Gilbert Sorrentino - Lunar Follies

Eratosthenes, one of the prize students of Callimachus, was the head of the famed library of Alexandria from about 240 BC till his death in 195 of a surfeit of new wine and adolescent boys. Or so they say. While at the library, and in moments stolen from the cataloguing and repairing of its treasures, Eratosthenes drew a map of the world, working from memory, hearsay, dreams, and the tales of Phoenician sailors. The map on display here at the Rufus X. Noogie Museum of Purest Jade is thought to be Eratosthenes’ original. Under its triple layer of shatterproof glass, surrounded by armed guards, and protected by electronic alarms of an almost frightening complexity and efficiency, it sits in its aura of splendid uniqueness. It is generally conceded that were it to be offered for sale at auction, the map, which is only 4 1/2 by 3 1/4 inches in size, would bring in excess of a billion and a half dollars. It is, incidentally, badly drawn, of muddy, indeterminate colors, rife with misspellings, and even for its time, all wrong.

Our Neighbors, the Italians: Myth and Reality

Happy Tony, whose grandfather was deeply respected by all for helping to build the New York City subway system.

Warm Sal, who stuck a fuckin’ ice pick into warm Vito.

Familiar Carmine, who cursed out a Puerto Rican mother, hey, why not, they breed like animals.

Brutal Biaggio, who makes homemade a pizz’ in his homemade oven in his homemade backyard with the fig trees.

Treacherous Cesare, who bounces his fat, curly-haired babies on his knee, all eighteen of them.

Loud Angie, who cries like a baby when his Mama sings “Sorrento.”

Blithe Nino, working ninety hours a week onna garbage truck to send his nephew to Fordham.

Affectionate Sal, he looks like a fuckin’ priest, God forgive me, who beat some chooch with a schlammer.

Domestic Rocco, who fucks every broad who’ll stand fuckin’ still.

Abusive Julie, weeping at his daughter, Yolanda’s, First Holy Communion, she was like an angel.

Crafty Tommy, corrupting an entire honest union all by himself.

Blatant Patsy, who don’t give a shit about his neighbor’s rights, fuck them with their barbecues.

Carefree Luigi, who shovels raw garlic by the handful into his laughing mouth.

Amiable Sally, crazy with admiration for all blondes.

Beastly Ray, a connoisseur of loud clothes.

Designing Joey, holding up a fuckin’ Jew basted store or maybe he was a fuckin’ Armenian.

Cheerful Mooks, who corrupted a virtuous brokerage house on virtuous Wall Street.

Benign Giannino, who once read a book for fun.

Bloodthirsty Curzio, who loves his pasta e cicc’ like when he was a kid.

Dangerous Donnie Peps, who has like an altar to Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra behind his fruit store.

Garish Richie, who has a mouth he shoulda gone to law school.

Exuberant Frankie Hips, who don’t mind moolanyans if they mind their fuckin’ business.

Cordial Lou, who smacks his wife, Filomena, on the sconce when she makes the gravy too thin like American fuckin’ gravy.

Cold-blooded Artie the Crip, who cries like a broad when he hears Dean Martin sing in Italian it’s so beautiful.

Devious Billy Beebee, whose suits and silk shirts all fell off a truck, right?

Noisy Nick Noise, who likes to look for trouble with the niggers in Coney Island.

Gay Choochie, who lost his fuckin’ gun in the Fabian Fox balcony one night, the second fuckin’ time.

Emotional Nunzio, who makes his own wine like a genius.

Cruel Benny Jinx, who makes out like he’s a spic and sells cocaine to the kids in the schoolyard.

Dishonest Gus, who is connected, along with every other Italian in New York, they won’t admit it but.

Obstreperous Tonino, who got thrown outta school for leaning on some momo football player fag.

Glad Gino, whose pizza joint is a hangout for all the wise guys in Bath Beach.

Fond Scoogie, who got mad as a bitch ‘cause he couldn’t get a pepper-and-egg sangwich at the New York Book Fair, which he thought was a feast.

Cutthroat Frankie Fats, who has a fat happy wife and eight fat happy kids, God bless them.

Insincere Gaetano, whose Uncle Pooch practically invented Roosevelt Raceway.

Pushy Rico, who busted some guy’s head for sayin’ shit about the Virgin Mary, hey!

Gleeful Franco, who told some asshole cop to get the fuck off his Cadillac.

Friendly Jimmy Shots, who is not a bad guy for being half-fuckin’ Irish.

