The job of World’s Most Popular Entertainer is not one that seems to lead to a modest estimation of one’s powers and a limited sense of self-worth. Elvis, a decade into his tenure, announced that he had seen Christ and Antichrist battling in the clouds above Graceland; John Lennon, six years into owning one-fourth of the title, was writing ballads about his imminent crucifixion; and Michael Jackson, keeping up the messianic ambitions, felt compelled to invent not just a new race but a whole new gender, of which he could be the only member.
That Charles Chaplin, who got this strange job first and held it longest, never went much beyond planning to cast himself in a movie about the life of Napoleon is, in a way, a tribute to his underlying sense of reality. (He had the stills made for the Napoleon picture; he looks good in the uniform.) Reading Joyce Milton’s new biography of Chaplin, though, which bears the title of “Tramp” (HarperCollins), you wouldn’t know that there was much of anything peculiar or out of the ordinary about Chaplin’s career. To the familiar biographer’s sin of underestimating the type to which her subject belongs, and attributing the habits of a whole class to the traumas of a warped individual, she adds the more original sin of completely missing what in Chaplin’s career was so peculiar that it’s a miracle he managed to emerge even as a normal mixed-up, egocentric artist.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 19, 2024 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 19, 2024 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
THE ST. ALWYNN GIRLS AT SEA SHEILA HETI
There was a general sadness that day on the ship. Dani was walking listlessly from cabin to cabin, delivering little paper flyers announcing the talent show at the end of the month. She had made them the previous week; then had come news that the boys' ship would not be attending. It almost wasn't worth handing out flyers at all—almost as if the show had been cancelled. The boys' ship had changed course; it was now going to be near Gibraltar on the night of the performance—nowhere near where their ship would be, in the middle of the North Atlantic sea. Every girl in school had already heard Dani sing and knew that her voice was strong and good. The important thing was for Sebastien to know. Now Sebastien would never know, and it might be months before she would see him again—if she ever would see him again. All she had to look forward to now were his letters, and they were only delivered once a week, and no matter how closely Dani examined them, she could never have perfect confidence that he loved her, because of all his mentions of a girlfriend back home.
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