The joys of the sullen

Seeing this message every morning on the way to the High Line eventually made me curious enough to look up the Brooklyn-based artist Elbow-Toe and to follow his Twitter feed. 

The earth and its onions?

Now through January 28, you can see a small but worthwhile show of late paintings by Roberto Matta at the Pace Gallery on West 25th Street, a stone’s throw from the High Line.

When we went there recently, there were also interesting shows at other nearby galleries: an assortment of minotaurs with a earthy golem-like surface—one of them reading a tiny book—and drawings of dogs enlarged to the point where the ripples of their lips resembled the edges of orchid petals in a Georgia O’Keeffe.

This was my favorite of the Matta canvases (a bigger version is here), but my favorite title was La terre et ses oignons, which my high school French informs me is “the earth and its onions.”

Impact Car Park

Dear Impact Car Park:

Do you really think you picked the best name for your business?

Favorite books of 2011

Below are some of my favorite books of those I read in 2011: some old, some new, omitting any that I’ve read before, and more or less in the order that I read them.

• The Best of Lucius Shepard
  
• Controlled Burn by Scott Wolven
• The Power Broker by Robert Caro
• If Not, Winter by Sappho, edited by Anne Carson
• Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
• Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
• Sex and the River Styx by Edward Hoagland
• Open City by Teju Cole
• The Lost City of Z by David Grann
  
• One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina
• Pity the Nation by Robert Fisk
• The Best Art You’ve Never Seen by Julian Spalding
• American Fantastic Tales, vol. I, edited by Peter Straub
• Return of the Osprey by David Gessner
• A Wider View of the Universe by Robert Kuhn McGregor
  
• Zone One by Colson Whitehead
• The Piano Shop on the Left Bank by Thad Carhart
• Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller: A Private Correspondence, edited by George Wickes

If you’re still in the mood for lists, here are more of mine.

• Favorite books of 2010
• Favorite books of the decade
• Books to return to

And here are some lists by others.

• Alexandra Fuller’s top 10 African memoirs (plus my own list)
• Top Ten favorite books by writers
• Cynthia Ozick’s list, discussed by Roger Ebert
• 25 Great Books by Legendary Scientists
• Books That Changed My Life

Honest steakhouse

Walking through the West Side after dark, I was charmed to see this sign for the HONEST STEAKHOUSE, est. 1868. I imagined how this place must have built its reputation on giving fair weight for its beef, and not watering the whiskey. It was good to think that honesty was a brand that had served this restaurant well for over a century.

It was only when I got closer that I noticed that sign actually read HOMEST STEAKHOUSE, and that this was because the last three neon letters of HOMESTYLE had burned out. Which, I suppose, is another illustration of the idea that you only see what you are prepared to see.