French poets and artists, and a giraffe in a wine glass
My stepdaughter, A., is visiting for ten days. This weekend Mr. Maud and I took her to French Book Art/Livres d’Artistes: Artists and Poets in Dialogue, an NYPL exhibition that runs through August 19.
Magritte’s giraffe in a wine glass impressed us all. And Paul Eluard’s accompanying Dadaist poem, “Musicien,” was [...]
Kokkinos on adapting Thomson
The Age profiles Ana Kokkinos, director of The Book of Revelation, which debuts tomorrow night at the Melbourne International Film Festival.
Kokkinos first read Thomson’s book in 1999, and had to beat off strong international interests to win the rights to adapt it…. “His previous five novels were all optioned (by film producers) but nothing [...]
Holding it
The late Charles Willeford (Miami Blues) on the secret to writing:
Never allow yourself to take a leak in the morning until you’ve written a page. That way you’re guaranteed a page a day, and at the end of a year you have a novel.
Mantel on character-author boundaries
Debbie Taylor interviews Hilary Mantel in the latest Mslexia. You can read a brief excerpt online at the magazine, but Book World pulls out a more interesting section including Mantel’s thoughts about the price of “identifying [] closely with one’s fictional characters.”
‘The more available you make yourself to your characters, the more you risk destabilising [...]
Frankenstein and Poe at the Morgan
I finally got out to the Pierpont Morgan Library on Sunday. It’s a weird jumble of ancient-to-modern texts and artifacts collected by J.P. Morgan’s tycoon father and displayed under glass in airy rooms or shelved inside locked cabinets in musty ones.
Mary Shelley’s own annotated copy of Frankenstein (at right; larger version here) sits alongside [...]
If you prick us, do we not bleed?
A Grand Illusion, one of the best South Florida blogs, takes note of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s “Merchant of Venice moment”:
“Is the value of human life less in Lebanon than that of citizens elsewhere?” he asked. “Are we children of a lesser god? Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese [...]
Reasons for pursuing English Ph.D. dropped in pursuit of it
Thomas H. Benton argues that succeeding as an English Ph.D. entails giving up the things that attracted you to the subject in the first place.
In a course I taught last spring, after three months of tracing the development of literary theory from humanism to structuralism to poststructuralism to the dilemmas of the present, I finally [...]
Metal thought balloons
Maximus reports on the BAPLab electronic art and music festival, held last weekend at 3rd Ward in Bushwick. I like these metal spheres. They rotate over bar patrons like disco balls/hookup thought balloons. “Things won’t be the same,” says one. “Don’t ever change,” says another.
Radical Shelley poem still under wraps
At the Guardian, a reader wonders when the public will get to read Percy Bysshe Shelley’s scathing, 20-page anti-war poem, “Poetical Essay,” recently uncovered after “completely elud[ing] Shelley scholars for nearly two centuries.”
[I]t seems as if the poem is explosive stuff, supporting the Irish in their attempts to get rid of British rule, while mentioning [...]
The Smart Set: Lauren Cerand’s Weekly Events
The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled by Lauren Cerand, that appears Mondays at 12:30pm and highlights the best of the week to come. Special favor is given to New York’s independent booksellers and venues, and low-cost and free events. Please send details to lauren@maudnewton.com by the Thursday prior to publication, with the event’s [...]
Remainders: booze, sex, death, etc. edition
Wine, not vodka, pervades Pushkin’s opus — where most histories of Russian literature begin. “This is not a fluke,” says Victor Sonkin. (Via Languor Management.)
Essays in The Blue Book of the Alcoholic examine the relationship between Russian writers and booze. (Also via LM.)
Albert Einstein: brilliant scientist, failed investor, sex maniac. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Jonathan [...]
Signing statements help Bush rack up despot comparisons
The American Bar Association denounces Bush’s “signing statements” — i.e., announcements of refusal to adhere to portions of laws he doesn’t agree with — as de facto line item vetoes that improperly deprive Congress of the opportunity to override them.
The bar association panel said the use of signing statements in this way was “contrary to [...]
Alarcón on being read in Peru
Daniel Alarcón, who moved to Alabama from Peru as a kid, nervously anticipates the appearance of his short story collection, War by Candlelight, in the country of his birth.
Certainly the world of Peruvian letters does not need me. There are writers of my generation attacking the same themes I have attempted to address, and many [...]
Weekend remainders
George Saunders visits the U.K. and falls in love with the place. So smitten is he with the mother country, in fact, that he’s calling for “the reconciliation of Britain and the United States into one nation, to be called the United Anti-Terror States Of Britain.”
From Carla Blumenkranz’s My Life and Times in American Publishing, [...]
Middle East: who backs immediate ceasefire?
Hard to keep track, I know. Fortunately, The Independent has done the tallying and captured the results in this handy graphic.
(Via Kottke.)
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