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Today in The New York Review of Books: Meg Weeks marches with Brazil’s putafeministas, Daniel M. Lavery watches Maddie’s Secret; Julian Bell praises the sacred paintings of Francisco de Zurbarán; a poem by Elizabeth Metzger; and, from the archives, Thomas R. Edwards on Charles Bukowski.

Meg Weeks
What Does a Puta Want?

Brazil’s putafeminism is a working-class, sex-radical feminism that positions whores as its flagbearers.

Daniel M. Lavery
Insincerity Case

John Early’s Maddie’s Secret mourns the loss of the ingenue from the silver screen.

Blueprint

a poem by
Elizabeth Metzger

Some friends call mine a spiritual problem
and when they do
I become the minister of the real
and go on Zillow
moving my future into various crannies of Los
Angeles…

Free from the Archives

Charles Bukowski was born 106 years ago today. In the Review’s October 5, 1972, issue, Thomas R. Edwards wrote about “five books of fiction that offer news from elsewhere”: Amos Oz’s My Michael, Paula Fox’s The Western Coast, Louis Auchincloss’s I Come as a Thief, Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (“a wild and funny fantasia upon historical themes”), and Bukowski’s Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness, in which the dissolute Californian wrote to “prov[e] defiantly that even at the edge of the abyss language persists.”

Thomas R. Edwards
News from Elsewhere

Bukowski writes as an unregenerate lowbrow contemptuous of our claims to superior being. Politics is bullshit, since work is as brutalizing and unrewarding in a liberal order as in any totalitarian one; artists and intellectuals are mostly fakes, smugly enjoying the blessings of the society they carp at; the radical young are spiritless asses, insulated by drugs and their own endless cant from any authentic experience of mind or body; most women are whores, though honest whores are good and desirable; no life finally works, but the best one possible involves plenty of six-packs, enough money to go to the track, and a willing woman of any age and shape in a good old-fashioned garter belt and high heels.

Homer vs. Hollywood: Discussing Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey

In this special hour-long edition of NYRSeminars recorded on July 29, Daniel Mendelsohn discusses Christopher Nolan’s polarizing blockbuster adaptation of the Odyssey. Mendelsohn outlines his judgment of the film and then opens the floor to questions from audience members. You may watch the video here for free.

For a limited time, we are also offering a special 25% discount code toward purchase of the recordings of Mendelsohn’s six-part Odyssey seminar as well as three of his books about classical themes, Three Rings, Ecstasy and Terror, and Waiting for the Barbarians, all published by New York Review Books. Use the links above or the code “odysseyevent” at checkout in our shops (shop.nybooks.com and www.nyrb.com) to receive the discount.

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