Susan Sontag or the duty to be at ease with themselves
True to his image of a disaster, Paul Virilio looks to the crisis in financial terms, of course, catastrophic: "The term 'systemic accident, but a incident to be able system is no longer such, it calls into question the very nature of progress, "says the philosopher in an interview on the" Nouvel Observateur "on the occasion of the exhibition" birthplace "edited by Raymond Depardon the same with Virilio Fondation Cartier Paris. Taking up a theme dear to him, the author of "Panic City" identifies the key to the acceleration of our society, "Begin 800 with the transport revolution, the acceleration continues today with the transmission of information, and is preparing to invade after the body of society, even with the human transplantation. " And the speed, along with the spread of new forms of nomadism, he brought with him - says Virilio - The end of geography: "All human history is based on geography: the rent of land, mines, soil ... But now the Earth is too small for us, science has exhausted the resources and distances. In short, geography is over ...».
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still believe in geography as a discipline that can reveal what happened during the long millennia prior to our history and Instead Sir Barry Cunliffe, Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford, whose "Europe Between the Oceans" is enthusiastically reviewed by Benjamin Schwarz on 'Atlantic'. In this work, "with profound and imaginative 'geography, Schwartz notes," is the essential basis "to illustrate" the complex interaction of human groups with the environment and each other "in Europe between 9000 a. C. and a thousand year of our era. And archaeological and topographical data in hand, Cunliffe concludes that Europe was so geographically and culturally, "only the outgrowth of Western Asia."
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It is titled "Becoming Susan Sontag," "Becoming Susan Sontag" Deborah Eisenberg dedicate this article on "New York Review of Books" to "Reborn", the first of three volumes that collect the writer's diaries, edited by his son David Rieff. A hit in the notes of a teenager Sontag, Eisenberg notes, is the feeling that the future author of "In America" \u200b\u200bis engaged in 'constant self-purification, to prepare for a predetermined fate that she has yet to fully understand. " As shown in this excerpt: "Wasted on the evening with Nat (his stepfather, Ed.) He gave me a driving lesson and then I went and I pretended to enjoy a Filmon in technicolor. After writing that last sentence, I re-read and thought I'd delete it. But Better leave. It is unnecessary to record only the parts of my life satisfactory. (I'm too few anyway!). Better to see all the annoying waste of today, so do not be at ease with myself and jeopardize my future. "
(from the "manifesto", December 6, 2008)
Madame Bovary military academy
Bruce Fleming teaches literature in the United States Naval Academy class and is every day in front of students who, after I have read on his words: 'Madame Bovary', are indignant because Emma ("a whore!") has betrayed the great Charles, "who loved her and kept her." Probably disturbed by this its sad experience daily, Fleming wrote about "The Chronicle of Higher Education" article - much discussed these days in the U.S. - in which he criticizes the "professionalization of literary studies' or even, to use his words again," the Long March through the New Criticism and structuralism, deconstruction, the "Foucauldian" and multiculturalism. " A "Pyrrhic victory", according to the academic (the author of a recent book entitled 'What Could Be Literary Studies, and What It Is "), because the birth of' Literary Studies' as a university discipline has made the teachers of literature" sovereign of a kingdom separate from the rest of the world, and made lose 'along the way a lot of students, and quite a few teachers. "
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An article in the Lebanese newspaper "Daily Star" revealed the origin of a phrase that recurs often in conversations curiously Beirut: "It's all the fault of the Italians." Presenting his latest book, "A City of Contrast", dedicated to the capital of Lebanon, the historic Jidejian Nina pointed out that Italians actually bombed Beirut in February 1912, in their warfare against the Ottomans. Years later, at the beginning of World War I, the city was hit by famine, mainly due to the corrupt practices of the governor, he replied to his critics by saying just that "it was the fault of the Italians." And forty years later, in '52, the phrase again, this time in an ironic, in the mouth of President Bechara al-Khoury resigned, when a British adviser to visit you too passionate to show that British policy was not responsible for his situation: "I know, I know, it's all the fault of the Italians" said al-Khoury. Sign that the old game of blame-game knows no bounds.
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Half the men and one third of British women admit they have tried to impress friends and potential girlfriends / i, falsely claiming to have read books that maybe had not even looked at from a distance, it shall report on "Paper Cuts', the cultural blog of The New York Times, Jennifer Schluesser. What takes this opportunity to confess that he lied on the contrary, denies knowledge books like "The Man Without Qualities" of Musil, the "Mahabharata" and "History of the United States under Jefferson and Madison administrations" of Henry Adams "To avoid having to show his total inability to say something intelligent about them." An awkward confession or a clever way to boast of having read books "difficult"?
