Longreads Best of 2019: Arts and Culture

Jessica LynneJessica Lynne is a writer and art critic.

杰西卡·林恩杰西卡·林恩是一位作家和艺术评论家。

She is co-editor of ARTS.BLACK, an online journal of art criticism from Black perspectives.

她是《ARTS.BLACK》的联合编辑，这是一本从黑人角度进行艺术批评的在线杂志。

## For Magicians Who Die On Stage (jayy dodd., Gay Magazine)

## 对于死在舞台上的魔术师（jayy dodd.，同性恋杂志）

## Benjamin Moser and the Smallest Woman in the World (Magdalena Edwards, Los Angeles Review of Books)

## 本杰明·莫泽和世界上最小的女人（玛格达莱娜·爱德华兹，洛杉矶书评）

As 2019 comes to a close, I would like to offer up two essays, disparate in conceit, but both worth the return.

2019年即将结束，我想献上两篇文章，虽然想法各异，但都值得回报。

First, there is jay dodd’s “For Magicians Who Die on Stage” published by GAY Mag.

首先是GAY Mag出版的杰伊·多德（jay dodd）的《致死在舞台上的魔术师》。

It is a beautiful meditation on the body, pain and fear, the specters of habit that might loom over our presence in the world, and the material reality of/for Black Trans Women.

这是对身体、痛苦和恐惧、可能笼罩在我们在世界上的存在的习惯幽灵以及黑人跨性别女性的物质现实的美丽冥想。

Using magic as structural metaphor, dodd moves us through her relationship to sobriety and the desires of self-imaging.

多德用魔法作为结构隐喻，带领我们了解她与清醒的关系和自我想象的欲望。

Here is a line that stays with me: “I don’t believe I am attempting an illusion just by being alive and hurting and outside.

这句话一直萦绕在我心头：“我不相信我只是通过活着、受伤和在外面尝试一种幻觉。

Part of being able to be anywhere is crafting a self that feels desirable to me.” In truth though, it might be better to say that every line of this essay has stayed with me.

能够去任何地方的一部分就是塑造一个令我感到向往的自我。”但事实上，最好说这篇文章的每一行都让我铭记在心。

dodd’s sentences are seared with undeniable beauty and clarity.

多德的句子充满了不可否认的美丽和清晰。

Secondly, I remain struck by Magdalena Edwards’ essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books, “Benjamin Moser and the Smallest Woman in the World,” in which Edwards recounts her experience working with the writer, editor, and Clarice Lispector translator Moser.

其次，我仍然对玛格达莱娜·爱德华兹在《洛杉矶书评》上发表的文章《本杰明·莫泽和世界上最小的女人》印象深刻，其中爱德华兹讲述了她与作家、编辑和克拉丽斯·李斯佩克特翻译家莫泽一起工作的经历。

Edwards, also a Lispector translator, vulnerably details the terms of a book translation project that, begun in deep admiration of Moser, leads to a reckoning with the ethics (or lack thereof) that guide Moser’s engagement with the work of one of the most important writers of the 20th century.

爱德华兹也是李斯佩克特的翻译者，他脆弱地详细介绍了一个书籍翻译项目的条款，该项目是出于对莫泽的深深钦佩而开始的，导致人们对指导莫泽参与 20 世纪最重要作家之一的作品的道德规范（或缺乏道德规范）进行反思。

Most importantly, in mining the politics of translation, Edwards centers a necessary question that remains critical for my own relationship to lineages of writing and research: “Who gets thanked for their devotion?” Edwards asks.

最重要的是，在挖掘翻译政治时，爱德华兹提出了一个必要的问题，这个问题对于我自己与写作和研究谱系的关系仍然至关重要：“谁因他们的奉献而受到感谢？”爱德华兹问道。

“Who gets credit for their work?”

“谁的工作得到了赞扬？”

Jillian SteinhauerJillian Steinhauer is a journalist and editor whose writing appears in the New York Times, The New Republic, The Nation, The Art Newspaper, and other publications.

