20-CENTURY-OLD MAN SEEKS TOGA-ED TWINK FOR FUN, TRAVEL, PIRACY
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To celebrate the release the fourth issue of her literary review, Whitney staged a library-themed variety show at Performance Space on Thursday and then a party at Frog Club on Sunday. I went. Duh.
I loved the performances. It reminded me that the reason why most mainstream comedic media isn’t funny is because it isn’t weird—that to be truly strange is a gift. I was like, Wow my friends are so sexy and talented: Maya and Mekala killed it. (First and only time I think I’ve ever written “killed it” but I’ll go with it.) It was giving WE FOUND KNOWLEDGE IN A HOPELESS PLACE WE FOUND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF KNOWING GOD IN A HOPELESS PLACE 🎶 by Rihanna on the sound system during a Simone Weil reading group/fight club at Pumps. Kellian yelled “REJECTION!” in my ear. Esmé and their dad was beautiful. Maybe it’s because my dad is dead but lately I’m really like, Wow isn’t it so cute that guy helping his kid on the scooter or whatever.
Last night: Frog Club’s decor and cuisine I don’t get (which is different than not liking), but I used to appreciate when they put stickers on your phone like at Basement. This time they didn’t. I heard at least three people ask, What happened to the stickers?
No one was taking pictures. Except for a New York magazine photographer who was gone by 8:30 pm. I ate several mysteriously topped crackers. I ordered only one drink. I decided I was gonna be Really Chill™. And say as little as possible. I was going to Better Myself and Let Life Happen. This because I felt queasy from Friday when I’d gone to an International Nerd Summit dinner that I thought would be just four people but it turned out to be, like, eight or ten.
Generous, circular table. White table cloth. Too-wet martinis. I’d felt insecure. Everyone had books, big ones. Or edited books, big ones. Or translated books—you guessed it—big ones. I mixed up where Neruda was from. (Hint: not Peru!) I became convinced that a woman complimented my shirt to let me know she thought I was stupid. (I am.) Pink (fka P!nk) was across the room. The gay couple at the table next to ours got in a screaming fight. (“I have a bigger dick!”) My boyfriend and I got into a more tepid fight. (“I have a bigger ego!”) At home.
(I have manners!)
Anyway, as the other times Whitney-and-team have released issues, I thought I’d share my review from the previous edition. Issue four (order here) is the first time I’ve written about new writing for the Review of New Writing. (Previously, they’d been recent editions/translations/collections of twentieth-century literature: Skelley and Bernhard/Guibert.) For issue three, I went really old school.
PETRONIUS, THE SATYRICON
TRANSLATED by P.G. WALSH
Oxford University Press, 2009 (Circa 65 A.D.)
Peopled by self-satisfied pundits, superstitious nouveau-riches, dissembling dilettantes, and one very beautiful twink sex slave, the surviving fragments of Petronius’s The Satyricon are admirably demented. A wooden dildo doused in olive oil and peppercorns and nettles; a priestess who scoffs “Juno… curse me if I can remember the time when I ever was a virgin” when her prudish captives shrink from violating a seven-year-old; fart jokes; dick jokes; bisexual love hexagons—the 20-centuries-old Roman picaresque novel surprises this modern reader less by such vivid particulars than its first-person realism and voicey satire. It’s a Three Stooges-meets-Salò romp that could’ve been written yesterday, or, with Trump-like Trimalchio bloviating about his untold wealth and uncontrollable bowels for 52 of its chapters, maybe today.
