The outline (on a shirt board, no less) that Gay Talese worked off of when he wrote the now legendary profile “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” is fascinating. It’s always groovy to try to piece together some of the dance in reverse.
Imagine some of your favourite Canadian writers. Now imagine them naked. I feel like it’s beneath me to incorporate some kind of CanLit joke into my heads up that this is a totally SFW link, and yet the impulse is there nonetheless. Thankfully, that probably says more about me than about our literature.
Louis C.K., a Gogol for our times? I’m not so certain, but Avi Steinberg makes a compelling case. Of special note is how both artists relish in the grotesqueries of the vulgar—as in everyday—bodies, how both sense the deep weirdness of the world and describe it in their work.
And a special treat for monarchists, anti-monarchists, and anyone fascinated by the hollowing affect of celebrity on the person being celebrated: Hilary Mantel’s LRB Winter lecture on regal women and their often torturous relationships with their publics is simply not to be missed. Mantel’s a brilliantly sharp wordsmith, and is just genius in her approach toward her subject. She caught a little shade for the piece, but her light is still shining strong as clean clear sunlight breaking into a dark, dusty, uselessly antiquated room.
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Image of Gay Talese from www.vol1brooklyn.com
