Roundtable

The Rest Is History

A civilized drink, questions about a new saint, and curative waters.

By Angela Serratore

Friday, August 21, 2015

Mural in San Pedro Post Office, San Pedro, California, by Fletcher Martin, c. 1935. Wikimedia Commons.

• Translator Benjamin Moser on the Clarice Lispector renaissance: “Sometimes you meet someone in a bar and end up in bed after a few drinks. And sometimes you wake up and look over at the person snoring by your side and gasp and say, What was I thinking? But other times that person turns out to be the love of your life. With Clarice, I certainly had no idea that our relationship would be as long or as intense as it turned out to be.” (Paris Review Daily)

• As girls and women of the early twentieth century looked to expand their rights and their roles in society, a group of books offered them instruction on how to camp, hunt, and fish. (Hyperallergic)

• “These days, however, gin is indeed rather civilized. Britain is its greatest exporter, with 56 new distilleries opening in the past two years alone, and the government is hoping to make it into the new whisky—prestigious and lucrative.” The sordid history of gin is looking up. (The Economist)

• Pope Francis is set to canonize Father Junipero Serra, the figure most associated with California’s missions. On the eve of Serra’s sainthood, a reflection on how deserved it really is. (New York Times)

• A new translation of Don Quixote is proving popular with readers, much to the chagrin of Spanish academics: “David Felipe Arranz, who teaches at Madrid's Carlos III University, called the new versions ‘a crime against literature,’ telling AFP: ‘I ask the booksellers in Madrid and they tell me no one buys Cervantes's original novel anymore because readers prefer the ‘light’ version. You cannot twist the flavor of the words of the greatest writer in our language.’” (The Telegraph)

• In a long-neglected California resort town, a meditation on ailments and cures: “Desert Hot Springs does not bear any resemblance to the landscape of Bad Ems, or Bath, but the very presence of natural water in the desert is ameliorative. It suggests a kind of elemental survival and, at the same time, a deeper geological time in which any individual’s survival is totally insignificant.” (Los Angeles Review of Books)

• In the 1950s, Dr. Alfred Kinsey received letters from Americans seeking reassurance about “normal” behavior. (Notches)

• As the United States Postal Service begins to sell off its buildings, a question emerges about the fate of the New Deal—era murals that hang inside many sites. “Unlike many depictions of factory work, ‘Resources of America’ does not show human bodies subsumed by machinery, but rather individuals with faces visible, carefully attending to their tasks. Industry is important, but the true subject of each painting is the laborer.” (JSTOR)