biden’s son during a House Oversight hearing about alleged tax
fraud. (Right-wing fixation with Hunter’s nudes, *explained*
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.)
- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) touted the job-training benefits of
slavery. We’re probably only a couple of news cycles away from DeSantis
reminding us that victims of lynching got to keep the rope. (All the ways
DeSantis is trying to *rewrite Black history*
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.)
Meanwhile, in Texas it’s literally and literarily approaching Fahrenheit
451. The state government now demands that every single title sold to a
public school be rated for sexual content. The law is named the *R*estricting
*E*xplicit and *A*dult-*D*esignated *E*ducational *R*esources (*READER*
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Act, which proves that even irony is bigger in Texas. This ludicrously
intrusive act requires booksellers to “perform a contextual analysis of the
material to determine whether the material describes, depicts, or portrays
sexual conduct in a way that is patently offensive.”
Valerie Koehler, owner of *Blue Willow Bookshop*
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in Houston, tells me the new law “will be devastating.” About a fifth of
her business stems from educational sales. And she facilitates more than
200 school visits with authors every year.
ADVERTISEMENT
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“We sell books to libraries. We sell books to school teachers. I don’t know
what they're doing with those books. I don’t ask them. It’s not my
business. Our business is to sell them the books,” Koehler says. “It is
untenable for a bookseller to say, ‘Yes, I can rate every one of the books
in my bookstore.’ It would cost us a fortune. It would cost us more than
what we make in the bookstore on an annual basis. We don’t know how we
could possibly do it without putting ourselves out of business.”
Koehler bought the Blue Willow Bookshop in 1996. When I ask if she sells a
lot of pornography to children, she lets out a laugh desiccated by months
of politicians’ hot air. “No, we don't. We don’t sell pornography to kids.”
Indeed. Despite hysterical claims from the right, teachers and librarians
are not filling Texas schools with pornography. But bigoted activists think
books about LGBTQ+ people (*and penguins*
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can fuel a politically expedient moral panic.
*Enough*. On Tuesday, Koehler, along with other booksellers and groups
including the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers,
filed a federal lawsuit to strike down the READER Act. The plaintiffs claim
Texas’s “overbroad and vague” book-rating law compels booksellers “to
express the government’s views, even if they do not agree, and operates as
a prior restraint, two of the most egregious constitutional infringements” (
*story*
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).
Alas, given the new deference to theocratic fanatics, the READER Act could
very well withstand this legal challenge. If that happens, look for
similarly proscriptive legislation to leach quickly across the whole
simmering swath of anti-book states.
ADVERTISEMENT
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REVIEW
The new conservative arguments for an un-modern America
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By Becca Rothfeld ● Read more »
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*Books to screens:*
- “Happiness for Beginners,” starring Ellie Kemper and Luke Grimes, is
streaming on Netflix. The rom-com, about a divorced schoolteacher who signs
up for a wilderness hike, is based on a novel by Katherine Center. You may
know her as the author of “The Bodyguard,” which The Washington Post called
one of “*the funniest romance novels of 2022*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/38864ed/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/28/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
.”
- The second volume of the third season of “The Witcher” is available on
Netflix (*trailer*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33ec/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/29/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>).
The medieval fantasy series is based on short stories and novels by Polish
writer Andrzej Sapkowski. This marks Henry Cavill’s final appearance as
Geralt of Rivia; Liam Hemsworth is set to play Geralt in the next season.
- The second season of “Good Omens,” starring Michael Sheen as an angel
and David Tennant as a demon, starts today on Prime Video (*trailer*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33ed/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/30/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>).
As the new storyline begins, the archangel Gabriel (Jon Hamm) is hiding in
an old bookstore. The series is based on a comic novel written more than 30
years ago by *Neil Gaiman*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3770889/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/31/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
and *Terry Pratchett*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33ee/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/32/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>.
Reviewing the book for The Washington Post back in 1990, Howard Waldrop
prophesied, “It would make one hell of a movie. Or a heavenly one” (
*review*
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).
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PERSPECTIVE
29 rules for reading: Take two books on vacation, mark your books with a
pencil, and more.
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By Michael Dirda ● Read more »
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*Roald Dahl has become an Everlasting Gobstopper that never loses the
flavor of controversy. *Last week, the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Center
in England posted *a statement*
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acknowledging that the late author’s “racism is undeniable and indelible.”
