Ian McEwan, slumped on a comfortable couch in the large formal sitting room of his Cotswolds manor house, dazzling early-summer sun filtering through the tall, narrow windows, tells me he has been suffering from a protracted bout of pessimism. “I got totally obsessed with Russia invading Ukraine,” he says, an unfamiliar note of pain in his voice. “From February onwards, it filled my thoughts. Massacres in small villages northeast of Kyiv, like curling black-and-white photographs. Suddenly it’s here again—unbelievable, merciless brutality; old ladies shot in their kitchens.” He rubs his eyes (hay fever). A barbaric assault on European complacency, the invasion has reminded him how close we are, all of us, to annihilation.
A word should not, in a perfect world, mean the opposite of itself; if galaxies comprise stars, surely stars cannot comprise galaxies. But in fact there are lots of words that are their own opposites, so many that they have not just one but several names: contronyms, auto-antonyms or, most poetically, “Janus words”, named for the two-faced Roman god who looks in opposite directions (and so gave his name to January, which faces back into the old year and forward to the new).
Though the press called her outfit “indecent,” Lenglen went on to win the tournament, becoming the first non–English speaker to do so. It marked the beginning of a bracing new era for Wimbledon, which had been on a four-year hiatus during World War I, and for women’s tennis in general. Lenglen would dominate the international tennis scene until her withdrawal from amateur tennis in 1926, winning five Wimbledon championships as well as two French titles and three Olympic medals. Her winning streak made tennis history, while also altering the course of fashion history.
At a time when female players typically wore the same ankle-length skirts and high-necked, long-sleeved blouses on and off the court, Lenglen’s attire was as revolutionary as her overhand serve and penchant for chugging cognac between sets; never before in Western history had women’s legs been on display.
What should we make of this realization? For me, it offers a feeling of kinship with all living things. We living things are the only mechanism by which the universe can observe itself. We living things, a few grains of sand on the desert, are that special arrangement of atoms and molecules that can attempt to fathom and record this dazzling spectacle of existence. In a limited but real sense, we living things help give the universe meaning. Without us, the cosmos would merely be.
As more people pour into metropolises—urban populations are projected to double in the next three decades, according to the World Bank—scientists like Bousselot are investigating how designers and planners can ruralize cities, greening roofs, and empty lots. The concept is known as “rurbanization,” and it could have all kinds of knock-on benefits for ballooning populations, from beautifying blocks to producing food more locally. It dispenses with the “city versus country” binary and instead blends the two in deliberate, meaningful ways. “You don’t have to set this up as a dichotomy between urban and rural, really,” says Bousselot. “What we should probably focus on is resilience overall.”
The best job I ever had was in the waning days of 35mm film projection at a cheap, six-screen mall movie theatre, the kind done up in garish family-friendly murals and rainbow colors, floors always a bit too sticky, seats in desperate need of replacing. The distinct odor of popcorn was so deeply infused in the carpet-covered walls that one might forgive patrons for skipping the concession stand out of olfactory disgust alone, if not the absurd prices—that nacho combo could really set you back!
I worked every meaningful position at that theater. Everyone started behind the concession stand, serving guests with a smile while sustaining regular abuse, a trial by fire. If you couldn’t hack it slinging popcorn, what good would you be in the business of film exhibition? Going home late each night after wearing out my elbow scrubbing down the popper, the unmistakable smell of sweat and stale popcorn wafted off my uniform as I tossed it over a chair in the bedroom, knowing I’d put it back on, unwashed, to do it all again tomorrow. For minimum wage and the sake of cinema.
Mr McEwan’s latest novel returns to more traditional fictional territory. This is not to say that “Lessons” is devoid of big ideas and artistic risks. Indeed, in some respects it may be the author’s most ambitious work to date. Well over 400 pages long, and tracking the course of a single life, it is a dense yet deeply absorbing book.
Nixon was wrong — on both counts. Buchwald was funny and serious. In the tradition of Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain, he concealed deep wisdom in the seemingly silly and farcical. As for Nixon’s potshot, Buchwald was not the least perturbed. “As a humor columnist, I need Nixon,” he said. “He’s been great for me. I’m going to run him for a third term.”
Over the decades, Buchwald was equally grateful for many other presidents, including Jimmy Carter (“I worship the very quicksand he walks on”) and Bill Clinton (for obvious reasons). Only George H.W. Bush let him down. “Nothing to write about, everything was dull,” Buchwald is quoted as saying in Michael Hill’s brisk and engaging biography, “Funny Business: The Legendary Life and Political Satire of Art Buchwald.” Meticulously researched and delivered in a taut, almost staccato style, “Funny Business” glides along the surface of Buchwald’s remarkable life, venturing wide but not especially deep.
In the end, though, why the “queen of crime” was so self-effacing is never quite clear. Much about this “elusive genius” appears destined to remain secret. She seems to have preferred it that way.