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Lapham's Quarterly: Celebrity
The famous, the infamous, and the wannabes populate our issue on celebrity, as fame comes to those who want it the most, and those who don't want it at all.
Among the contributors: Max Weber, P.T Barnum, Truman Capote, Lord Byron, John Dos Passos, T.S. Eliot, Christine de Pisan, John Keats, Oscar Wilde, Buffalo Bill, John Wilmot, Muriel Spark, John Tresch, Paul Collins, Lillie Langtry.
Among the contributors: Max Weber, P.T Barnum, Truman Capote, Lord Byron, John Dos Passos, T.S. Eliot, Christine de Pisan, John Keats, Oscar Wilde, Buffalo Bill, John Wilmot, Muriel Spark, John Tresch, Paul Collins, Lillie Langtry.
221 pages
First published January 1, 2011
21 people want to read
About the author
Lewis H. Lapham
181 books134 followersLewis Henry Lapham was the editor of Harper's Magazine from 1976 until 1981, and again from 1983 until 2006. He is the founder and current editor of Lapham's Quarterly, featuring a wide range of famous authors devoted to a single topic in each issue. Lapham has also written numerous books on politics and current affairs.
Lapham's Quarterly
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/
Lapham's Quarterly
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/
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October 22, 2014
You can find links to my numerous Lapham’s Quarterly blog posts here: http://fairplay740.wordpress.com/2014... .
I’m reading back issues from my Complete Collection of Lapham’s Quarterly (est. Winter 2008, still available in the literary market if one seeks and he shall find) as well as reading each current issue as it arrives.
L.Q. describes itself much better than I:
“Lapham’s Quarterly is a journal of literature and history, edited by Lewis Lapham. Four times a year we collect fiction, non-fiction, poems, and essays from over four thousand years of recorded time, all gathered around a single theme.”
I’m still working on 2008 (one to go, Fall) but was prompted to jump to this issue by the recent suicide of comedian Robin Williams at age 63. What a great, great comedian (and dramatic actor) he was, giving us the gift of laughter and release from our mundane daily lives. Now he has had the nerve to deprive us of him. It was thoughtless, selfish, and unfair.
Then, before I finished reading this issue, comedian Joan Rivers died at age 81 after a medical procedure. There was no one quite like her. I love the synonyms listed online for acerbic (sharp and forthright), as in acerbic wit. They are so HER. [Unless you are already bored to tears do NOT feel like you need to click the links for the definitions. I'm too lazy to remove them.]
Celebrity. As this issue reminds us, we mankind have sought, fawned or pursued celebrity since the beginning of time. Early on ‘the great ones’ were kings and conquerors, perhaps also those of soldierly or athletic prowess. Today it seems like it is everyone and everything. I wonder/fear mankind (at least the western ‘civilized’ of us) embodies some severe psychic aberration. We are not willing to be ourselves just for the sake of our self. We must be recognized, applauded, regaled, feted. If we can’t do that then we live our lives vicariously through an endless number of fantasy/reality outlets. Sports! Movies! TV! (Even books! Fiction explodes these days. YA (young adult) novels, soon to be transported to a big screen near you! Hunger Games! Divergent! Twilight! Glorious fantasy.) Facebook! Selfie photos!! CosPlay! (Which actually looks like fun.) ANYTHING but dirt, grass, trees, sky. (I hope you saw my marathon comments on L.Q. Book of Nature.)
Lapham’s thoroughly (as usual) explores the span. Lewis Lapham’s always exemplary Preamble is present, this time titled Dancing With The Stars, a play on a popular TV show airing in 2011 and still at this writing. The main body of the issue, Voices in Time, has the sections of On the Rise, At the Top, and Out of Sight. Priceless representative art, anecdotes, and side-quotes are liberally distributed, all on high-quality bond paper to the exact number of 221 pages before the Sources reference section. I love knowing how many pages are left. I have some urge to be finished and knowing the remaining distance is a comfort but we all know it’s every bit the journey where the value lies.
The superficiality of celebrity can be readily seen in Gossip Girl (Lili Langtry) and P.T. Barnum Sets the Stage. (Free online!)(Use the 2nd link at the top of the page.)
Singer Bob Dylan is noteworthy in that all he ever wanted was to have a normal family life with wife, kids, and quiet time. How did that work for ya’ Bob?
Of course many of the really good extracts are not free. ‘Behind the Lens…’ on paparazzi is chilling and insightful. Fictional celebrity is represented by a slice of The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald. I saw the movie recently with Leonardo de Caprio as Gatsby. Didn’t care for it. It was excessively color-stylized.