Now, Dahl’s 1964 children’s novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is
back in the news. A trailer for the upcoming movie “Wonka” shows Hugh Grant
as a little Oompa-Loompa. George Coppen, a British actor with dwarfism, has
publicly objected: Casting Grant in that part steals one of the few
high-profile roles left for people like him.
Speaking to me from his home in Derby, England, Coppen says, “If they did a
film about Nelson Mandela and got a white bloke to play him, there'd be an
uproar. So why is there not the same uproar now with an average actor
playing a dwarf character?”
Coppen appeared as Sweet Cupid in Netflix’s “The School for Good and Evil,”
and he was also in “Willow” on Disney Plus, but he says acting
opportunities are vanishingly rare.
“Change is happening, but incredibly slowly,” Coppen says. “While we’re not
being offered the everyday roles, we still need the traditional roles like
your gnomes, your goblins, your elves, just to get some money, just to pay
the bills. If people like Hugh Grant are going to come along and push us
out, what’s next? Are we going to be replaced in ‘Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs’? Where does it stop?”
In the trailer, Grant, who’s been digitally re-engineered to appear about
two feet high, says, “I will have you know that I am a perfectly
respectable size for an Oompa-Loompa.”
Coppen would respectfully disagree.
He admits, though, that the situation is fraught, given the potentially
degrading quality of some of the roles traditionally offered to people with
dwarfism. “But this is our choice whether we want to do these jobs,” he
says. “People who can’t relate to us in any way deciding for us? *No.*
We’ve got a voice just like you have. Let us choose.”
“Personally, if my agent had texted me saying, ‘Would you be up for
auditioning for an Oompa-Loompa?,’ I would have jumped at the chance,
because an Oompa-Loompa is such a well-known character in cinema history.”
But the Oompa-Loompas are also stained with Dahl’s racist attitudes (*story*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/39468cb/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/39/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>).
The original figures were African pygmy slaves. (DeSantis: “Think of the
candy-making skills they learned!”)
Coppen says an insightful actor can effectively push back on the demeaning
elements lingering in such roles. He points to Deep Roy, who portrayed all
of the Oompa-Loompas in Tim Burton’s 2005 version of “Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory.”
“We need our voice to show you we can act,” Coppen says. “We want to do
these roles.”
“Wonka” will be released in December.
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10 staff picks for July
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By Washington Post Staff ● Read more »
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[image: John Steinbeck's former home in Sag Harbor, N.Y. (Photo by
Sotheby’s International Realty)]
John Steinbeck's former home in Sag Harbor, N.Y. (Photo by Sotheby’s
International Realty)
*East of Eden, Northeast of Austin. *John Steinbeck’s former home in Sag
Harbor, N.Y., has become a retreat for writers. *The Michener Center*
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at the University of Texas announced the creation of a program to preserve
the legacy of the Nobel Prize-winning author and provide an inspiring place
for new and established writers to work.
Residents selected by the university will offer public readings and
workshops to people in Sag Harbor and interact with students on the
UT-Austin campus. (The university holds a major collection of Steinbeck’s
papers donated by the author’s late wife, Elaine.)
The first Steinbeck Writers’ Retreat resident will be Pulitzer
Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar, whose novel “Homeland Elegies” was
named one of *the top 10 books of 2020*
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by The Washington Post.
Steinbeck lived at the Sag Harbor “cottage” during the final years of his
life, when he wrote “The Winter of Our Discontent” and “Travels with
Charley.” He died in 1968.
The preservation of Steinbeck’s house as an academic workplace and literary
shrine almost didn’t happen. In 2021, Steinbeck’s heirs put the “cottage”
up for sale for $17.9 million, and then cut the price to $16.75 million.
But Kathryn Szoka, co-owner of *Canio’s Books*
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in Sag Harbor, was determined to keep the property from slipping away
forever into private hands. After she and others rallied public support,
the Town Board of Southampton contributed $11.2 million to a nonprofit
called the Sag Harbor Partnership, which bought the property earlier this
year for about $13.5 million.
Szoka is an avid fan of Steinbeck’s novels. “The combination of his really
being involved in the town with the fact that he received the Nobel all
spoke to me about why we needed to preserve his home,” she told me. “‘The
Winter of our Discontent’ talks exactly about issues we’re facing today in
Sag Harbor and across the nation. . . . He could see what was happening.”
