RIP Richard Stites

Somehow I missed Russian historian Richard Stites's death March 7 and the obit than ran in the New York Times two weeks ago, but the Washington Post has an obit up as of today. I have a number of his books, and his cultural histories were always a pleasure to read.

Mom

My review of Rebecca Jo Plant's new book, Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America, is up now at The Millions. Read it here. Do it now.

If the Guggenheim were a bookshelf

Dezeen features an amazing translucent white bookshelf spiraling up a two-story staircase. It holds 6,000 books. The house belonged to a nineteenth-century Portuguese poet and was recently converted into a literary center.

Stereoscopes

The Boat Lullabies has posted a series of animated stereoscopic pictures from the 1940s. Try looking at them with one eye closed, then switch eyes. Way cooler than Avatar.

Dubravka Ugresic

I have a review of her latest book, Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, in the new issue of Time Out New York. It's online here.

Harry Smith Colonoscopy

I knew Harry Smith was dead, but this headline caught my eye:

Harry Smith Colonoscopy to Air on 'Early Show'

Turns out one of the show's anchors is named Harry Smith, which I didn't know, since I find TV news repellent.

HOWEVER

This makes a great excuse to watch some animation by the real deal.

Tony Judt in 'New York Magazine'

The latest issue of New York Magazine has a profile of Tony Judt, also available online. Judt, the author, most recently, of the brilliant Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehring's disease, in 2008 and has since lost the use of his body. Though the disease inexplicably stopped short of destroying his ability to speak (he does so with the aid of a microphone) and eat, he's essentially left with only his mental faculties intact. But what a mind. Judt is an aggressive, provocative, and stimulating thinker. He's also widely criticized, not least for his views on Israel. He's made enemies of friends, but I greatly admire his fearlessness and his belief in the intellectual's responsibility to stand apart and, often, alone.

“I think intellectuals have a primary duty to dissent not from the conventional wisdom of the age (though that too) but, and above all, from the consensus of their own community. . . . So liberals should look especially hard at the uninterrogated assumptions of liberalism. Otherwise we are just hacks for a party line. If I have an Archimedean ethical standpoint, it really just consists of telling the truth as I see it even if I don’t much care for the implications, or if it offends my friends and my political allies.”

The magazine has judiciously let stand lengthy, unbroken passages of Judt speaking, and it makes for great reading:

One thing I always felt very strongly empathetic about in my reading of [the Italian chemist and Holocaust diarist] Primo Levi was his absolutely clearheaded sense that none of what had happened to him in the camps had any meaning. You might draw lessons from it in terms of experience, you certainly might draw political lessons. But at the existential level of one man’s life, it had no meaning. This has no meaning. What I do with it is up to me.

Ikea does manga

Ikea has introduced a new line of fabrics inspired by Japanese manga and ukiyo-e (and even a little oragami). Called the "Charlotta" line, it's designed by Swedish mangaka Åsa Ekström (interview here). The US site has five patterns on the theme "Japan Meets Scandinavia." I like them all, though the one at right is my favorite. Nothing beats manga's angsty, absurd melodrama. (Plus: Gojira v. Stockholm.)

Also great for tea cozies!