吉利安·斯坦豪尔 (Jillian Steinhauer) 吉利安·斯坦豪尔 (Jillian Steinhauer) 是一名记者兼编辑，其作品发表在《纽约时报》、《新共和》、《国家》、《艺术报》和其他出版物上。

She’s a recipient of a 2019 Arts Writers grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation and Creative Capital.

她是安迪·沃霍尔基金会和创意资本 2019 年艺术作家补助金的获得者。

## The Tear Gas Biennial (Hannah Black, Ciarán Finlayson, and Tobi Haslett, Artforum)

## 催泪瓦斯双年展（Hannah Black、Ciarán Finlayson 和 Tobi Haslett，Artforum）

## Psycho Analysis (Andrea Long Chu, Bookforum)

## 心理分析（Andrea Long Chu，图书论坛）

Within the world of writing, criticism gets short shrift.

在写作的世界里，批评受到冷遇。

Sure, maybe I’m just saying that because I’m a critic, but I do believe it’s true, both financially and in terms of how our society assigns value.

当然，也许我这么说只是因为我是一个批评家，但我确实相信这是真的，无论是在经济上还是在我们的社会如何分配价值方面。

Despite the ongoing journalism layoffs and consolidation bloodbath, a lot of great arts and culture writing was published this year.

尽管新闻业正在进行裁员和整合大屠杀，今年还是出版了许多伟大的艺术和文化作品。

I don’t know if these two pieces were the best — I find myself utterly unable to make such judgments — but both are excellent examples of criticism at its best.

我不知道这两件作品是否是最好的——我发现自己完全无法做出这样的判断——但这两件作品都是最好的批评的典范。

And both have stuck with me.

两者都一直困扰着我。

The first is technically an opinion piece, but it does the work of criticism by helping readers better see and understand something in the culture — in this case, the debate over how artists in the 2019 Whitney Biennial should respond to protests against the Whitney Museum’s vice chairman Warren Kanders.

第一篇从技术上讲是一篇观点文章，但它通过帮助读者更好地看到和理解文化中的某些东西来完成批评工作——在本例中，是关于 2019 年惠特尼双年展的艺术家应如何回应针对惠特尼博物馆副主席沃伦·坎德斯的抗议的辩论。

The situation was pretty specific and probably lost on you if you don’t participate in the contemporary art world, but that doesn’t matter.

这种情况非常具体，如果你不参与当代艺术世界，你可能会迷失方向，但这并不重要。

In “The Tear Gas Biennial,” Hannah Black, Ciarán Finlayson, and Tobi Haslett break down the entanglement of art and politics with incredible clarity and moral force.

在“催泪瓦斯双年展”中，汉娜·布莱克、西亚兰·芬利森和托比·哈斯莱特以令人难以置信的清晰度和道德力量打破了艺术与政治的纠缠。

The same can be said of “Psycho Analysis,” Andrea Long Chu’s review of Bret Easton Ellis’s new book White.

安德里亚·龙·朱（Andrea Long Chu）对布雷特·伊斯顿·埃利斯（Bret Easton Ellis）的新书《怀特》（White）的评论《心理分析》也是如此。

For better or worse, takedowns — let alone good ones — are hard to find these days.

无论好坏，如今都很难找到被删除的内容了，更不用说好的删除内容了。

This piece reminds me why they’re so delicious when done right.

这篇文章让我想起了为什么如果做得正确的话它们会如此美味。

Chu refuses to take Ellis’s bait and get angry.

楚拒绝接受埃利斯的诱饵并生气。

Instead, with equal parts rigor and wit, she entertainingly eviscerates his “deeply needless book.”

相反，她以同样的严谨和机智，有趣地剔除了他的“毫无必要的书”。

Soraya RobertsSoraya Roberts is a culture columnist at Longreads.