Members of the public can tour the grounds of Steinbeck’s house on Saturday
afternoons. On select holiday weekends, the house is open, too. *All visits
are free but require reservations.*
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REVIEW
Brando Skyhorse’s satire imagines a wall around a ‘perfect’ life
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33f1/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/48/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
By Ron Charles ● Read more »
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[image: From “Revenge of the Librarians,” by Tom Gauld (Drawn &
Quarterly).]
>From “Revenge of the Librarians,” by Tom Gauld (Drawn & Quarterly).
*Literary prizes and honors:*
- “The Botanist,” by M.W. Craven, was named the Theakston Old Peculier
Crime Novel of the Year. This is the fifth novel in Craven’s series about
Detective Sergeant Washington Poe.
- Barbara Kingsolver’s novel “Demon Copperhead” and Darryl Pinckney’s
memoir “Come Back in September” won the James Tait Black Prizes for fiction
and biography, respectively. The two awards, worth about $13,000 each, are
conferred by the University of Edinburgh. The Washington Post named “Demon
Copperhead” one of *the top 10 books of 2022*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/385bc97/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/50/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>.
And last year, our critic *Michael Dirda*
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wrote, “No reader will be indifferent to the gossipy stories in ‘Come Back
in September’” (*review*
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).
- The Academy of American Poets awarded $50,000 grants to more than 20
writers who serve as poets laureate of states, counties and cities. The
money will be used to sponsor workshops, readings, festivals, anthologies
and more. Since 2019, the Academy has given $5.45 million in fellowships to
105 poets laureate across the country. (*One might live near you.*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33f7/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/53/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
)
- “Revenge of the Librarians,” by London-based cartoonist Tom Gauld, won
the Eisner award for Best Humor Publication at Comic-Con in San Diego.
Gauld is a great wit; I regularly send out postcards of his literary
cartoons. The Washington Post included “Revenge of the Librarians” in last
year’s *bookish gift guide*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33f8/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/54/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>.
(Full list of *2023 Eisner award winners.*
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)
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REVIEW
Shorts, tees and a corporate culture of sleaze
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By Dana Schwartz ● Read more »
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[image: (Princeton University Press)]
(Princeton University Press)
*We can all remember a professor who believed in throwing students to the
sharks. *But Daniel C. Abel and R. Dean Grubbs throw their students to
*actual* sharks — during a feeding frenzy.
That life-changing lesson, which they’ve been teaching for almost 30 years,
is part of their biology course at the Bimini Biological Field Station in
the Bahamas.
When I ask if the sharks ever attack his students, Abel says, “That’s why
we bring 15.”
You’re gonna need a bigger sense of humor.
In fact, Abel assures me they’ve never lost anyone, though he did once
wrench his back trying to catch a student who fainted.
“Am I afraid to go in the water?” he asks rhetorically. “Yes, I’m afraid of
getting hit in the head with a jet ski or a surfboard or maybe a rip
current taking me out or bacteria in the water — but not the sharks.” (*Scared
of sharks? Take our quiz.*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab3aa1/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/59/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
)
While some biologists might feel exasperated with the lurid melodrama of
Discovery Channel’s “*Shark Week*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab3aa2/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/60/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>,”
Abel says he “feeds off” the popular enthusiasm. “We use it as motivation
to take that group that is so enthralled with these magnificent beasts and
give them the information they need.” (One of Abel’s former students, the
biologist Craig O’Connell, is a presenter on “Shark Week.”)
Sharks are Abel’s academic specialty, but he has a larger goal. “If I can
take a student on the water on one of my shark research and training
cruises and introduce them to the beauty of sharks in their natural
environment, my hidden agenda is to get them to care about the planet as a
whole and every living organism on it.”
In September, Abel and Grubbs will publish an enthralling book called “The
Lives of Sharks: A Natural History of Shark Life” (*Princeton University
Press*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33fc/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/61/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>).
Lavishly illustrated with big color photos and drawings, the book covers
shark biology, behavior and ecology in prose that’s authoritative but
highly accessible to anyone bitten by shark fever.
The last chapter, “Sharks and Us,” begins by “celebrating the enormous
reservoir of respect and even veneration with which sharks are viewed by
large numbers of people.” But the authors conclude with a survey of the
devastating effects of human behavior on these awesome marine animals.
Sharks may terrify us, but we’re far more dangerous to them.