(from the "manifesto", December 20, 2008)
signs of euphoria at the time of the "credit crunch"
In a booklet released in 2007 to Donzelli, The latest copy of The New York Times , the journalist Vittorio Sabbadin tried to draw a landscape near future, an orphan of the "daily paper." It cited in this regard the calculations of an American publishing scholar, Philip Meyer, whereby the last crumpled copy of The New York Times was sold in 2043. Optimistic! The latest edition of the 'Atlantic, "the columnist Michael Hirschorn argues that the major newspaper in New York could die in May this year - a fact perhaps not likely, but certainly" plausible "given that the debts exceed the journal a million dollars, and the figure is ready to rise if you do not soon take "drastic measures". But beyond the provocation, Hirschorn is convinced that - month month less - The New York Times (in a short time later by the "newspaper of paper" from around the world) is intended to close much more quickly than Meyer is not imagined. It will be "the end of a kind of intellectual ritual that has characterized our adult lives," and at the same time "will be severely undermined the ability of the press to act as a mastiff of democracy." Yet Hirschorn on a long time looks to change with confidence: it will disappear the "fluff" articles of quilting useless pages of The New York Times and will be inaugurated "The prototype of the future journalism: a healthy dose of aggregation, a wide range of collaborators, a steadily growing number of original reporting."
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They face far too good to bad game of the crisis, Robert McCrum on the Guardian and Boyd Tonkin on 'Independent' means the first should not buy more expensive new products and tap into the treasures hidden in caves retailers texts used, and concludes the article proudly proclaiming "Down with the new books, old hands" (Safe for the joy of British publishers), while the second recalls the hardest time of Margaret Thatcher, who, however, coincided with an especially fortunate for the English fiction , and apparently rubbing their hands waiting for a similar miracle.
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Perhaps stimulated by the creativity of the "credit crunch", the American artist Phil Buehler, who has to his credit a project entitled "Modern Ruins", published at his own expense in the U.S. the book that Jack Torrance, the star of Shining of Stephen King, did not finish. Loyal to King and Kubrick, which claims to be a fan, Buehler put in eighty pages of volume one sentence, the proverb "All work and no play Makes Jack a dull boy" (the Italian version, "The Early l 'gold in the mouth'), which had filled Torrance sheets on typewritten sheets. It seems that the book, for sale on Blurb.com eight dollars and 95 (22.95 for the hardcover edition), has sold few copies thus far, but Buehler says he is confident. Sign that the crisis has had if only as a strange side-effect epidemic euphoria.
(from the "manifesto", January 10, 2009)
African writers in the maw of "Jaws"
Perhaps publishers should move to Nigeria in crisis (which are many, and will soon be more around the world, where in 2008 the pre-Christmas sales of books in the U.S. have fallen by 13 per cent). The Nigerian newspaper The Guardian Gregory Austin Nwakunor draws a positive balance of the situation editorial in the African country. Of course, behind Nigeria has a long dark phase, "the years of" intellectual migration ", when large sections of the intelligentsia went abroad and multinational publishers closed or reduced their local branches." But all this has passed, and if "2007 was the year in which the writers have sparkled like stars on the Nigerian literary scene in the world" (due, for example, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Chris Abani), the past year confirmed that, in spite of the difficulties of the moment, the publishing industry in Nigeria through a state of grace. Popping up everywhere, and successful history, literary festivals, new magazines were born, raining awards International: how, months ago, the party for half a century of Things Fall Apart (The collapse), the wonderful novel by Chinua Achebe, considered as the first example of African literature. And although Nwakunor not mention, just witness the resurgence Achebe of Nigeria, and across the continent, in the literary field: Recently the most famous and infamous, the world's literary agent, Andrew Wylie said "the shark" has acquired literary heritage of the old writer, is a clear sign of potential economic and other African authors.
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instead of how they are going to book sales in Iran, we do not know. But it's interesting technique implemented to promote reading to Divandarreh, where shops of barbers and hairdressers have been equipped with a small library. According to the agency Mehrnews.com, the governor of the city, Abdolsalam Karimi, took this decision because young people usually attend these places, and then "selecting appropriate books can guide their tendencies toward Western models."
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Recurrences. of history, perhaps it's time for revenge for Heart . Fifty years of dall'Elogio Franti, the American psychologist Joseph Carroll claims data in hand, the usefulness of books based on "good feelings." In truth Carroll - as reported by the Guardian Ian Sample in an article entitled The Victorian novels have helped us become better people - had in mind De Amicis, but George Eliot with Middlemarch , or Bram Stoker's Dracula with . In any case, according to research (the results are released in the journal Evolutionary Psychology '),' the archetypal novels of the time they sang the praises of an egalitarian society and sustained cooperation and kindness against individual thirst for power and domain ', thus helping "to spread the genes of altruism in Victorian society."