Deadly Jackie Buds, who covered his finished basement walls with beautyful maroon and gold woddayacallit, velveteen?

Lying Baby Rufino, who stuck up what turned out to be his compare ’s gas station over in Elizabeth.

Raucous Patsy Cheech, who was a nice fast middleweight till he got fucked up with a Jewish broad.

Joyful Whitey Bromo, who could play fuckin’ Hearts for a year and never win a hand.

Genial Beppo, who ate fifteen calzones at the St. Rocco’s feast.

Ferocious Black Sally, who cut some mook’s nose off in Sunnyside, don’t ask.

Perfidious Jimmy Trey, who took a little of the vig off the top as a regular thing, who they found shot fulla holes on Neptune Avenue.

Rowdy Tommaso, who worked strictly as a union bricklayer ‘cause of an oath he took to his mother, God rest her soul.

Merry Clemenza, whose marinara that he put scotch in, was famous even in Naples, no shit.

Good-natured Jackie the Pipe, who says he can get Armanis for like a yard apiece, Armani his ass.

Fierce Papa Gigio, who kissed the ground his wife of forty-six years walked on, Rose.

Scheming Tony Candy, who says he heard that they don’t put no tomatoes or mozzarell’ in Domino’s pizza that tastes like fuckin’ shit.

Strident Jerry the Barber, whose three daughters, Robin, Erin, and Tiffany, all married American boys who went to college and don’t know the difference between a cassata and a lupara.

Radiant Googie the Jump, whose sister went to the convent after that rat basted Polack George fuckin’ something left her high and dry which was good news for the emergency room, right?

Neighborly Nuzz’, whose little candy store on Eighteenth Avenue clears maybe 300 grand a year, God bless him.

Merciless Mario, whose wife of eighteen years still looks, madonn’, like the gorgeous chorus girl he married, even though she’s not even Italian.

Shifty Nicky Chicago, who always wears porkpie hats like some kind of a cetrul’ black guy.

Tasteless Corrado, who never picked a horse right in his whole miserable fuckin’ life.

Sunny Ralphie, who drives nothing but Cadillacs, fuck you with the German cars, he says.

Sociable Tommy Mouse, who they don’t let into Atlantic City even to take a piss anymore.

Murderous Enzo, who says he never knew the guys who got popped over on Ralph Avenue, what balls.

Unscrupulous Harry the Painter, who lets his wife buy anything she wants in Miami Beach, which she says is full of nothing but spics from Cuba over there nowadays.

MORE PHOTOGRAPHS OF THESE IRREPRESSIBLE AND HARDWORKING AMERICANS, WHO HAVE HELPED TO BUILD OUR GREAT NATION, OR SO THEY SAY, ON THE SECOND FLOOR, REAR GALLERY.

Banville Teddie: Late Works

This small, exquisitely mounted exhibition shows works from the Gassendi Foundation’s collection of Teddie’s last miniatures. It is provocatively, if somewhat inaccurately presented under the title “In the Months of Love,” a phrase from the juvenilia of Ingelow MacGonagall, a Scottish poet much admired by Teddie, and comprises a group of late paintings from the mysterious “Primavera” series. They are hopefully dreamy, their microscopically gestural bravura “in love,” so to say, with the notion of ideal beauty, their colors almost vengefully Parnassian. And yet, this dreaminess is quite proper, perhaps, to aesthetes, while not yet quite so to poets, to whom, en masse —as we know from Teddie’s recently discovered diaries — these delicate miniatures were dedicated, and for whom they were most certainly executed. This dreamy quality of Teddie’s work is often thought of as a flaw, and yet one cannot remotely conceive of the paintings otherwise. Teddie increasingly thought of himself as a poet, and of his colors as words, his forms, as he once put it, “[as] a shifting syntax, of sorts,” and his canvases as his “well-thumbed, scratched over, blotted” manuscripts, all brushed by the hand of the Muse, “yet no more than her hand, no more, no more.” The canvases, one must declare, are much smaller, even, than miniatures, and are each dominated by a cool, sherbet-like color, although other colors, tints, shades, tones, and highlights, lurk everywhere. These are, perhaps, after all, “the months of love.” Perhaps not. The pictures, so small as to be made out with no little difficulty, are madly ambitious, a kind of paean to a strange Teddiean spring, to his beloved primavera, and to the sun, the sun of the artist’s cherished Ringo Chingado Flats, the site of his last isolated studio; and, of course, to flesh, the flesh of his fellow humans, mostly women, that he honored and adored, even as he exploited, brutalized, and despised it.