索拉亚·罗伯茨索拉亚·罗伯茨是 Longreads 的文化专栏作家。

## The Artist Who Gave Up Her Daughter (Sasha Bonét, Topic)

## 放弃女儿的艺术家（Sasha Bonét，主题）

Few of the multitude of articles I read each year stick, and the ones that do tend to hail from magazines like The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian.

我每年读到的大量文章中，很少有人能够坚持下来，而那些坚持下来的文章往往来自《纽约客》、《纽约时报》、《大西洋月刊》、《卫报》等杂志。

It makes sense: Those are places that not only have the resources to nurture the best writers, but also to carve their work into its greatest form.

这是有道理的：这些地方不仅有资源培养最好的作家，而且还能将他们的作品塑造成最伟大的形式。

Which is why I didn’t want to pick anything from those places.

这就是为什么我不想从那些地方挑选任何东西。

I realize that Topic magazine isn’t the biggest underdog of all, but it’s a start.

我意识到《Topic》杂志并不是最大的失败者，但它是一个开始。

And I had never heard of Sasha Bonét before I read The Artist Who Gave Up Her Daughter.

在读《放弃女儿的艺术家》之前，我从未听说过萨莎·博内特。

But that’s a story that I remember.

但这是我记得的一个故事。

It’s a story I sent people.

这是我发给人们的故事。

Even just seeing the short description in my Twitter feed — the black artist Camille Billops abandoned her 4-year-old child in the ’60s to pursue her art — I knew it was for me.

即使只是看到我的推特上的简短描述——黑人艺术家卡米尔·比洛普斯 (Camille Billops) 在 60 年代抛弃了她 4 岁的孩子去追求她的艺术——我就知道这是为我准备的。

I, as I’m sure a lot of women artists do, have a particular affinity for stories about women who choose their art first, when they are always expected to do the opposite.

我确信很多女性艺术家也是如此，对那些首先选择自己的艺术的女性的故事特别感兴趣，而她们总是被期望做相反的事情。

Bonét traces how Billops becomes self actualized as an artist by shedding her past — what she had been taught about black womanhood and its attendant motherhood — including her own daughter.

博内特追溯了比洛普斯如何通过摆脱过去——她所接受的关于黑人女性身份及其随之而来的母性——包括她自己的女儿，从而成为一名艺术家的自我实现。

If she hadn’t given up her daughter, the artist says, “I would have died, and if I would have died, she would have died.” In contrast, the piece offers up Billops’ partner, a white man who not only contradicted societal norms of the time, but also provided her the emotional support for her art that she couldn’t provide her own child.

如果她没有放弃女儿，艺术家说：“我就会死，如果我死了，她也会死。”相比之下，这件作品描绘了比洛普斯的伴侣，一位白人，他不仅违背了当时的社会规范，而且为她的艺术提供了情感支持，而她无法为自己的孩子提供这种支持。

Bonét illustrates how Billops, following the initial rejection of her own family, adopts a community of artists as her chosen relatives.

博内特展示了比洛普斯如何在最初拒绝自己的家人之后，如何收养一群艺术家作为她选择的亲戚。

“Her memory collided with the new world she had carefully and meticulously molded,” she writes.

“她的记忆与她精心塑造的新世界发生了碰撞，”她写道。

The eventual fraught rapprochement of mother and daughter, itself becomes a confluence of emotion and creation.

母女俩最终令人担忧的和解本身就成为情感和创造力的融合。

Bonét doesn’t shy away from Billops’ fundamental paradox, which is that she could only nurture that which she chose to create: “Christa had said that meeting her birth mother and her biological family saved her life, but some may argue that it led to her demise.” A devastating but beautiful piece of art about a devastating but beautiful artist.

博内特并不回避比洛普斯的基本悖论，即她只能培育她选择创造的东西：“克里斯塔曾说过，遇见她的生母和她的亲生家庭救了她的命，但有些人可能会认为这导致了她的死亡。”这是关于一位毁灭性但美丽的艺术家的毁灭性但美丽的艺术作品。

Danielle A.

丹妮尔·A.

JacksonDanielle A.