I thought Andy Warhol was very insightful on the subject:
“Some company was recently interested in buying my “aura”. They didn’t want my product. They kept saying, “We want your aura.” I never figured out what they wanted.” (p. 106)
“An actress should count up her plays and movies and a model should count up her photographs… …so you always know exactly what you’re worth, and you don’t get stuck thinking your product is you and your fame, and your aura.” (p. 107)
Buffalo Bill is a personal favorite (Hitting It Big (free!)) as I visited his gravesite and museum this summer.
Sooo many great writers and insights. Virginia Woolf. Leo Tolstoy. John Hinckley’s love letter to Jodie Foster (This Is Just To Say (free!)). He shot Ronald Reagan and James Brady. Brady remained incapacitated until his death Aug. 2014 at which time his death was ruled a homicide. It reminded me that one of the many school shooters seeking fame told his jailor “At least people will remember me”. His jailor replied “No they won’t”. I don’t remember his name or location either and only recall the jailor’s prescience. Celebrity is fickle.
L.Q. again surprises me that it doesn’t have more of a presence of Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. Isn’t this too what Celebrity is all about? The masses, en masse, chasing their tails and the meaning of their lives in the shadow of someone else. I must read that book yet again.
There is a single side-quote from Hoffer: “Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience.” –Eric Hoffer, 1951 (p. 221)
Hoffer’s quote is on the last page of the issue but before that the final extended-length essays (free, Free, FREE online!) delve further.
I really liked this one: Vanishing Act, on a child writer destined too soon to wither and fade.
““My dreams are going through their death flurries,” she wrote that June. “I thought they were all safely buried, but sometimes they stir in their grave, making my heartstrings twinge. I mean no particular dream, you understand, but the whole radiant flock of them together—with their rainbow wings, iridescent, bright, soaring, glorious, sublime. They are dying before the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money.”” (p. 197)
I recommend it.
The story of Orson Welles young success and fading star is outstanding. Against Appearances.
Who better to finish the issue with than the original sham artist P. T. Barnum. Celebrity is the thinnest of veneers, more likely cheap cotton cheesecloth than the finest silk.
‘Nuff said.
I’m reading back issues from my Complete Collection of Lapham’s Quarterly (est. Winter 2008, still available in the literary market if one seeks and he shall find) as well as reading each current issue as it arrives.
L.Q. describes itself much better than I:
“Lapham’s Quarterly is a journal of literature and history, edited by Lewis Lapham. Four times a year we collect fiction, non-fiction, poems, and essays from over four thousand years of recorded time, all gathered around a single theme.”
I’m still working on 2008 (one to go, Fall) but was prompted to jump to this issue by the recent suicide of comedian Robin Williams at age 63. What a great, great comedian (and dramatic actor) he was, giving us the gift of laughter and release from our mundane daily lives. Now he has had the nerve to deprive us of him. It was thoughtless, selfish, and unfair.
Then, before I finished reading this issue, comedian Joan Rivers died at age 81 after a medical procedure. There was no one quite like her. I love the synonyms listed online for acerbic (sharp and forthright), as in acerbic wit. They are so HER. [Unless you are already bored to tears do NOT feel like you need to click the links for the definitions. I'm too lazy to remove them.]
Celebrity. As this issue reminds us, we mankind have sought, fawned or pursued celebrity since the beginning of time. Early on ‘the great ones’ were kings and conquerors, perhaps also those of soldierly or athletic prowess. Today it seems like it is everyone and everything. I wonder/fear mankind (at least the western ‘civilized’ of us) embodies some severe psychic aberration. We are not willing to be ourselves just for the sake of our self. We must be recognized, applauded, regaled, feted. If we can’t do that then we live our lives vicariously through an endless number of fantasy/reality outlets. Sports! Movies! TV! (Even books! Fiction explodes these days. YA (young adult) novels, soon to be transported to a big screen near you! Hunger Games! Divergent! Twilight! Glorious fantasy.) Facebook! Selfie photos!! CosPlay! (Which actually looks like fun.) ANYTHING but dirt, grass, trees, sky. (I hope you saw my marathon comments on L.Q. Book of Nature.)
Lapham’s thoroughly (as usual) explores the span. Lewis Lapham’s always exemplary Preamble is present, this time titled Dancing With The Stars, a play on a popular TV show airing in 2011 and still at this writing. The main body of the issue, Voices in Time, has the sections of On the Rise, At the Top, and Out of Sight. Priceless representative art, anecdotes, and side-quotes are liberally distributed, all on high-quality bond paper to the exact number of 221 pages before the Sources reference section. I love knowing how many pages are left. I have some urge to be finished and knowing the remaining distance is a comfort but we all know it’s every bit the journey where the value lies.
The superficiality of celebrity can be readily seen in Gossip Girl (Lili Langtry) and P.T. Barnum Sets the Stage. (Free online!)(Use the 2nd link at the top of the page.)
