Chekhov’s Mistess

Rambling with Radhika

I have this imaginary conversation in my head where I meet Radhika Jones on the street (she lives in my neighborhood) and tell her how much I enjoy her “Collections” columns in Bookforum. She’s taken aback and says “don’t you know I’m the managing editor of The Paris Review?” as though that column is a trifle compared to her work at the venerable litmag. And I say “yes, but even though I subscribe I have a terrible time getting my issues in the mail, so don’t end up reading it as much as I like.” At which point she jots down in her Rhodia to have Guerevitch hand deliver my issues in the future and to call to find out how I like it and if I’d kindly mention The Paris Review on Chekhov’s Mistress.

I tell her that the the “Collections” columns remind me a bit of The Paris Review interviews in that they’re fun in that ‘peeking-into-other’s-lives’ kind of way, but they’re also insightful and add a dimension into writer’s lives that those of us who love to write like to read. Her latest on Edward Mendelson reveals how he came to be W.H. Auden’s literary executor, an episode filled more with ambition on the part of Mendelson rather than from some eminent status – which he only gained later. Who also knew that the Columbia professor known for extensive analysis of Auden’s work also writes about technology in PC Magazine?

Could it be that the same man that wrote:

“ ’Sext’ is one of the few poems in English that try to understand power in its willed yet impersonal essence, as neither the manifestation of someone’s personal wickedness or the instrument of unwilled historical forces. What it attempts is more difficult because less visible than the recognition that ‘Somebody chose their pain’ which Auden wrote about in ‘A Walk After Dark’: it acknowledges the social and bureaucratic power that Kierkegaard dismissed as lethal untruths…

– from Later Auden

also wrote:

When I dove into the new version [of Microsoft Office], the most obvious change I found in the interface is the replacement of the initial shades-of-gray color theme with two new themes, Luna (blue) and Obsidian (mostly black); more will presumably arrive with the final versin.

– “PC Magazine”

It’s true, and in this context there’s almost something cool about writing for “PC Magazine” (although I’m a “Macworld” guy).

Well, If that’s not cool enough, I tell you that Mendelson collects first editions of Thomas Pynchon, about whose work he wrote his first scholarly publication, and editions of Virginia Woolf’s work (his published by Hogarth, no less, causing Mendelson to hunger while paying for them).

And speaking of Virginia Woolf, Mendelson has a new book out, The Things that Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life, with her work figuring prominently. I gave The Things… a looksee while wandering around Labyrinth Books (where, even if you don’t find Mr. Mendelson stalking about, you might very well find the coursebooks he’s assigned) the other day. I imagine that I could give you my impressions in fewer words than the title, but that would be unfair, I think, but I didn’t buy it (well, I rarely buy new hardcovers anyway).

So you get all that in a far more interesting package than I’ve given you here. As if we needed another reason to subscribe to Bookforum.

comments

LOL- great read. Now in my favorites.

    – Annonn (02/01  at  01:04 PM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: January 31, 2007
• Filed Under:
  Wise Men Fish Here: Literature

Tags: The Paris Review

• Comments:1
• Links to this Post: Technorati

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