杰克逊丹妮尔 A.

Jackson is a contributing editor at Longreads.

杰克逊是 Longreads 的特约编辑。

## Forgotten: The Things We Lost in Kanye’s Gospel Year (Ashon Crawley, NPR Music)

## 被遗忘：我们在 Kanye 福音年中失去的东西（Ashon Crawley，NPR 音乐）

## For Black Women, Love Is a Dangerous Thing—“Bitter” Showed Me How to Do It Anyway (Tari Ngangura, Catapult)

## 对于黑人女性来说，爱情是一件危险的事情——“苦涩”告诉我如何去做（Tari Ngangura，Catapult）

Like most people I know, I read a lot of articles and books and listened to a lot of music in 2019, for learning, for practice, for work.

和我认识的大多数人一样，2019 年我读了很多文章和书籍，听了很多音乐，为了学习、为了练习、为了工作。

When it got to be too much, when work overwhelmed, or the world did, by way of the news or simply duty, I spent a fair amount of time reconnecting to pleasure.

当事情变得太多时，当工作不堪重负时，或者世界因新闻或纯粹的责任而不堪重负时，我会花相当多的时间来重新获得快乐。

I needed to re-learn how to experience the art I love for the sake of sensation, for how it vibrated in my body, rearranged my cells, made me change.

我需要重新学习如何体验我喜欢的艺术，为了感觉，为了它如何在我的身体里振动，重新排列我的细胞，让我改变。

I never want to be too busy or too much in despair to remember that my work should be infused with pleasure, too, that what I place on the page, how I think and engage in the world must be infused with heart and feeling.

我不想太忙或太绝望，以至于忘记我的工作也应该充满乐趣，我在页面上放置的内容，我思考和参与世界的方式必须充满心灵和感觉。

These two pieces immediately struck me and stayed, guiding me through my attempts at staying connected.

这两件作品立即打动了我并留下来，引导我尝试保持联系。

First, Ashon Crawley’s examination of Kanye West’s Sunday services and their culmination, the very popular Jesus is King album, is a moving meditation on remembering, or rather, how, in the deluge of so much sensory input and so much hype, we forget precedents, echoes, entire people and eras.

首先，阿桑·克劳利（Ashon Crawley）对坎耶·韦斯特（Kanye West）的周日礼拜及其高潮——非常受欢迎的《耶稣是王》（Jesus is King）专辑的审视，是对记忆的感人冥想，或者更确切地说，在如此多的感官输入和如此多的炒作中，我们如何忘记先例、回声、整个人和时代。

We lose the substance, Crawley insists, when we lose the memory.

克劳利坚持认为，当我们失去记忆时，我们就失去了实质内容。

And so, we are so easily deluded, so easily bought.

所以，我们很容易被欺骗，很容易被收买。

Crawley threads together stories of Zora Neale Hurston, who told us a century ago about the political underpinnings of Black American religious ritual, the author Hans Christian Andersen, and William Seymour, the founder of the American Pentecostal movement, to help us think through the sad, hollow spirit-lessness of Kanye’s endeavor into gospel.

克劳利将佐拉·尼尔·赫斯顿 (Zora Neale Hurston)、作家汉斯·克里斯蒂安·安徒生 (Hans Christian Andersen) 和美国五旬节运动创始人威廉·西摩 (William Seymour) 的故事串联在一起，帮助我们思考坎耶 (Kanye) 为福音所做的努力中的悲伤、空洞和无精打彩。

More importantly, Crawley proposes that failing to remember costs us in imagination and progress.

更重要的是，克劳利提出，不记得会导致我们失去想象力和进步。

In his words, “Gospel performance at its inception was the announcement of the practice of different worlds, the fact that alternatives are available, the sounding out of the here and now breaking with the normative and violent world.

用他的话来说，“福音表演从一开始就是宣告不同世界的实践，是替代方案存在的事实，是此时此地与规范和暴力世界的决裂。

Sounds of otherwise possibility.”

