Posts from the General Research Division

About a month ago, I was having a conversation with a colleague about the then upcoming film, World War Z. Our discussion turned to pop culture's fascination with zombies. Zombies have shuffled their way into books, films, comics, music, T.V., video games, etc., and it appears that nothing can stop the spread of zombie content. From million dollar franchises to low budget films, from tongue-in-cheek titles to serious drama, zombies are seemingly everywhere. This was not always the case. As my colleague Rosa demonstrated in her 2010 blog post "The Zombie Comeback", zombies have grown significantly in popularity in recent years and they show no sign of slowing down.

My colleague MN said she would be coming the 'my' next lecture. Of course I said what?? (your friends will come to your funeral, your real friends go to your lectures). She had just discovered John Adams's opera Doctor Atomic and pointed me to the YouTube clip of the aria "Batter My Heart," one of Donne's most famous poems. Cool, as the youngbloods say (used to say?)

Last month, while reading the ever-elegant obituaries in The Economist, I ran across RPJ's. I knew the name through the Merchant/Ivory movies, but she was a writer-writer as well as screen-writer. She wrote over a dozen novels, with a "heroine [who] was almost always herself: trapped in a cross-cultural marriage, tipping between the old world and the new, observing from the outside some bewildering place." As so often happens, the next day I stumbled on a mention of her in the journals of the great Leo Lerman, who knew everyone, and enjoyed the rare gift of description in a paragraph.

May 27th is Memorial Day. Did you know that this U.S. federal holiday goes as far back as the American Civil War in the 1860s?

Memorial Day, formerly known as Decoration Day, occurs ever year on the last Monday of the month of May and is the day of remembering the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.

This coming fall, perhaps in September, I will be giving a library talk called "Edith Wharton: A Writing Life." In preparation, I have been immersing myself in Wharton's novels and stories. Although the fiction is often set in a New York as remote from us as an ancient city, among a wealthy and exclusive class many generations removed from today's social elite, what strikes me most powerfully is how modern it all seems. Her characters have passions, needs, joys, and frustrations which are as piercing and poignant as our own. They breathe the same air as we do.

May is Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month. This month celebrates the contributions of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States.

During World War II, when the Japanese invaded and occupied Shanghai, Nanjing and other coastal cities of eastern China, they looted, intimidated, and massacred millions of people to prove their imperial strength and mercilessness. Many children and women were raped and killed during the invasion; towns were burned to crisp and lives were forever changed and destroyed.

The Ancient Greeks believed it. Christians believe it. So do Muslims, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Shintos, Sikhs, Mayans, Mormons, Witches, and few other spiritual groups.

Regardless of their spiritual differences and outlooks, they all believe that after life, there is a special place reserved for people that harm others or indulge in their own "sins" without remorse or repentance; thus their souls deserve this special invitation to hell or somewhere dark, agonizing and unpleasant in a state of foreverness or eternal damnation.

Most of the collections at the Stephen A. Schwarzman building are closed-stacked, i.e., we bring them to you. But on the 3rd floor, the Rose Main Reading Room maintains open, very open stacks of about 30,000 volumes on every subject, not just the humanities and social sciences which is our collection strength.

That is, the kick-off to Shakespeare Week—April 15 to 20 here at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. Schizophrenia, nomadism, Lacan (oh the joys of serendipity—I just ordered his Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Profession), Deleuze, all the quite-cut edge philosophers and concepts.  

Well, it's April and time for Shakespeare Week. And once again, to read a great novel—The Juliet Club, by Wertheim writer Suzanne Harper.  Here is the blog post about it from 2 years ago.  It (the novel, that is) is as good as the first time.

Carrere & Hastings, architects of the Central Library on 42nd Street (now the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building) designed room 316 as a 19th century picture gallery. On May 22, 1986, the 75th anniversary of the opening of the building, the room was formally dedicated to Edna Barnes Salomon, the wife of Mr. Richard Salomon, Chairman of the Board of the Library from July 1977 to May 1981. In addition to the oil portaits of various Astors, members of the Lenox family, some of the Shelley & Wollstonecraft clan, some landscapes and scenes of New York, there two matching life size portraits of Charles Coburn and Ivah Wills (Mrs. Coburn) as  from As You Like It.

April is Immigrant Heritage Month. In New York City, April 17th to 24th is Immigrant Heritage Week. In honor of both celebrations of Immigrant Heritage, this blog will focus on the multiculturalism of the 7 train.

If you live in Queens, New York, and you work in midtown like me, there might be a possibility that you often take the MTA train to work, particularly the 7 line which runs from Main Street, Queens to Times Square, New York.

One of the most interesting things about this line is that it runs into various ethnic pockets of Queens. The train brings and transports a multicultural group of people from all over the world from Queens to Manhattan on a daily basis. Here 

"Life was difficult in Shanghai, but infinitely better than anything they had left behind. From lower-middle-class comfort, the Tobias family was reduced to poverty but not to starvation. There was always food, always something to eat, always shelter even when the Jewish community was ghettoized shortly after Pearl Harbor. Thus even under terribly difficult conditions Moses Tobias was able to take care of his family but under the Nazis the conditions of the Jews were far worse than merely 'terribly difficult.'

"I wouldn't want the nursery locked up," said Peter coldly. "Ever."

"Matter of fact, we're thinking of turning the whole house off for about a month. Live sort of a carefree one-for-all existence."

"That sounds dreadful! Would I have to tie my own shoes instead of letting the shoe tier do it? And brush my own teeth and comb my hair and give myself a bath?"

"It would be fun for a change, don't you think?"

"No, it would be horrid. . ."

Ray Bradbury, "The Veldt"

First published on February 1st, 1963, The New York Review of Books has been hailed to be one of the world's leading intellectual literary magazines. Known for its sharp and critical insights, commentaries and book reviews on culture, literature and current affairs, The NYRB has had much success in gaining attention from and written contributions by eminent scholars, intellectuals and writers such as Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, Harold Bloom, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Joan Didion, and Mary Beard. The magazine was published in response to a printing strike in 1963 when The New York Times had ceased publication temporarily. This was a grand opportunity for 

The short stories of H.P. Lovecraft have always been personal favorites of mine. Ever since I read "The Call of Cthulhu" for the first time as a teenager, I have been hooked on Lovecraft's particular brand of supernatural fiction and the sense of cosmic horror his characters evoke.

There was a time — in what has come to seem more and more a mythical past — when books were everywhere. Along the relatively short stretch of Fifth Avenue between the New York Public Library and Central Park were three magnificent bookstores: Doubleday, Brentano's, and the most architecturally stunning of them all, Scribner's. Around the corner on 47th Street was Gotham Book Mart ("Where wise men fish"). A few blocks west, on 57th Street, was the prodigiously well-stocked Coliseum Bookstore. All of these inhabited just one little chunk of midtown!

Harper Montgomery, a writer in the Wertheim Study, has curated a fascinating exhibition at Hunter College, going until May 4. At 68th and Lexington, it is a smallish (read: do-able) delight — Open Work in Latin America, New York & Beyond: Conceptualism Reconsidered, 1967-1978.