“It has been an interesting project, particularly when translating some of [Roald] Dahl’s unusual words into new Gaelic words. … We have also been able to keep in the sketches of the original books done by Quentin Blake, which will be great for the children.”
Tag: 12.02.12
Prizewinner: A Book That Plays With Plot, Character, And Author
“The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation awarded its 2012 Fiction Prize to Helen Oyeyemi for “Mr. Fox,” a novel about a writer who can’t stop himself from killing off women in his fiction until he meets his muse, who challenges him to confront trite fairy-tale endings.”
Stop It With The ‘New’ Christmas Music, We Beg Of You
Sufjian Stevens’ new Christmas music collection, “supports the contrarian notion that all meaningful holiday music already has been written, recorded and re-recorded.”
Retrieving Copy Of Leonardo Painting A Victory For Italy’s Art Police
“The painting – on a small wooden panel measuring 115x86cm (45x34in) – was last seen in public 73 years ago on the eve of World War II, when it was shown at a Leonardo exhibition in Milan. Then it disappeared.”
An Austin Cultural Institution Takes A (Possibly Permanent) Break
The art magazine . . . might be good “strove to place Texas’ art scene into a larger national and international context, publishing earnest, academically-oriented reviews, interviews, essays and artist projects.”
Gray Foy, Artist, Bon Vivant, ‘Fixture of New York Cultural Life,’ 90
“For decades, Mr. Foy was a quiet if supremely capable avatar of the city’s gracious, aesthetically minded, boldface-named social milieu, a latter-day Gilded Age that flourished in New York in the years before the Stonewall uprising and for some time after, of which Truman Capote was perhaps the best-known embodiment.”
We Thrive On Chaos, As Long As We’re Antifragile
“What we do today has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism. It is a crony type of system that transfers money to the coffers of bureaucrats. The largest ‘fragilizer’ of society is a lack of skin in the game.”
The 28-Year-Old Behind The Smart, Literary, Popular ‘Brain Pickings’
“Her paternal grandmother was a rabid biblio and had a collection of encyclopedias, [Maria] Popova said, and she credits the act of randomly opening volumes and happening upon entries for her passion to discover old knowledge. ‘The Web has such a presentism bias,’ she said, with Facebook updates, tweets and blog entries always appearing with the latest first. By contrast, flipping through the encyclopedia was ‘an interesting model of learning about the world serendipitously and also guidedely.'”
Without Her, There’d Be A Lot Less Middle Earth (But Who Is She?)
Fran Walsh co-writes all of Peter Jackson’s movies, produces them, and even directs scenes. “Walsh, 53, is also one of Hollywood’s biggest living mysteries. She rarely grants interviews and refuses to sit for a photograph. Forget walking a red carpet alongside Mr. Jackson. Ms. Walsh has not even allowed her face to be shown on camera when contributing DVD commentary.”