Mel Bernstine, Red Light District, 2015, Posca on Mountboard, 7.5x7.5"

 

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This week: Salter, Sound, and Streaming.

FictionA Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux): It’s an unfortunate truth that great writers often go unread until their deaths, like literary Van Goghs, never enjoying the benefits of fame during their lifetimes. Even writers who receive some acclaim during their lives are often buoyed posthumously, and James Salter belongs in this latter category. Though long-recognized as a “writer’s writer” (a damning euphemism for lack of sales), Salter will surely be the recipient of renewed interest following his death this past weekend at the age of 90. As such, there appears to be no better time than now to reexamine his most-known work, A Sport and a Pastime, detailing the amatory exploits of a Yale dropout in the south of France. —BR

Nonfiction: Experience, by Martin Amis (Vintage): Although Martin Amis’s memoir Experience was published back at the start of the millennium, I have only just read it. I did so reluctantly, at the behest of a friend, because I’d read a couple of MA’s novels and hadn’t liked them. I am an avid fan of the work of Amis père, Kingsley, whose novel Lucky Jim is one of the funniest things I have ever read. Martin’s oeuvre, what I know of it, is distinctly less agreeable. But I am glad I read Experience. It is a remarkable memoir, moving, deep, and, yes, funny by turns. Above all, perhaps—and this was the real surprise—it is gratifyingly affectionate, about friends, family, about almost everyone with the possible exception of Eric Jacobs, the official biographer of Kingsley Amis. Experience is a remarkable book that conjures winningly with life’s principle mysteries. A line from Amis’s friend Saul Bellow which is repeated a few times is worth the price of admission: Death, said Bellow, is “the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything.” But don’t let that somber (if eloquent) observation put you off: Experience is an allegro performance full of joy and fun, as well as a harrowing account of dental catastrophe. Be thankful for your snappers. RK

Poetry: The Typewriter Project: The Subconscious of the City (Through July 29): One does not think of Tompkins Square Park as a font of poetry, but that changes with the installation of The Typewriter Project this summer. The project, which has popped up around New York since 2014, places typewriter booths in various locales, allowing users to contribute original poetry and prose to an ever-growing text that lives on the web. As far as public instillations go, this seems not only innocuous, but also fruitful, giving every budding McGonagall a chance to practice his doggerel. —BR

Art: June Bugs (Through June 27): The Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, is a cult favorite for Young's ability to attract some top names and great works to his small second-floor gallery (all despite a charmingly out-of-date website). On view now is "June Bugs," featuring a dozen works each on paper by Brenda Goodman and Mel Bernstine, along with a selection of other work that includes James Siena and Fred Tomaselli. Goodman and Bernstine are each coming off of big New York shows (Goodman at Life on Mars; Bernstine at McKenzie), but here is a chance to see their smaller work in an intimate (and always well curated) two-person exhibition. This Saturday at 6pm, the gallery will stay open late for a performance by "Brooklyn's own" Chris Dingman's Subliminal Trio. —JP

Music: The Tchaikovsky Competition (Through June 30): One of the world's most prestigious musical contests, the Tchaikovsky Competition, has been going on for a week now, and for the first time in its more than fifty-year history, the entire proceedings are being live-streamed, courtesy of Medici.tv. The competition's laureates include many of the most celebrated performers of the last half-century, most recently Daniil Trifonov, whose Grand Prix in 2011 vaulted him to the top tier of concert pianists. Round II is being heard right now, with the finals scheduled to begin on Sunday and continue through next week. —ECS

Theater: The Sound and the Fury (Through July 12): The Public Theater recently extended the run of The Sound and the Fury for a second time, adding two weeks on to its prior closing date of June 27. The play has received praise for its chaotic and enthralling interpretation of the first and most famous chapter of the 1929 masterpiece by William Faulkner. Performed by the experimental theater group Elevator Repair Service, who first worked with The Public Theater in 2010 with Gatz, this dramatization of the incomprehensible Benjy chapter is confusing but engrossing, and requires every ounce of your attention as the novel opens before your eyes verbatim on stage. —LR

Support Our Friends: First Things is pleased to invite you to a memorable weekend of thought-provoking seminars and lectures on the concept of freedom. Join us as we study pre-assigned classics from Western Civilization in small-group seminars limited to 15 participants. There are no prerequisites to attend. This will be a rare opportunity to get together with like-minded individuals in a spirit of friendship and common purpose to discuss big, timeless ideas, and how they inform the cultural issues occupying our nation in recent years.

From the archive: The Amis country, by David Yezzi: Speaking of Kingsley Amis, here is our Poetry Editor, David Yezzi, writing in 2007 on his verse, which Yezzi finds “bare-knuckled, witty, [and] light but never ‘lite.’”

From our latest issue: Doing as the Romans do, by William Logan: On recent verse.

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