Tryptophan Trips
by Giampaolo Bianconi
My Thanksgiving.
It’s Thanksgiving–and I know, I know, you’ve got so many things to do–but here are some things to make your down-time that much sweeter.
1. The Top Ten Book Covers of the 00s. If you’re design inclined, it’s easy to chuck the maxim “never judge a book by its cover.” I do it all the time. It’s great to see some of the best covers of the decade in one place. Also the Book Cover Archive Blog just got added to my Googler Reader.
2. Speaking of Google, the great historian Robert Darnton has just written about “Google and the New Digital Future” for the New York Review of Books. It touches on the reasons why soon most books won’t even need covers.
3.Don DeLillo has a new story in this week’s New Yorker.
4. Look at this photo of Lauren Bacall before you eat. Think about it while you eat. Return to it after you eat.
5. Richard Brody talks about Pedo Almodóvar’s new film (thankfully staring Penelope Cruz), Broken Embraces. You can watch the trailer here.
6. You might want to consider following the turkey with a Camel.
Funny Like an Intellectual?
by Giampaolo Bianconi
I read today about a new book by Chris Fujiwara about Jerry Lewis, the American treasure who rose from a partnership with Dean Martin to a brilliant career as an actor, director, and writer on his own. It’s intriguing to think of Lewis the American Jacques Derrida. While Derrida was controversial and even brushed aside in his native France, he found a welcoming home in the United States, where his ideas were infinitely more influential. Likewise, Lewis’ success in the States in incomparable to his level of popularity in France: he’s a God in the land of the Seine.
It reminds me of The Groucho Letters, where you can read letters sent from Groucho Marx to Ezra Pound. An exchange like this seems inconceivable: one was the apex of American modernism, the other was, well, a clown. Yet Groucho could, and should, be seen as a counterpoint to American modernist literature and painting. Just as the Marx Brothers are perhaps inseparable from Ezra Pound, it may probe to be impossible to separate Jerry Lewis from Derrida: both are indicative of perpetual, perhaps irritating, postmodern instabilities.
Picking up a copy of Fujiwara’s book, then will certainly get you thinking about more than just comedy. And regardless of what Richard Brody says, it will be better than watching Funny People.