Levi Stahl
@levistahl.bsky.social
Editor of The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany and The Daily Sherlock Holmes. Marketing Director at the University of Chicago Press. Board member of the Uptown People’s Law Center.
Trying to imagine the wildly different urban and retail environment of about 1940 in which a bookstore that specializes in textbooks but also has a fine art prints and rare books section is open until midnight on Michigan Avenue. It’s borderline incomprehensible to me.
I’ll confess to being pretty bougie-ly house-proud. I think we have an attractive home full of interesting and unusual things. That doesn’t mean I don’t still have goals for it.
Thine heart shall meditate terror. —Isaiah 33:18 (Gonna toss that in my bag of imprecations; there will be times when it comes in handy.)
In this life, I’ve failed at most things, except reading. —Lisa Robertson, Riverwork
I have always been on the side of ornament and artifice. —Lisa Robertson, Riverwork
“I Got It Bad (and That Ain’t Good),” Duke Ellington and Paul Francis Webster (1941). I’m not very happy with the solo here, but it passes quickly and I like the way the final time through the body of the song works out. Baby steps.
I always love it when Hercules or Thor uses a Christian oath. (My explanation that will get me a Marvel No-Prize is that they’ve been around humans for millennia and picked up words like “zounds” not knowing their derivation (“God’s wounds”), just thinking they were cool slang.)
Fun to be able to respond to an instructor who wrote to me about our translation of the Aeneid by David Ferry and be able to say, Oh, I was just re-reading part of that over the weekend and was reminded of how distinctive it is.
This new blu-ray of The Outfit (1973)—the movie that comes closest to getting Westlake’s Parker right—is out now, and if you get it you can watch me talk about Westlake, Parker, & the material shittiness of the 1970s. (And then watch Duvall & Joe Don Baker & Robert Ryan & (sigh) Marie Windsor.)
Levi Stahl@levistahl.bsky.social · 3mo agoIn case you missed it the other day: If you want to see The Outfit, one of the best Parker novel adaptations, & also get to watch me in my library talking about it, Donald Westlake, and movies of his books as part of the DVD extras, here’s your chance. This was really fun to get to be involved with.
I always make sure to get to at least one Dodger game at Wrigley each year. Lotta star power on the field tonight.
The most Chicago thing ever in the Studs Lonigan Trilogy: a potbelly on a man is referred to as “having an alderman.”
There is something grand about living as though no one had ever lived before. —Phyllis Rose, Parallel Lives
“I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes),” Hoagy Carmichael (1939).
Joe wrote angry today. And, properly, not at the Dodgers, but at the Tigers.
Joe Sheehan@sheehannewsletter.bsky.social · 3d agoEditor @scottdsimon.bsky.social said I should make this one free, and we almost always listen to Editor Scott. So on the big trade, posted free. Read, love, subscribe. www.joesheehan.com
Issue 21 of my newsletter, This, Not That, is out! It covers the Aeneid, the Harryhausen film of Jason and the Argonauts, the Sirens from O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and (bonus book rec!) Zachary Mason’s The Lost Books of the Odyssey.
Issue 21: “Sing to me, muse, of the man. No, not that man. Maybe a different one this time.”
As someone who has a professional stake in sales of the Odyssey, I can’t complain overmuch about how it has dominated cultural conversation since the arrival of Christopher Nolan’s film version. I dou...
this-not-that.ghost.io
It’s not a deathbed until you die in it. —Dan Chiasson, New Yorker
Have long heard of when Otto Penzler brought Patricia Highsmith to NYC for signing events but never seen a flier for one til just now
Issue 21 of my newsletter, This, Not That, is out! It covers the Aeneid, the Harryhausen film of Jason and the Argonauts, the Sirens from O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and (bonus book rec!) Zachary Mason’s The Lost Books of the Odyssey.
Issue 21: “Sing to me, muse, of the man. No, not that man. Maybe a different one this time.”
As someone who has a professional stake in sales of the Odyssey, I can’t complain overmuch about how it has dominated cultural conversation since the arrival of Christopher Nolan’s film version. I dou...
this-not-that.ghost.io
Baseball is so tough. The Blue Jays were literally an inch away from winning the World Series last fall. This year their core is a year older, and almost none is having a good year. They’ll probably be at home in October. And they won’t get many more shots with this group.
The world does not take kindly to a successful collaboration between a married couple. —Phyllis Rose, Parallel Lives