Roundtable

The Rest Is History

The CIA’s literary endeavors, a maligned bird, and the peril of an ancient city.

By Angela Serratore

Friday, August 28, 2015

Jakob Fugger und Sibylla Artzt, by Hans Burgkmair, 1498. The Schroeder Collection (via Wikimedia Commons). 

• A ranking of literary magazines funded by the CIA: “During the Cold War, it was commonplace to draw the distinction between ‘totalitarian’ and ‘free’ societies by noting that only in the free ones could groups self-organize independently of the state. But many of the groups that made that argument—including the magazines on this left—were often covertly sponsored instruments of state power, at least in part.” (The Awl)

• For Treasury department officials, a seat at the Broadway musical Hamilton becomes a must-have. (New York Times)

• The sad history of the seagull (and its detractors): “Protestantism did further damage to the gull’s reputation. One of the unclean birds listed in Deuteronomy chapter 14 appears as larum in the Vulgate. English translators weren’t sure what to make of it. The Wycliffite Bible hedged its bets and called the bird a ‘lare.’ William Tyndale translated it as ‘cuckow.’ But the Geneva Bible went for ‘seagull.’ Henry Ainsworth, in his 1627 Annotations on the Bible, called it ‘a bird of a greedy and ravenous kind.’” (London Review of Books Blog)

• French novelist Michel Houellebecq is at war with Le Monde, claiming the newspaper’s recent series of articles about his work and process put his life at risk. (The Independent)

• How one German family came to dominate Europe’s political and financial markets in the sixteenth-century: “Today, just 400 families are providing most of the money for the 2016 election, but in 1519, when the crown of the Holy Roman Emperor was up for grabs, only a handful of families could participate in the money race. The Fuggers were one of them, and their willingness to spend the sixteenth-century equivalent of tens of million of dollars dwarfed the competition’s, so much so that the family was essentially able to decide the race.” (Atlas Obscura)

• Joseph Roth and literature’s ongoing fascination with hotel stays. (Paris Review Daily)

• Images of Palmyra, an ancient city now under threat of destruction by ISIS: “Located roughly 150 miles northeast of Damascus, Palmyra can lay claim to being one of the most important crossroads of antiquity, a cultural melting pot, key Roman settlement and the empire’s gateway to Persian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations. At its height, the city boasted a 3,600-foot-long colonnaded street, a series of temples, an agora and a theater.” (Curbed)

• The Guinness Book of World Records turns sixty: “In 1951 Sir Hugh Beaver, the managing director of the Guinness Brewery, missed a shot at a game bird during a hunting trip and wondered aloud if it could possibly be the fastest game bird in existence. A few years later, upon realizing there did not exist a record of superlatives such as the fastest game bird, Beaver enlisted the assistance of two journalists, Norris and Ross McWhirter, to write the first edition of the bestseller. After more than thirteen 90-hour weeks, the editors finally published the book on August 27, 1955.” (Smithsonian)