T uesday, June 30. The last day of June. Kevin’s birthday. And the second anniversary of Ingmar Bergman’s death. Today’s briefing starts in the film industry, with Werner Herzog’s reflections on nature’s role in the making of Fitzcarraldo. Zak Smith and The Rumpus has a “Sex” section. Well, they need it, as they continue to focus on porn themes (as we do). Following that, a review of Gilgamesh delves into the sack. But now we move away from bedroom passion (ostensibly) and into the passion of anger. Word is that spite may be a precursor to kindness. Garry Wills patched things up with his friend and ideological opponent Bill Buckley and gives an appreciation humanizing Bill, by revealing his flaws. The “In Case You Missed It” department brings us Scott Simon’s 2005 conversation with n+1 editor Benjamin Kunkel, with an excerpt from Indecision. — Andrew Geer
– This is what “a beautiful, fresh, sunny morning” was like for Werner Herzog during the Sisyphean miseries that plagued the shooting of his Amazonian epic “Fitzcarraldo” (1982): one of two newly hatched chicks drowned in a saucer containing only a few millimeters of water. The other lost a leg and a piece of its stomach to a murderous rabbit. And Mr. Herzog realized, for the umpteenth time, that “a sense of desolation was tearing me up inside, like termites in a fallen tree trunk.” — Werner Herzog in The NY Times
– Sometimes, in the Industry, you see things that you really wish you hadn’t. If it’s a certain kind of very independent girl, she’ll shrug it off, like “Hey, it didn’t turn out that well—but I have no regrets, and it’s good for business.” But it can be hard to watch someone you know being sincerely degraded—dressed up so she’ll look half her age, ganged up on and treated like a whore, and edited so she’ll intentionally sound like an idiot—even if you know she made a lot of money off it. Like when Tasha Rey does The Tyra Banks Show. – Zak Smith in The Rumpus
– I read Gilgamesh as part of my “classics year” project, to read all those classics I’ve been meaning to. This work always gave me the impression of being an inaccessible epic, like the tome poems of Homer that go on for hundreds of pages. However, that is not the case. Like Beowulf (I highly recommend Seamus Heaney’s translation), Gilgamesh is a short, quick read, with lots of rollicking battles and sex. Part of the shortness comes from the fact that the story is incomplete — it is known that several books are missing from the original narrative. Hopefully one day those missing sections will surface. — Gilgamesh at Powell’s Books
– Around the time of the G20 summit in London on 2 April, the streets of cities across the world were filled with people protesting against the excesses of the banking bosses, among other things. Chances are you agreed with the sentiment. Chances are too that if you had been asked to put your hand in your pocket to fund a campaign to seize their bonuses, even if you wouldn’t see any of the money, you’d have been sorely tempted. — Spite in The New Scientist
– Hour by hour, day by day, Bill Buckley was just an exciting person to be around, especially when he was exhilarated by his love of sailing. He could turn any event into an adventure, a joke, a showdown. He loved risk. I saw him time after time rush his boat toward a harbor, sails flying, only to swerve and drop sail at the last moment. For some on the pier, looking up to see this large yacht bearing down on them, it was a heart-stopping moment. To add to the excitement, Bill was often standing on the helmsman’s seat, his hands clutching the shrouds above his head, turning the wheel with his foot, in a swashbuckling pose. (He claimed he saw the berth better from up there.) — Bill Buckley in The Atlantic
– Paper or plastic? To quit or not to quit? To commit or not to commit? Indecision tells the story of 28-year-old Dwight Wilmerding, who is not so much lonely as bored until he jumps at the chance to try an experimental drug offering him the hope of putting more decisiveness into his life. — Benjamin Kunkel on NPR