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33f5/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/62/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
REVIEW
He stole more than 300 artworks — and left us with big questions
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33f5/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/63/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
By Brandon Tensley ● Read more »
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33f5/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/64/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
[image: (Dey Street Books; University of Texas Press)]
(Dey Street Books; University of Texas Press)
*Even if you weren’t watching “Saturday Night Live” on Oct. 3, 1992, you
can remember seeing Sinéad O’Connor rip up a photo of Pope John Paul II and
say, “**Fight the real enemy*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33fe/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/65/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>*.”
*Epochal events are like that: They colonize memory.
O’Connor, a soft-spoken singer-songwriter who fearlessly condemned abuses
of power, was often the subject of harsh condemnation and mockery steeped
in misogyny. But since *her death was announced*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33fd/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/66/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
on Wednesday, tributes and reassessments have flooded the internet. (*In a
world afraid of music, Sinéad O’Connor didn’t flinch.*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab3424/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/67/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>)
In a review for The Washington Post, Allison Stewart described O’Connor’s
2021 memoir, “Rememberings,” as a “moving, bawdy, open-wound of a book” (
*review*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/332bb28/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/68/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>).
After surveying the shocking list of abuses, tragedies and struggles that
O’Connor endured, Stewart concluded, “She is long overdue for the kind of
cultural reconsideration, the collective atonement, that Britney got.”
Enter cultural critic Allyson McCabe, who now looks eerily prescient. In
May, McCabe published a thoughtful book called “Why Sinéad O'Connor
Matters.” It’s part of the *Music Matters*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab3400/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/69/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
series from the University of Texas Press, which offers “concise books that
make outsize arguments for the meaning and legacy of a wide range of
popular artists.”
In her deeply personal explanation of O'Connor's importance, McCabe also
illuminates the challenging position of female artists and the toxicity of
our media environment. A former English lecturer at Yale University, she’s
that rare critic who can make even the most intellectual analysis feel
intimate, colloquial and witty. (I first heard about “Why Sinéad O'Connor
Matters” on Sarah Marshall’s delightfully provocative podcast *You’re Wrong
About*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab3401/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/70/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
.)
“She was right about the role of the Catholic Church in condoning and
covering up child abuse,” McCabe writes. “She was right about the music
industry’s fixation on defining success in purely commercial terms. She was
right about its racism, and the way it uses and silences women, pimping
them out when they're young and abandoning them when they're not. Most of
all, she was right to seek and speak her own truth, even though she's paid
— and continues to pay — a terrible price for it.”
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33ff/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/71/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
Smithsonian literary fest flagged ‘sensitive’ topics before cancellation
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33ff/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/72/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
By Sophia Nguyen ● Read more »
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33ff/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/73/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
[image: (The Washington Post)]
(The Washington Post)
*For years, I have disparaged the importance of spelling, the same way I
disparage all things I can’t do well, like sports, driving, home
maintenance, sleep, foreign languages, cooking, etc. *But this month,
despite myself, I’ve become obsessed with Keyword, an innovative word game
from The Washington Post.
As a terrible speller, I find Keyword equally addictive and maddening
(*madening?
maddenning?*). The game’s tagline is “One word to spell ’em all.” It’s like
a mini-crossword puzzle in three dimensions — and it’s timed!
You can find Keyword and other clever challenges by subscribing to Game
Break, The Washington Post’s newsletter about games, hosted by Amy
Parlapiano. How much does it cost? It’s _R_E. (*Sign up here.*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab3402/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/74/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
)
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33fb/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/75/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
REVIEW
A bumbling man-child, it turns out, can still be a funny antihero
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33fb/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/76/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
By Mark Athitakis ● Read more »
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab33fb/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/77/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
[image: (Graywolf Press)]
(Graywolf Press)
*Sally Wen Mao’s new collection, “The Kingdom of Surfaces,” looks across
history but stays rooted in personal experience.* Her poems challenge
romanticized concepts of oppression embedded in art and culture.
Some of the poems are artfully arranged so that the lines form the shape of
a vase — just another way Mao creates beauty and interrogates it.
*The Peony Pavilion*
In the concrete garden, he appears.
Before long I’m holding his hand.
We are in Hangzhou, walking the length
of the famous lake. He is a young scholar
in a full cotton robe. We kiss under the willows,
then he pulls down my pants against the pink
pagoda wall. The cameras watch.
It happens so fast. It’s getting dark already.