听起来还有其他可能性。”

Tari Ngangura’s Catapult piece “For Black Women, Love is a Dangerous Thing —“Bitter” Showed Me How to Do It Anyway” is a story and analysis of bassist and vocalist Meshell Ndegeocello’s album Bitter, but also of Ngangura’s first encounter with it, and how the album allowed her to verbalize and move through the feelings and aftermath of an early romantic relationship.

塔里·恩甘古拉（Tari Ngangura）的弹射器作品“对于黑人女性来说，爱情是一件危险的事情——“苦涩”向我展示了如何做到这一点”，讲述了贝斯手兼主唱 Meshell Ndegeocello 的专辑《苦涩》的故事和分析，同时也讲述了恩甘古拉第一次接触这张专辑，以及这张专辑如何让她能够用语言表达和经历早期浪漫关系的感受和后果。

I love Ngangura’s insistence on hope through disappointment, her gentle pleas with herself to stay open.

我喜欢恩甘古拉在失望中坚持希望，她温柔地恳求自己保持开放。

I love that a piece of art can help us do that.

我喜欢一件艺术品可以帮助我们做到这一点。

Monica CastilloMonica Castillo is a New York City-based film critic and writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, RogerEbert.com, Remezcla, The Wrap, Hyperallergic and elsewhere.

莫妮卡·卡斯蒂略莫妮卡·卡斯蒂略是纽约市的一位电影评论家和作家，其作品曾出现在《纽约时报》、《华盛顿邮报》、NBC 新闻、RogerEbert.com、Remezcla、The Wrap、Hyperallergic 等媒体上。

## Why Do the Oscars Keep Falling for Racial Reconciliation Fantasies?

## 为什么奥斯卡奖不断因种族和解幻想而落败？

(Wesley Morris, New York Times)

（韦斯利·莫里斯，纽约时报）

Earlier this year, while many critics and moviegoers were scratching their heads over the outpouring of love for the uncomfortable interracial buddy movie from Peter Farrelly, Green Book, Wesley Morris made sense of the ordeal by examining the way certain feel-good movies about race like Bruce Beresford’s Driving Miss Daisy tend to win awards over more challenging and honest works like Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.

今年早些时候，当许多评论家和电影观众对彼得·法拉利《绿皮书》中令人不舒服的跨种族好友电影的喜爱感到摸不着头脑时，韦斯利·莫里斯通过研究布鲁斯·贝雷斯福德的《为黛西小姐开车》等一些自我感觉良好的种族电影往往会比斯派克·李的《为正确的事》等更具挑战性和诚实的作品赢得奖项，韦斯利·莫里斯理解了这种痛苦。

The year Lee’s electric film broke out, it wasn’t even up for the Best Picture category at the Oscars.

李的这部电动电影爆发那一年，它甚至没有角逐奥斯卡最佳影片奖。

Instead, the award would eventually go to the much more saccharine movie in which Morgan Freeman played a happy-go-lucky driver hired for a racist client played by Jessica Tandy.

相反，该奖项最终颁给了一部更加甜蜜的电影，摩根·弗里曼在其中扮演了一位无忧无虑的司机，为杰西卡·坦迪扮演的种族主义客户雇用。

Through his piece “Why Do the Oscars Keep Falling for Racial Reconciliation Fantasies” and a few episodes of his podcast with Jenna Wortham, “Still Processing,” Morris explores the various shortcomings of the form and why its persistence does more harm than good.

莫里斯通过他的文章《为什么奥斯卡奖不断因种族和解幻想而落败》以及他与詹娜·沃瑟姆合作的播客《仍在处理中》的几集，探讨了这种形式的各种缺点，以及为什么它的持续弊大于利。

For starters, these types of movies always prioritize the character arc of the white character who’s maybe a little bit racist but not explicitly so, and over the course of the film, they learn the error of their ways.

