“A hundred years after his birth, Patrick White (1912-1990) remains Australia’s only Nobel laureate for Literature (in 1973), but he’s as unknown to most readers as his name is nondescript. Though it rightly inducted him into the company of Faulkner, Hemingway, Beckett, and Bellow, White’s Nobel has done little to ensure the longevity of the work that earned it.”
Tag: 12.28.12
Does Islam Prohibit Images Or Not?
“There are strong theological precepts against the creation of likenesses of living things, and above all of religious figures, especially Muhammad. And yet lush vegetation in mosaic form garlands the façade of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, devotional pictures of members of the prophet’s family are common among Shias, and merchants in the Tehran bazaar sell pendants with Muhammad’s portrait on them.”
Homoerotic Paintings Lead To Uproar At Pakistan’s National College Of Arts
When the school’s academic journal published “a series of paintings depicting Muslim clerics in scenes with strong homosexual overtones, prompting threats of violence by Islamic extremists, … [officials] pulled all its issues out of bookstores and dissolved its editorial board.” A court is considering blasphemy charges.
The Strange Story Of William Faulkner’s Only Children’s Book
The Wishing Tree “a sort of grimly whimsical morality tale, somewhere between Alice In Wonderland, Don Quixote, and To Kill a Mockingbird.” (It is also a rather egregious case of regifting.)
James Bond Makes A Billion Dollars (Best Ever)
“Directed by Sam Mendes and marking Daniel Craig’s third turn as 007, the movie reached the milestone Sunday when its worldwide tally hit $1 billion, by far the best showing of any Bond pic, not accounting for inflation.”
Writing A Diary As Heroic Act
“There is something oddly affecting about historical diary entries for the first day of January, so full of hope for a year that has long since vanished into the past, and often beginning the diary-keeping habit itself – for this was Woolf’s first entry in a diary she kept for another 26 years. In an age when social networking sites host perpetual updates on the mundane details of our lives, this unbending commitment to private writing feels heroic.”
Zaha Hadid Fights Piracy Of Her Building In China
“China is now building a carbon copy of one of Hadid’s Beijing projects. What’s worse, Hadid said in an interview, she is now being forced to race these pirates to complete her original project first.”
Physical Book Reading Down, E-Book Reading Up
“The percentage of adult Americans who read a book this fall fell to 75% from 78% a year ago, according to new survey findings by the Pew Research Center released December 27.”
Is The Publishing Business Actually Getting Better?
“The exciting thing about digital books is that we actually get to test and price differently. We can even price on a weekly basis.”
100 Years Since Marcel Duchamp Changed The Art Wolrd
“The Armory Show, its grumbling critics, the ignominy heaped on Duchamp’s bland exercise in soft-core cubism – these are the founding myths of 20th-century art in America. Modernism thrived on being misunderstood, and the American public obliged in great numbers.”