Tracy K. Smith, whose “My God, It’s Full Of Stars” appeared in The Poetry Section back in October of 2010, won the Pulitzer Prize today. As did some other people. Congratulations!

This interview with outgoing Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) is so good that you might as well read the full transcript. He only blows up at the reporter a couple of times, which must mean he’s mellowing.

Hahahaha, “ova non grata

.”

I was walking along 4th Avenue in Brooklyn this morning when a delivery truck drove by in the opposite direction with a guy in a Mets cap sitting on the sideboard singing Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” He pointed at me, and sung out louder when we made eye contact. I didn’t know quite what to do, but he seemed friendly enough, and I like the Mets, if not Survivor, and its a sunny day and all, so I flashed him the devil’s-horns “rock-on” sign. (Like I said, I didn’t know what to do. He was communicating with me, it seemed to call for some response. And I’m a dork.) But then he stopped singing and shouted, “You don’t work out!”

Which, I mean, sure, I could stand to lose a few pounds, sure. Many of us, could, right? But I have actually slimmed down considerably in the last month or so. In fact, I actually just started jogging last week, the first time since autumn, so technically, I do work out.

Fuck You, New York! You don’t always look so great either, you know. 4th Avenue is riddled with potholes, and there’s a vacant lot right near where this happened that is filled with so many little different colored bags of poop that irresponsible dog-walkers have thrown over its chain-link fence that it looks like someone has strewn about a bunch of those “grand-opening” flag lines. The first time I walked past it, I thought it might be some weird public art project.

I was thinking of going jogging again, later today, but now I’m not going to. Out of spite. Then I will cut off my nose. Which will actually help some, because it’s way too hot and you stink like August already and it’s only April.

Pop Quiz: Edith Wharton? Or “Girls” Review?

by Ali Pechman

1. “New York’s not very friendly to strange girls, is it? I suppose you’ve got so many of your own already — and they’re all so fascinating you don’t care!”

2. “The chief characteristic of her generation is a kind of creative solipsism: nothing is better material than the absurdities and contradictions of her own life. Successfully mining personal experience of underachievement has, of course, its ironies.”

3. “As a girl, you are a delicate glass vase, waiting to be broken. You are a sweet-smelling flower, waiting for life’s hobnailed boots to trample you. That built-in suspense is part of your appeal.”

4. “It is less mortifying to believe one’s self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.”

5. “Writing about the lives of women is a minefield. There are demands for ‘realistic’ representation, yet what constitutes realistic is ephemeral, shifting from woman to woman. What is relatable for one woman is completely alien for another.”

6. “If she was faintly aware of fresh difficulties ahead, she was sure of her ability to meet them: it was characteristic of her to feel that the only problems she could not solve were those with which she was familiar.”

7. “Entitlement can be a superpower: It’s the strength to believe, even when no one is listening, that you do have something to say.”

8. “Her story turns on the paradox of wanting access to power afforded by a city that’s the cultural capital of the moment while simultaneously desiring connection with a critical mass of people in situations similar to her own.”

9. “There were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe.”

10. “She found poignant pleasure, at this stage in her career, in the question: ‘What does a young girl know of life?’”

11. “Every morning the papers hit the door. Every morning yards of agitation and anxiety and self-alienation, briefs on how to get and spend our identities … queries about manners and mores and the mediated self, and so forth&mdasha;these meet the door downstairs with a solid thud.”

12. “The more art purports to represent our reality, the more we end up scrutinizing it, pinning all our hopes on it, and feeling contemptuous when there are cracks in the mirror it holds in front of our faces.”

13. “She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.”

14. “There’s nothing grimmer than the tragedy that wears a comic mask.”

15. “Might it actually be braver, or more revolutionary, to portray sex as sometimes without dire consequence, or not totally absurd? To mingle the comic with a deeper investment, the bad parts with the fun parts?”

16. “The piece wants to flow like a length of ribbon unspooled in asides, advancing at digressive stretches, looping old news in ellipses to retrace patterns of thoughts, and so on, and on, until the whole of the thing gathers like a bloom of a bow pinned at the point of an eye.”

