i didn’t start out as a huge edith wharton fan as my first exposure to her writing was ethan frome as a junior in high school. my classmates and i were disgusted by how heavy and depressing the book was. after reading the age of innocence and the house of mirth, i can’t say i would call wharton’s writing uplifting or even in the ballpark of “sunny” but i love her ability to break down social hierarchies and ambition and paint multi layered characters caught in the web of convention.
a few years ago i bought hermione lee’s biography on wharton but haven’t touched it yet (the thing is HUGE). now that i have blown through all her major works it might be time to dust it off.
Selected highlights and facts about the beloved New York Public Library courtesy of the Times. A few favorites:
- THE FIORELLO LA GUARDIA IMPACT - La Guardia, New York’s loquacious Depression-era mayor, renamed the famous lions that guard the Fifth Avenue entrance. The mayor decided that Patience and Fortitude — survival qualities essential during a depression — made better sense than Lord Lenox and Lady Astor, especially since both lions are male.
- MENU, PLEASE - The library has 40,000 restaurant menus, the world’s largest collection, dating from the 1850s to the present. It is heavily used by chefs, novelists and researchers; a few years ago, a marine biologist consulted menus from the early 1900s for a study of fish populations.
- CABINET OF CURIOSITIES - The most bizarre item, not counting those skull fragments from Percy Bysshe Shelley in Room 319, has to be Charles Dickens’s favorite letter-opener. The shaft is ivory, but the handle is the embalmed paw of his beloved cat, Bob, toenails and all.
The library also features Truman Capote’s cigarette case, the original Winnie-the-Pooh, hair from Mary Shelley and Walt Whitman, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s slippers on display.
edward rothstein reviews the new jane austen exhibition at the morgan library and museum in new york.
for those of you not in new york city, you can get a taste via the online exhibition.
pleasant saturday afternoon spent reading in the park.
adam kirsch explores the relevance of ayn rand’s atlas shrugged in the obama era.
