Good morning. Globalization has been around a lot longer than we think, Valerie Hansen argues in her book The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—And Globalization Began. Is she right? “Our interconnected world dates back much further than we think. She suggests that it was in 1000 that Norse explorers ‘closed the global loop’ with their voyages to North America. This is perhaps a bit of a stretch: there was no continuing chain of communication along this route. Nonetheless, knowledge of how far the Norse went (and the archaeological proof that has emerged since the 1960s) reminds us of how much world exploration took place before Columbus and Henry the Navigator. Hansen argues quite persuasively about the role of the Norse in creating new ways of trade and exploring different parts of the world. There is even a suggestion that some Vikings may have made it, either by accident or under force, to Mayan territories on the Yucatan peninsula. The archaeological indication is in the form of artworks depicting blond captives. This is suggestive rather than definitive, but it is intriguing.”

The New-York Ghost returns.

Tomie dePaola’s “icons”: “Certainly Tomie dePaola’s visual art is distinctively his own. Scan the displays in the children’s section of a bookstore: Even if his name were omitted, the covers of his books would announce him. His stylized human figures, with their almond eyes and austere, often inscrutable faces, recall iconography—if icons were friendlier and more like folk art. His Saint Francis resembles Saint Christopher; Saint Patrick might just as easily be Saint Juan Diego. His children, like Tommy of Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs, though they wear shorts and sneakers and striped shirts, look as though they might grow up to be Saint Francis or Saint Juan Diego. His grandmother figures—Nana Downstairs, or the magical Strega Nona with her pasta pot—stand up stiffly like icon figures. The effect is paradoxical. The hand which has drawn them could be no one else’s, and the characters are strikingly themselves. At the same time, however, there is something self-effacing in dePaola’s illustrations—as if, like an icon, they were meant to be looked both at and through, to the reality of the story they tell.”

Photography, adultery, and murder: “In 1874, at a silver mine 60 miles outside San Francisco, the pioneering British photographer Eadweard Muybridge shot and killed his wife’s lover, Harry Larkyns. Larkyns is the subject of Rebecca Gowers’s book. Born in India in 1843, he was sent to Britain aged three. Left with relatives, he never saw his parents again. In 1857, they were massacred during the siege of Cawnpore. This horrific event is chronicled at length, but the effect on the young Harry, who had not seen them for eleven years, is questionable. After their deaths, he was sent to school at a Brussels pensionnat . . . From Brussels, Larkyns embarked on a military career in both England and France. At one point, he distinguished himself as a sharpshooter for the French army and received the Légion d’honneur. But he was also regularly involved in dubious pursuits, spending over a month in Mazas, the Parisian panopticon prison, for having refused to pay a jeweller for his gifts to high-profile courtesans. He travelled to the US in 1872. In Salt Lake City, Utah, he was taken to court for having fleeced a wealthy friend, and Gowers reports minutely on the court proceedings that led to his acquittal. He ended up in San Francisco, where he showed an inclination for literary expression, first as a drama critic for the San Francisco Evening Post, and eventually reporting on, among other subjects, fashion, duelling and spiritualism.”

Why copper kills the novel coronavirus: “When researchers reported last month that the novel coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic survives for days on glass and stainless steel but dies within hours after landing on copper, the only thing that surprised Bill Keevil was that the pathogen lasted so long on copper.”

Condé Nast to cut salaries, lay off staff: “The salaries of those earning $100,000 or more — just under half the company — will be reduced by 10 to 20 percent for five months, starting in May, the memo said. The pay of executives in the senior management team, including Anna Wintour, the artistic director and Condé Nast’s best-known figurehead, will be cut 20 percent. In addition, Mr. Lynch said that he would forgo half of his salary, and that board members who were not employees of Advance Publications (the holding company that owns Condé Nast), like Domenico De Sole, former chief executive of Gucci Group, would take a 50 percent reduction in their compensation. Mr. Lynch did not specify how many layoffs were under consideration.”

Essay of the Day:

In National Review, Peter Baehr surveys Rebecca West’s unheralded writings on Communism:

“Rebecca West is more likely to be recalled for The Return of the Soldier (1918), an innovative psychological novel; or for Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), that grand bio-travelogue of Yugoslavia on the cusp of war. Her reports on the Nuremberg trials, and the post-war trials of British fascists, also continue to find readers, especially among students of journalism. West’s writings on Communism, by contrast, lie unread, unsung. Many of them sparked controversy in her own day, and are well worth revisiting in ours. In articles, book chapters, and book reviews spanning six decades, she returned to the allure of Communism for educated Westerners.”

Read the rest.

Images: Studies on Twilight after Krakatoa

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