Argentina’s most famous First Lady died of cervical cancer in July 1952, slightly less than a year after she was diagnosed. A researcher has found that, several weeks before her death, she was given a lobotomy, almost certainly without her consent. The ostensible reason was to alleviate her severe pain; just as likely, it was to stop the increasingly dangerous political activity she conducted from her sickbed. – Mental Floss
Tag: 10.10.20
Hard To Believe, But Roddy Doyle Wrote A First Book That He Describes As ‘Shite’
The author of The Commitments misses Dublin pubs, says Ireland is nicer now – he doesn’t miss being denounced from the pulpit, for instance – and worries about what will happen to his writing, usually set in the present moment, if the present moment keeps changing rapidly due to the virus. – Irish Times
How Prison Shaped Writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
The Kenyan writer, a perennial frontrunner for the Nobel Prize for Literature, saw the committee pass him over once again. But his time in prison in Kenya changed his life. “How come that a post-colonial African government has put me in prison for writing in an African language? … I had written a few plays in English, and novels in English, and I had not been in prison for being critical of the post-colonial system. So why now? And that question is what set in motion my thinking about the unequal and unequal relationship of power between languages. That thinking made me say no — from now onwards, I’ll be writing in my mother tongue.” – NPR
When Britain’s Music Magazine Q Closed, A Songwriter Got In One Last Act Of Kindness
The iconic magazine fell prey to the coronavirus in July, but songwriter Paul Heaton (somewhat unlike Britain’s current government, according to recent reports) didn’t want the staff to be “left on their arse.” So he gave a large donation that the final editor shared with 40 staffers and freelancers alike. – The Guardian (UK)
How We Know Who Was Reading What In Medieval Times
Early medieval libraries lent books often and lending books for copying was, in fact, seen as an act of Christian charity. The books were borrowed not only by other monasteries but also by local priests and lay people. The list kept by the meticulous monks of Wissembourg was perhaps maintained until the middle of the tenth century. It is a living list. – History Today
So, How’s It Going With The Attempt To Restart Film And TV Production In The U.K.?
Like the virus in the rest of the country, the perhaps too-soon begun production restart is not going well. “As the threat of new COVID-19 restrictions looms large, the industry is rushing to crank out film and TV productions this fall, in what could be the last gasp for production in 2020.” – Variety
What Louise Gluck’s Poetry Tells Us About Beginnings
The new Nobel laureate’s themes remain all too relevant. “Glück examines the human compulsion to retell stories and reimagine scenes; in the face of grief, sadness, and destruction, she asks, how can belief in new beginnings possibly still persist?” – The Atlantic
Duncan Grant’s Recently Rediscovered Erotic Art Is ‘A Blast Of Joy’ In Tough Times For The Arts
“What images they are: defiantly subversive and explicit multiracial homoerotica, bursting with passion, flesh, joy, love, freedom and everything else gay people were legally barred from experiencing and expressing at the time. The underlying message of Grant’s paintings is still uplifting in 2020: art will always find a way, whatever the obstacles, hardships and dangers.” – The Guardian (UK)
How Ordinary Germans Let Naziism Creep In
“Consumerism boomed in the early years of the Third Reich (and even, for a time, during the war). For all that Nazism was a dictatorship, ordinary non-Jewish Germans felt they had choices they had not had before. As the economy improved, Germans travelled widely, a process supported by Nazi organisations such as Strength Through Joy, which offered a range of affordable holidays. Travel-writing journalism developed as a form. The Nazis made theatre and concerts available to wider audiences.” – History Today