Introductions by the Editors -- On an anonymous crucifixion and great art / Leonard Michaels. On Merce Cunningham / Wendy Lesser -- On the mambo and rhythm / Leonard Michaels -- On Six Degrees of Separation / Steve Vineberg -- On Prague / Frances Starn -- On tables and Shakespeare / Christopher Ricks -- On horror films / Craig Seligman -- On The Brothers Karamazov / Deirdre Levinson -- On the Bowery and Luc Sante / Thom Gunn -- On delivering phonebooks / Irene Oppenheim -- On the LA race riots and his student / Michael Ryan -- On radio in Haiti / Ricki Thompson -- On cover songs / Ross Feld -- On Stoppard and math / Wendy Lesser -- On movie theaters and shootings / W. S. Di Piero -- On Euclid and straight lines / Margaret Doody -- On Jess and his painting / Millicent Dillon -- On Ann Hamilton and her art / Lawrence Weschler -- On postmodernism on the street / Luc Sante -- On the NEA and offensive art / Alexander Nehamas -- On a photograph in Life magazine / Lisa Michaels -- On mannequins / Ruth Fainlight -- On DeafWest and Equus / Irene Oppenheim -- On moving books / Dwight Garner -- On building a fence / Dean Young -- On the digitization of life / Arthur Lubow -- On the British Museum Reading Room / Evelyn Toynton -- On death and assisted suicide / Thomas Laqueur -- On digression / Claire Messud -- On her typewriter / Robyn Sarah -- On time capsules and AIDS / Bill Hayes -- On reading Emma and Emma reading him / Michael Gorra -- On collecting pennies / Tim Savinar -- On Babel in translation / August Kleinzahler -- On driving an eighteen-wheeler in New York / Douglas Danoff -- On men's, and his own, watches / Jeff McMahon -- On the Kirov Ballet / Mark Morris -- On being conned in New York City / Nora Sayre -- On seeing Sid Caesar unclothed / W. S. Di Piero -- On buying Pushkin in Russia / Jeff Seroy -- On Robert Pinsky and "Shirt" / Louise Glück -- On working at home and listening to music / August Kleinzahler -- On the Frankfurt Ballet / Arthur Lubow -- On the Museum of Pathology in Washington, DC / Thomas Laqueur -- On Taipei and dance / Francie Lin -- On cellphones and mules / Harriet Shapiro -- On Burning Man and Shakespeare / Geoff Dyer -- On "natural" vs. artificial or manmade / Bert Keizer -- On the passage of time / Susie Linfield -- On haircuts / Sam Swope -- On English word order / Michael Ryan -- On Wagner's King / Michael P. Steinberg -- On Emily Dickinson and a dead rat / Henk Romijn Meijer -- On meeting famous people in dreams / William Bennett Turner -- On Robinson Crusoe and ink / Nicholas Howe -- On the girl in the convertible / W. S. Di Piero -- On his generation and reading / Geoffrey Hartman -- On taming a horse / Mimi Chubb -- On swimming in Vietnam / John Berger -- On working with troubled children / Paula Fox -- On Lolita / David Bezmozgis -- On being in Hollywood on the set / Charlie Haas -- On Bank of America / Robert Reich -- On Donald Judd and his Marfa installation / Rosanna Warren -- On seeing a buffalo in San Francisco / Kathryn Crim -- On giving directions to lost people / Robert Shuster -- On his personal notebook / Clifford Thompson -- On The Wire / Erik Tarloff -- On cutting ties to humanity / Bert Keizer -- On the Frank Bascombe novels / Wendy Lesser -- On Emily Dickinson and the morality of humans / Bert Keizer -- On an all-female Macbeth / Janna Malamud Smith -- On getting a stray cat out of his house / Sven Birkerts -- On music and reverse immortality / Sarah Rothenberg -- On Man on Wire / Brian Seibert -- On clotheslines / Louis B. Jones -- On coming into a movie midstream / Lynne Sharon Schwartz -- On his grandfather in Greece / Nick Papandreou -- On the mind / -- N. Furbank -- On Dorothea Lange's photo of his mother / Greil Marcus -- On telephone calls from the dead / Jane Vandenburgh -- On biography / Brenda Wineapple -- On books in his childhood home / Javier Marias -- On Sophia Rosoff's piano lessons / Sarah Deming -- On de Waal, netsuke, and touch / Tim Carr -- On holes in Kansas / Ben Merriman -- On dreams and reality / Roberto Bolaño -- On video recordings and the passage of time / Mert Erogul -- On parallel parking in New York City / Thomas Beller -- On his uncle dying and a Thorn Gunn poem / Thomas Rayfiel -- On Földenyi / Alberto Manguel -- On stars in the Hudson and Merce Cunningham / Mindy Aloff -- On capoeira / Jennifer Zahrt -- On a car breakdown in the Central Valley / Gary Soto -- On the Greek financial crisis / Nick Papandreou -- On her grandmother's Don Quixote / Julia Zarankin -- On writing autobiographically / Sigrid Nunez -- On writing in the dark / Philip Levine -- On an anonymous crucifixion and great art / Leonard Michaels.
Summary:
"Table Talk is a portable dinner party and a book to read alone while laughing out loud. Table Talk is a salon attended by your smartest friends and by all of the wittiest people they know. Table Talk is a collection of brief but critically acclaimed, half serious/half tongue-in-cheek pieces that borrow the format of The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" column. Selected from several decades (1990-2013) of The Threepenny Review, known colloquially as the West Coast's New York Review of Books, these anecdotal essays debate the historical, artistic, and technological developments of our time. It includes essays by Christopher Ricks, who unfolds a dazzling literary history of the phrase "Table Talk"; Leonard Michaels on why the waltz should be viewed as an aggressive, imperialist dance; and Claire Messud on the art of digression in fiction and conversation. Sigrid Nunez engages with the contemporary vogue for memoir and autobiography, while Luc Sante draws conclusions about postmodern art from a stray bit of graffiti glimpsed on a New York street. Other contributions include Alexander Nehamas on the NEA controversy that roiled the culture wars of the 1990s and Paula Fox's tips for interacting with difficult children. Ninety-nine pieces become a garden of literary delights, as Table Talk takes an irreverent walk on the wild side of philosophical and cultural speculation that will resonate with readers of any age. "-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.