17. “She is still a bundle of engaging possibilities rather than a finished picture.”

Answers
Edith Wharton:
1. The Custom of the Country; 4. The House of Mirth; 6. The House of Mirth; 9. The Age of Innocence; 10. The Custom of the Country; 13. The House of Mirth; 14. The House of Mirth; 17. The Buccaneers

“Girls” Review
2. Hermione Hoby, The Guardian; 3. Heather Havrilesky, New York Times Magazine; 5. Jen Evans, BitchBuzz; 7. Emily Nussbaum, New York; 8. Richard Brody, The New Yorker; 11. Troy Patterson, Slate; 12. Nona Willis Aronowitz, GOOD; 15. Katie Roiphe, Slate; 16. Troy Patterson, Slate.

Related: “The House Of Mirth” As A Poorly Played Game of “Choose Your Own Adventure”

Ali Pechman lives in Chicago.

This is an EP, in advance of an album this summer, by the “Harlequin Futurist Ghetto Flamenco Queen” Ana Lola Roman. Lady electro! Post goth kitty cat music! She has all of the potential. (Also someone’s got a Tumblr.) (via)

Record executive Ian Thomas Garner MacKaye is 50. Seriously. I know, I don’t believe it either! Good lord.

Today’s New York magazine cover story on artisanal Brooklyn is absolutely killing it. It’s the best thing ever:

It’s easy to be seduced by the vision: a world, or at least a borough, where thousands of salvaged-teak schooners ply the oceans, or at least the Gowanus Canal, bearing Mason jars full of marmalade made from windfall kumquats. It’s like a child’s dream. The supermarket aisles are lit by Edison bulbs, staffed by scruffy men in butcher’s aprons, and stocked with cruelty-free dog food and hand-pulped toilet paper. But wait: Should the TP come from new-growth forests (more environmentally correct) or old-growth (more authentic)? Those lightbulbs are beautiful, but aren’t they inefficient? If small batch goes global, how will the idiosyncrat perform this pageant of superior taste? (By embracing Wal-Mart-scale production as a “retro” counterculture?) And is there really a mass market for $9 chutney? In other words, can twee scale?

(Sure, yes, yes, probably, not really and “kind of.”) One thing that I really like that this piece gets at is the hideously annoying steampunk and Victoriana underpinnings of Brooklyn twee. It’s the suspenders on the boy waitstaff at Prime Meats; it’s in the beard oil (*gags*); it’s the lovage soda from P&H.; (What’s next, borage soda? Vom! SIDEBAR: I absolutely love P&H; Soda and drink it on the regular. So I guess there is a market for $10-bottles of syrup: gay dudes.) More importantly, there’s more than one dark side of Brooklyn localism: for instance, once you sell out the tiniest bit, you’re dead to your fellow artisans.

“But in many observers’ telling, Friend had left these seekers no choice. They had to ‘speak [their] truth,’ they have said, on and offline, because Friend is ‘like a thousand-headed Hindu painting,’ ‘a guy counting cards faster than you can imagine any human being able to count,’ or a ‘weird warlock perverted Dumbledore power whore.’”
 — The rise and fall of John Friend, the former king of anusara yoga.

Everyone loved the New Yorker’s recent piece on Lyndon Johnson (subscription-only). That includes Hal C. Wingo, one of the founders of People magazine, who spent New Year’s Eve of 1963 with Johnson, while on assignment for Life, and penned this letter to add to the record:

Johnson explained that all he wanted to do was to insure Kennedy’s legacy on civil rights, space exploration, and other cherished programs of his short-lived Presidency. He said that he needed the kind of help the press had given Kennedy. Just before midnight, he wished us all a Happy New Year and made one final request. Leaning forward in his chair, he put his hand on my knee and said, “One more thing, boys. You may see me coming in and out of a few women’s bedrooms while I am in the White House, but just remember, that is none of your business.”