(from the "manifesto", January 17, 2009)
Alice in the books published fee
is a literary parable of the twenty-first century or so calls it the "Time", the story of thirty-eight Lisa Genova, until recently, health consultant and aspiring writer in Massachusetts. Nobody, neither the publishers nor the agents to whom she spoke, wanted to know of his novel, Still Alice, a fifty-year history of suffering from early Alzheimer's, despite the author's expertise in secure, which boasts a PhD in neuroscience at Harvard. Not tame, Lisa Genova has published the book at his own expense, $ 450 and rarely have been better invested. Slowly Still Alice has done over the wide circle of friends, arrived on the desk of an agent who has sold rights to Simon & Schuster for half a million dollars, and this week is in fifth place among the bestsellers of The New York Times. Wrong, however, according to Time magazine who labeled the story of Lisa Genova as an exceptional case. Despite the specialized magazine "Publishers Weekly has written that 2009 will be an annus horribilis for the publishing (the worst in decades'), 'Time' is ready to bet on the viability of an industry that" evolving so radically that may not be able to recognize when the process will be accomplished. The literature interprets the world, but it was also formed, and we are going through one of the biggest transformations economic and technological beginning of the eighteenth century. And the novel-form, always very sensitive to news, is being renewed, to become something more cheap and unpredictable, and fertile something so democratic that we can not even imagine. "
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about the future that awaits us, it sounds interesting recent paper by economist George Magnus, one of the few to understand in advance that the subprime crisis would lead to global recession. This time Magnus in The Age of Aging (Wiley 2008) deals with the economic consequences of an aging population, an issue to be addressed with clarity and energy - Robin Blackburn observes in The New Statesman - If you think that twenty-five years the number of over sixty in the world will double.
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"Now that we have finally broken the barrier of race, what will it take to break down the religion and have an inauguration without someone's hand resting on a Bible?" Asks Michael Lieberman, in his fine literary blog "Book Patrol" (www.bookpatrol.net). But it is a voice in the wilderness, or nearly so, while most of the comments at the White House cultural input of the first African-American president in history chosen as the target (indeed modest) verses "inaugural" by Elizabeth Alexander, described by the poet German Durs Grünbein the "Frankfurter Rundschau "as" an honest piece of prose, a little 'tune in' a glorious time. "
(from the "manifesto", January 24, 2009)
policy? A derivative of culture
is going on these days (until 5 February) the Book Fair in Cairo, two years ago, in 2007, had made a lot of talk from us because the window of honor was dedicated to Italy. Now that the host country is the United Kingdom, the interest is much smaller, although with its two million visitors, the event is Egyptian, by way of market-exhibitions, one of the largest in the world. And a little 'attention to the merits, however, a piece of the interview that the director of the British Council in Egypt, Paul Smith, has released the Cairo weekly "Al Ahram" precisely at the Book Fair: "Culture - says Smith - today is more important than politics. Politicians, commentators and diplomats seem to have realized in recent years that the policy is a "derivative" of culture ... Themes and cultural changes are profound and sustained currents of humanity, while the policy for the most part coincides with the waves and ripples, more visible, but superficial. " A revelation that in Italy, unfortunately, has not yet arrived. As indeed it is not in many other countries, starting with the United States.
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again in recent days, the American cultural editors are in mourning because "Book World", the literary supplement of the Sunday Washington Post, was deleted and from Feb. 22 pages devoted to books will be incorporated in the section "Style" of the newspaper . Making the best of a bad game, Rachel Shea, a journalist called to deal with this abridged version of "Book World," he admitted - the columns of the same "Post" - this is a decision "disappointing" and that "it was beautiful have more space to be reserved for the most important titles, "but it was useless" banging your head against the wall for too long. " But Motoko Rich in The New York Times, after observing that the decision to abolish the Sunday supplement of the newspaper's Washington is the result of a steady decline in print advertising, has written - of course reluctantly - that it is "a further sign of the loss of important of literary criticism in American newspapers. "
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Moreover, what is criticism if most of the books soon to be self? It is still Motoko Rich in The New York Times to begin an article claiming that "not long before there will be more people who want to write books than those who are willing to read them." He cites a recent study by the National Endowment for the Arts, which comes out as a seemingly schizophrenic: a growing number of readers of fiction, and fewer and fewer readers of books. Their placement in this gap is increasing, and prosper, companies seeking to aspiring authors pay for publication. Actually, also known as Rich, is not a new phenomenon. The news is now 'self-publish is no longer a dirty word. " So much so that publishers 'true' hunt for new talent on sites such as in Italy, ilmiolibro.it, which takes the bold caption: "If you wrote, it should be printed."
(from the "manifesto", January 31, 2009)
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