首先，这些类型的电影总是优先考虑白人角色的性格弧线，他们可能有点种族主义，但并不明确，在电影的过程中，他们认识到了自己的错误。

Unfortunately, that journey comes at the expense of the Black character who must endure the white character’s racist nonsense as they play second fiddle to the white protagonist’s story.

不幸的是，这段旅程是以牺牲黑人角色为代价的，他们必须忍受白人角色的种族主义胡言乱语，因为他们在白人主角的故事中扮演次要角色。

Morris finds a through-line in Driving Miss Daisy and to other movies before and after it like Green Book that offers an easy out for white audiences because they’re not as bad as the worst racist villains in the movie.

莫里斯在《为黛西小姐开车》以及之前和之后的其他电影（例如《绿皮书》）中找到了一条主线，为白人观众提供了一个轻松的出路，因为他们并不像电影中最糟糕的种族主义恶棍那么糟糕。

It was the incisive reading I needed — and still need to some extent, as there are still people who want to relitigate my opinion — to back up my own misgivings on the movie.

这是我需要的深入阅读——而且在某种程度上仍然需要，因为仍然有人想要重新审视我的观点——来支持我自己对这部电影的疑虑。

Green Book won the Oscar for Best Picture that night (and picked up a few extra awards as well), so Morris’ piece will likely continue to resonate for many more awards seasons to come.

当晚，《绿皮书》赢得了奥斯卡最佳影片奖（还获得了一些额外的奖项），因此莫里斯的作品可能会在未来的更多颁奖季中继续引起共鸣。

Krista StevensKrista Stevens is a senior editor at Longreads.

克里斯塔·史蒂文斯 (Krista Stevens) 克里斯塔·史蒂文斯 (Krista Stevens) 是 Longreads 的高级编辑。

## Trigger (Michael Hall Texas Monthly)

## 触发器（迈克尔·霍尔德克萨斯月刊）

More than anything, I love music and and I love writing that transcends time.

最重要的是，我热爱音乐，也热爱超越时间的写作。

For me, music is fifty percent art and fifty percent magic.

对我来说，音乐是百分之五十的艺术和百分之五十的魔法。

During this most trying of years it’s been a salve I turn to (or perhaps tune in to?) every day to find solace as the planet collapses and the news cycle brings to mind Yeats’ center that cannot hold.

在这最艰难的岁月里，当地球崩溃时，我每天都会求助于（或者可能会调到？）来寻求安慰，新闻周期让我想起叶芝的中心无法维持。

Of all the pieces I’ve read this year as part of my curation work for Longreads, there’s one that particularly resonated with me as a keen student of guitar and bass.

作为 Longreads 策展工作的一部分，我今年读过的所有文章中，有一篇特别引起了我作为吉他和贝斯热心学生的共鸣。

Back in the January 21st edition of Texas Monthly in 2013, Michael Hall wrote a lengthy ode to Trigger, Willy Nelsen’s faithful musical sidekick.

早在 2013 年 1 月 21 日的《德克萨斯月刊》中，迈克尔·霍尔 (Michael Hall) 就为威利·尼尔森 (Willy Nelsen) 忠实的音乐伙伴 Trigger 写了一篇长篇颂歌。

Wille’s been playing that same Martin N-20 classical for 50 years.

Wille 演奏同一把 Martin N-20 古典琴已经 50 年了。

In it, Hall chronicles Nelsen’s career through the battle scars literally etched into Trigger’s worn neck and battered body as well as the careful tending and regular repair the guitar has undergone in the span of five decades.

在书中，霍尔通过刻在扳机磨损的脖子和饱受摧残的身体上的战斗伤疤，以及这把吉他在五年来所经历的精心照料和定期修理，记录了尼尔森的职业生涯。

Reading the piece, my own small instrument family suddenly meant even more to me and it made me happier about the countless hours I’ve spent studying music.

读了这首曲子，我自己的小乐器家族突然对我来说变得更加重要，这让我对我花在学习音乐上的无数时间感到高兴。

For is there anything more worthwhile than to make a bit of magic?

还有什么比创造一点魔法更有价值的吗？

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