February 2012
57 posts
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“Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair.”
– Edith Wharton, The Touchstone. Want to know what Wharton really thought about her own beauty? Read this scathing and sarcastic Roman à clef about her lover Morton Fullerton.
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WatchWe are loving this short 1948 silent film by Helen Levitt and James Agee about Harlem street life, shot using 18mm hidden cameras.
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Stop Talking. Start Making →
Lewis recently took part in General Assembly’s “Stop Talking. Start Making” series, talking about why he started a brand new magazine at age 72.
There’s other videos as well, including Mario Batali, Michael Bloomberg, and Amanda Hesser, all talking about what it takes to be an entrepreneur.
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“Andrew Jackson VI had planned to name a son Andrew Jackson VII but instead had...”
– “When the Country’s Founding Father is Your Founding Father,” Smithsonian Magazine
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Thomas Edison's Eccentric Job Interview Questions
mentalflossr:
Could you get a job working for Thomas Edison? Here are some sample questions from his employment questionnaire.
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Might we suggest a Longreads pairing?
Ah the long weekend, so much to read! Of course you are thinking: I need more devastating, thoughtful, and poignant true stories of familial love and loss. Might we suggest a delightful pairing of Philip Connors and Cris Beam?
Philip Connors, “Stories to Live With” from the Family issue of LQ
We tell stories about the dead in order that they may live, if not in body then at least in...
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James Franco reads Ben Franklin's "In Praise of... →
“Because as they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better stor’d with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreeable.”
And don’t forget….“because they are so grateful!”
"A Few Words About My Wife," from "Me" by Vladimir...
Oh Mayakovsky, why won’t you love me?
nyrbclassics:
2. A Few Words About My Wife
I have married the moon and she combs the water, the beaches of uncharted seas. She’s my lunar lady, she has long red hair and she drives a herd of horses through a screaming streak of stars! She gets married every evening in a greasy garage and she kisses all the pictures on the newspaper stands. Her pretty...
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Edith Wharton was a prude? We don't suppose you've...
Hi there, Jonathan Franzen. We hope you are having a lovely Tuesday. So you say Edith Wharton was a prude, confined largely to a sexless marriage, hemmed in by plainness and haunted to write about the very beauty and passion that was lacking in her own life?
But have you read her porn?
Here’s a passage from an unfinished work, Beatrice Palmato:
“And now, darling,” Mr. Palmato said,...
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“Frankly, I’m fed up with politicians in Washington lecturing the rest of us...”
– —Bill Clinton, 1992
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Great Sound, What Do You Call It?
“Darling, won’t you put on the Klangophone this evening? I do so feel like dancing!”
Like any smart inventor, Thomas Edison knew that his new audio device needed a name, a catchy name. Lists of Note has the original cheat sheet of all of the rejected names for what eventially became the phonograph:
Didaskophone = Teaching speaker, Portable teacher Glottophone = Language...
10 Things You Don't Know About Dickens
@LaphamsQuart Named Benedict Cumberbatch from the grave. #10thingsyoudontknowaboutdickens
— Aidan Flax-Clark (@flaxclark) February 7, 2012
Oh won’t you join us over at @laphamsquart?
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WatchAll right everyone, what do we think about the new Great Expectations for Masterpiece Theatre?
Corollary: Can Gillian Anderson be in every Dickens adaptation? Madame Defarge, perhaps?
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This is the moment in which Jane Smiley convinces...
If you read one biography of Charles Dickens this year, seriously, make it Jane Smiley’s Charles Dickens: A Life, from the Penguin Lives series. (via LQ web editor michellelegro)
From Charles Dickens: A Life:
He made fun. He made fun of the Civil Service, he made fun of the courts of Chancery, he made fun of the aristocracy ad the factory owners and the bankers and managerial class. He...
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“If I turn into the street, I am followed by a multitude. If I stay at home, the...”
– Charles Dickens, one of the first celebrity authors, 1842
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