Singer Bob Dylan is noteworthy in that all he ever wanted was to have a normal family life with wife, kids, and quiet time. How did that work for ya’ Bob?
Of course many of the really good extracts are not free. ‘Behind the Lens…’ on paparazzi is chilling and insightful. Fictional celebrity is represented by a slice of The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald. I saw the movie recently with Leonardo de Caprio as Gatsby. Didn’t care for it. It was excessively color-stylized.
I thought Andy Warhol was very insightful on the subject:
“Some company was recently interested in buying my “aura”. They didn’t want my product. They kept saying, “We want your aura.” I never figured out what they wanted.” (p. 106)
“An actress should count up her plays and movies and a model should count up her photographs… …so you always know exactly what you’re worth, and you don’t get stuck thinking your product is you and your fame, and your aura.” (p. 107)
Buffalo Bill is a personal favorite (Hitting It Big (free!)) as I visited his gravesite and museum this summer.
Sooo many great writers and insights. Virginia Woolf. Leo Tolstoy. John Hinckley’s love letter to Jodie Foster (This Is Just To Say (free!)). He shot Ronald Reagan and James Brady. Brady remained incapacitated until his death Aug. 2014 at which time his death was ruled a homicide. It reminded me that one of the many school shooters seeking fame told his jailor “At least people will remember me”. His jailor replied “No they won’t”. I don’t remember his name or location either and only recall the jailor’s prescience. Celebrity is fickle.
L.Q. again surprises me that it doesn’t have more of a presence of Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. Isn’t this too what Celebrity is all about? The masses, en masse, chasing their tails and the meaning of their lives in the shadow of someone else. I must read that book yet again.
There is a single side-quote from Hoffer: “Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience.” –Eric Hoffer, 1951 (p. 221)
Hoffer’s quote is on the last page of the issue but before that the final extended-length essays (free, Free, FREE online!) delve further.
I really liked this one: Vanishing Act, on a child writer destined too soon to wither and fade.
““My dreams are going through their death flurries,” she wrote that June. “I thought they were all safely buried, but sometimes they stir in their grave, making my heartstrings twinge. I mean no particular dream, you understand, but the whole radiant flock of them together—with their rainbow wings, iridescent, bright, soaring, glorious, sublime. They are dying before the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money.”” (p. 197)
I recommend it.
The story of Orson Welles young success and fading star is outstanding. Against Appearances.
Who better to finish the issue with than the original sham artist P. T. Barnum. Celebrity is the thinnest of veneers, more likely cheap cotton cheesecloth than the finest silk.
‘Nuff said.
August 25, 2012
c. 1923: Hamburg
DANILO KIS SENDS THE FLOWERS
Mariette's grave was covered with armfuls of roses, white and red, freshly cut pine branches,
chrysanthemums and tuberoses, sky-blue hydrangeas, decadent art-nouveau irises, the flower of lust, hyacinths and expensive black tulips, the flower of night, waxen mortuary lilies, the flower of virginity and First Communion, violet lilacs reeking of decay, low-born rhododendrons, and monstrous gladioluses (which were in the majority), soft-white and soft-pink, saintly, angelic gladioluses with their intrinsic sword-and-rose mystique, all of them together a sign of putrid wealth, of the cool mansions of the wealthy, lethally lush gladioluses watered by the sweat of weary old gardeners, the rosettes of watering cans, the artificial rain of artesian wells, to shield from the elements the lushly morbid growth of barren flowers devoid of fragrance, even fish fragrance, despite their frantically joined, lobster-claw structure, despite the blossoms' waxen wrinkles and the stamens' mock tentacles and the mock spines of the finely honed buds: all that monstrous lushness was incapable of exuding a single atom of scent, not even so much as a wild violet's worth.
DANILO KIS SENDS THE FLOWERS
Mariette's grave was covered with armfuls of roses, white and red, freshly cut pine branches,
chrysanthemums and tuberoses, sky-blue hydrangeas, decadent art-nouveau irises, the flower of lust, hyacinths and expensive black tulips, the flower of night, waxen mortuary lilies, the flower of virginity and First Communion, violet lilacs reeking of decay, low-born rhododendrons, and monstrous gladioluses (which were in the majority), soft-white and soft-pink, saintly, angelic gladioluses with their intrinsic sword-and-rose mystique, all of them together a sign of putrid wealth, of the cool mansions of the wealthy, lethally lush gladioluses watered by the sweat of weary old gardeners, the rosettes of watering cans, the artificial rain of artesian wells, to shield from the elements the lushly morbid growth of barren flowers devoid of fragrance, even fish fragrance, despite their frantically joined, lobster-claw structure, despite the blossoms' waxen wrinkles and the stamens' mock tentacles and the mock spines of the finely honed buds: all that monstrous lushness was incapable of exuding a single atom of scent, not even so much as a wild violet's worth.
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