CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo via The Paris Review.

Nicole Rudick in The Paris Review of all the articles featured in the printed edition of Nautilus Magazine, that she calls sharped and well-rounded, recommends Alisa Opar’s short piece in the Spring 2014 issue on procrastination, which we featured back in January, of course. "I’m writing this, you see, up against the deadline that Dan Piepenbring sets for us each week. I did the same thing last week. Though I spend all week knowing I’ll write a few lines on what I’ve been reading, I wait, without fail, until the very last minute to sit down and write it. That’s because, according to Opar’s article, my future self is a stranger. That future version of me is the one who will have to deal with the consequences of my current procrastination (sucker!). Apparently, making a lengthy timeline that ends with me writing this should help me feel connected to my future self. It’s an interesting idea." Full article in The Paris Review. E.T.P. 4'

Photo: Aaron Rose via The New Yorker.

Aaron Rose, made his art-world début in his late fifties, at the 1997 Whitney Biennial, spent three summers in the early nineteen-sixties photographing the beaches of Coney Island. Seventy of Rose’s photographs from Coney Island are on view for the first time, at the Museum of the City of New York, until August 3rd. Have a look at some of his wonderful photos in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 3'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Zadie Smith, photo by Chris Boland via The Paris Review Facebook Page.

“Rome says: enjoy me. London: survive me. New York: gimme all you got.” Zadie Smith’s story Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets from The Paris Spring issue is now available in its entirety online, go ahead and have a lovely read. E.T.P. 28'

Image via The New Yorker.

Adrienne Raphel share in The New Yorker the story of the very famous Moleskine: "Maria Sebregondi, the founder of Moleskine, was born and raised in Italy. Her mother worked as an editor and a graphic designer. “I remember, when I was a child, having graphics around all the time,” she said. Sebregondi’s background is primarily in literature and publishing, but, she said, a “kind of visual sensibility was strong in my family.” Moleskine-style notebooks had been produced since the eighteen-fifties, by small French bookbinding companies, and distributed in Paris bookstores; they were used by Picasso, Hemingway, Van Gogh, and the like . . . But, in 1986, the last traditional moleskine manufacturer, a small stationer in Tours, France, closed down. Moleskines went extinct, driven out by cheaper, mass-produced notebooks." Read full story in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 9' 

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo via Les InRocks.

Eleven years after The Ignorance (2003), Milan Kundera is back with the novel La Fête d'insingnifiance. Always ironic, but maybe with less grief, is how El País describes it. Le Monde says that is as light as a quail's feather, or maybe an angel one. Originally written in French, the novel will be available in Spanish in September. Read full article (in French) in Les InRocks (E.T.P. 4') and in Spanish in El País (E.T.P. 7'). Couldn't find an article in English, but I found a great interview conducted soon after Kundera’s most recent book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, had become an immediate best-seller, by Christian Salmon in The Paris Review. E.T.P. 15'

Photo via Co.Create.

Mad Men premieres tonight and its creator, Matthew Weiner speaks with Co Create about advertising, the loneliness of social media, the eternal nature of storytelling and the theme of crafting your own narrative. The end is nigh. Read full article in Co.Create. E.T.P. 7'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo Emmanuelle Devos via The Paris Review.

“If you saw American Hustle with your parents, as I did last Christmas, you will have noticed something that set it apart from pretty much every Hollywood movie of the last few years. I refer to the sex appeal of Amy Adams. Her hotness was a blast from the past, and not just because of the disco décolleté. For some reason, Hollywood doesn’t really do sexy these days, at least not in female roles—and certainly not compared to the French.” Intrigued? Have a look at this week’s staff picks readings in The Paris Review. E.T.P. 5'

 

Photo via NPR.

"Have you ever had a sentence stop you in your tracks? Editors at The American Scholar magazine have put out their list of the "" in fiction and nonfiction. Associate editor Margaret Foster says the inspiration came from water cooler talk around the office." Read full article in NPR. E.T.P. 3'

Still of the short via Slate.

The new Muppets movie centers around a showdown between Kermit and his evil doppelganger, and so of course there was one place the comedy was destined to go: the Mirror Routine. Muppets Most Wanted is only the latest in more than a century of movies to include the gag, in which two characters stand on opposite sides of an empty mirror frame and one pretends to be the other’s reflection. Almost every great comedian, from Charlie Chaplin to the Marx Brothers to Adam Sandler to Bugs Bunny, has at some point in their career performed their own variation of the bit. Watch a nice super cut of the evolution of the Mirror Routine in Slate Magazine. E.T.P. 2' 30''