Dank. The water under the bridge
rips, red. At West Lake, sunset makes
us sweat like horses. The famous opera
originating here is about a woman who turns
into a snake: *The White Maiden Locked*
*for Eternity in the Leifeng Pagoda.*
I think of a girl from another opera
who meets a phantasmic suitor in a dream.
In the garden of rotten roses they meet, part.
She pines and pines, then dies from longing.
At a bar called Peony, my friend confesses
that most intimacy in her life she has never
fully consented to. Can intimacy be forced?
*Sometimes I submit to someone else’s desires*
*to fulfill my perceived function to them,*
*which is bleak. *She drinks from her mojito
and laughs. Men bump into her on purpose,
trying to flirt. I want to stand on the stool and spill
tequila on their scalps. The kindest men are always
the ones in operas. Or the ones I make up,
dream of. I always wake up. But I’m not willing
to die from that disappointment.
*“The Peony Pavilion” copyright © 2023 by Sally Wen Mao. Reprinted from
“The Kingdom of Surfaces” with the permission of **Graywolf Press*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/2e05976/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/78/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>*.
All rights reserved.*
*Poets, take note:* Scribner, publisher of the Best American Poetry series,
will accept unsolicited poetry collections during the month of August (up
to 300 manuscripts). According to the Scribner Poetry editors, this program
is intended “to lower some of the hurdles that poets experience when
seeking a publisher.” Submissions must be previously unpublished
collections written in English by writers 18 or older who do not have an
agent (*details*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab3403/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/79/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
).
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab3426/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/80/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
An artist gives David Simon’s breakthrough book, ‘Homicide,’ a new look
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab3426/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/81/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
By Michael Cavna ● Read more »
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab3426/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/82/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
[image: The Dickinson children (left) with Ron and Dawn Charles (right) at
Emily Dickinson’s home in Amherst, Mass., on Saturday. (Photo by Becky
Lockwood/Emily Dickinson Museum)]
The Dickinson children (left) with Ron and Dawn Charles (right) at Emily
Dickinson’s home in Amherst, Mass., on Saturday. (Photo by Becky
Lockwood/Emily Dickinson Museum)
*“I taste a liquor never brewed.” *Last Saturday, I finally made a
pilgrimage to *Emily Dickinson’s house*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab3404/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/83/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
in Amherst, Mass., and the experience was even more moving and enlightening
than I’d imagined it would be.
The house had been closed for more than two years during the pandemic for a
painstaking restoration. New wallpaper was created from tiny scraps found
behind molding. Paint colors were determined by analyzing layers of pigment
on the walls. The carpet in the living room, with its riot of flowers, was
designed by following a comment in a letter by a mid-19th-century visitor.
And period pieces donated from the set of the Apple TV show “*Dickinson*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3ab3aa3/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/84/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>”
are placed subtly around the rooms.
The overall effect is extraordinary. The house appears not as a finely
preserved antique but as it would have looked to Emily and her family:
bright, fresh, filled with light.
Brilliant docents stationed in every room eagerly answered my questions
about everything from the poet’s interest in botany to her changing
attitudes about publication. (*We keep revising our idea of Dickinson.*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/37b0598/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/85/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
)
And of course, there is nothing like standing in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom
and staring at the tiny desk where she wrote, “This is my letter to the
World / That never wrote to Me —.”
Meanwhile, send any questions to *ron.charles at washpost.com*
<ron.charles at washpost.com?subject=Book%20Club%20%2D%20July%2028%2C%202023>.
You can read last week’s issue of the Barbie-mania newsletter *here*
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Tell friends who might enjoy this free newsletter that they can *get it
every week by clicking here*
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And remember, you can find all our books coverage, updated every day, *here*
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/1d30def/63dd21d51b79c61f8777ffe7/5980c5dfae7e8a6816fa41a6/80/91/63dd21d51b79c61f8777ffe7?utm_campaign=wp_book_club&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_books>
.
------------------------------
*Interested in advertising in our bookish newsletter?* Contact Michael King
at *michael.king at washpost.com*
<michael.king at washpost.com?subject=Washington%20Post%20Book%20Club%20newsletter%3A%20Advertising%20inquiry&utm_campaign=wp_book_club&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_books>
.
<https://s2.washingtonpost.com/39c9244/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5/597275d49bbc0f1cdce4c1e1/91/100/64c3cfe14d8f8f664ee5ffe5>
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Check out About US for candid conversations about identity in America —
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