J'ai déployé tour à tour, pour me pousser au premier rang, la brutalité d'une acheteuse de grands magasins aux jours de solde et la gentillesse flagorneuse.
[In order to push myself to the front row, I displayed, alternately, the brutality of a department store shopper during sales season, and fawning kindness.]
--Colette, Ouvres complètes
Local boy Sherman Alexie has a new novel on the shelves after a 10 year hiatus. I've only just cracked my copy, but the NYT is raving (sort of). My review to follow:
And yet, for all the death and violence he navigates, Zits clings to small moments of connection in the lives of his temporary souls — a wife to come home to, a father to comfort him, a friend with whom to soar to the heavens. “Flight” might be categorized as a novel for particularly precocious young adults, but it also works on deeper levels. It’s raw and vital, often raucously funny, and there isn’t a false word in it.
--Tom Barbash, NYT
"Beset with information sickness and time fever, our challenge is to explode the continuum of history, as Benjamin realized in his final and best thinking.
Empty, homogenous, uniform time must give way to the singularity of the non-exchangeable present. Historical progress is made of time, which has steadily become a monstrous materiality, ruling and measuring life. The 'time' of non-domestication, of non-time, will allow each moment to be full of awareness, feeling, wisdom, and re-enchantment. The true duration of things can be restored when time and the other mediations of the symbolic are put to flight.
Derrida, sworn enemy of such a possibility, grounds his refusal of a rupture on the nature and allegedly eternal existence of symbolic culture: history cannot end, because the constant play of symbolic movement cannot end. This auto-da-fé is a pledge against presence, authenticity, and all that is direct, embodied, particular, unique, and free. To be trapped in the symbolic is only our current condition, not an eternal sentence...."
Link: Insurgent Desire - The Modern Anti-World .
Via: ::: wood s lot ::: "the fitful tracing of a portal". and WIT
This is just so much dorky goodness that I have to post the full entry. From Kottke.com:
I might be shooting myself in the foot by posting this, but the table of contents for the newest issue of the New Yorker is usually available on Sunday on newyorker.com, the day before the issue hits the newsstands and arrives in subscriber mailboxes. All you need to do is hack the URL of the TOC from the previous Monday. Here's the URL for the April 23 TOC:http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2007/04/23/toc_20070416
"2007/04/23" is the date of the issue and "toc_20070416" refers to the date of the posting. This then is the URL for the April 30 issue:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2007/04/30/toc_20070423
At right is the cover for tomorrow's issue, which includes Adam Gopnik's piece on the Virginia Tech shooting, a new piece by Atul Gawande, and Anthony Lane's review of Hot Fuzz. Monday's New Yorker on Sunday is usually only available to the select few of the Manhattan media elite who are sped their new issues hot off the presses. Now everyone can have a similar experience on the web.
Enjoy.
Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" is as bleak as it gets. The end of the world. Fire. Nuclear winter. Fanaticism. Cannibalism. Blood, bones and dust.
It's McCarthy's 10th Novel, and at 73 it seems things are looking worse than ever to the author of such standouts as "All the Pretty Horses" and "Blood Meridian". Apparently the Pulitzer committe sees it that way too.
Be sure to check the articles at the NYTs for more. HERE
"In this radio drama, middle-aged, doctoral candidate Irving Paley is obsessed with a work of contemporary sculpture in downtown Manhattan, and the ways it affects those who pass by it regularly. On an answering machine he collects the stories of a range of New Yorkers, all of whom have some relationship to Alamo, aka “the Cube.” Over the course of an interview with a public radio reporter about the project, Paley reveals how the Cube has slowly consumed his life, while back at the sculpture, a mystery surrounding the artwork deepens."
You can find more on this one here http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/audio_library_2004.asp Be sure to check out the interview with Moody:
> You've recorded several of your short stories for the radio, with musicians and artists playing along. How do you imagine the experience of hearing these versions of the stories differs from reading them?
Well, I think literature really benefits from being performed. It makes the beauty of the language more apparent, and it makes an implied voice an actual instrument. I always feel like I understand literature better when I've heard it read aloud. For example, there's a recording of James Joyce reading some of Finnegans Wake. That's a very difficult book, but it sounds fabulous when Joyce reads from it.
Eagle and Child, Oxford
Literary Patrons: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien
CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien spent many an hour in deep discussion in the Rabbit Room at the Eagle and Child. Every Tuesday morning, these two luminaries held meetings of the Inklings, a literary group consisting of fellow writers in the Oxford community. Although the group began gathering across the way at the Lamb and Flag pub in 1962, the Rabbit Room remains the favorite spot for literary fans.
Link: 10 Famous Literary Bars | ForbesTraveler.com.
via Wit
"A rare, original illustration by The Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry has been discovered in Japan. François d'Agey, the author's nephew, was among those at a media conference in Tokyo on Wednesday announcing the discovery.
"Seeing [the drawing] made me very happy," the 81-year-old d'Agey told the gathering of reporters.
The image depicts the businessman on the fourth star visited by the title character of Saint-Exupéry's beloved story. The man is so busy counting stars that he pays no attention to the philosophical little character.
The precious drawing is only the sixth discovered of the estimated 47 illustrations by Saint-Exupery (1900-1944). Most of the author's drawings are missing, officials said.
The drawing has been kept by Minoru Shibuya, head of the Ehon Museum Kiyosato in Hokuto, Yamanashi Prefecture, which displays the works of picture-book writers from around the world and who is said to not have realized the drawing's value (!).
via http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2007/04/04/little-prince-drawing.html
You've finally settled on your ultimate reading list after culling through thousands of combinations and now you just need the time and place to read.
We can't help you with finding the time, but we've found the perfect place. The Bibliochaise by Nobody & Co. holds up to 5 linear meters of your favorite books. Just fill it up with the books on your list and start reading. When the shelves/chair are/is empty, repeat.
seen at http://www.rossanaorlandi.com/
"Earlier this year, the world celebrated the 175th anniversary of the birth of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known under his pen name, Lewis Carroll. Virtually anyone who loves books can tell you that Carroll is the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a masterpiece of children's literature that has been translated into more than 100 languages, including Russian.
But few people know the story of how Alice appeared in Russia -- a fantastic tale with several twists and turns that are almost as absurd as the book itself.
Alice first came out in Russian nearly 130 years ago, but back then, it seemed the book would not fare well here. The anonymously translated version of 1879 was met with confusion and bewilderment. 'Tiring, most boring, most confused sick delusions of a little girl'; 'absurd dreams may be recounted in a family circle for fun, but they are not published, illustrated and presented to the general public'; 'one can hardly imagine anything less sensible and more absurd than this fairy tale; all mothers are urged to disregard this worthless fantasy'-- such was the critical consensus in Russia at the time..."
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/story/174970/
the very soft-core picture essay by Rom Devisig HERE
via Wit
My name is Daniel Flahiff and I'm the editor here at (incli)NATION a blog about art, architecture, music, technology and a few other things. Mostly Seattle, Los Angeles and NYC, but not exclusively. Artists, inventors, philosophers, engineers, conspiracy theorists, novelists, poets, and filmmakers. If you like what you read, subscribe!
(incli)NATION is: Daniel Flahiff, editor :: Dorothy D., Akira Rabelais, and Bryan Schultz...
