The Net has made us bigger, but not necessarily better. Is Google God? Maybe not, but it's way up there
Literature & Art Across Frontiers: I have spent my life learning other people's lines
Can a novel start a war, free serfs, break up a marriage, drive readers to suicide, close factories, bring about a law change, swing an election, or serve as a weapon in a national or international struggle? In Kharkov I have seen all kinds of queues—for the film Tarzan, butter, women’s drawers, chicken giblets and horse-meat sausage. But I cannot remember a queue as long as the one for your book in the libraries ...
An Actor with a Brain — In this era when actors spout off to look like "good guys" in the face of terror, Herbert Lom...
Lesson learned — Roger Simon links to this excellent portrait of 87 year-old actor Herbert Lom in the Independent. Herbert Charles Angelo Kuchacevich ze Schluderpacheru was wise to change his surname to Lom. It is one of many wise decisions he has made in his long life. Another was to emigrate to England, from his native Czechoslovakia, in January 1939.
• Herbert Lom: The odd fellow [As political consciousness and knowledge grow more prevalent in the broad culture, leading literary stars lag behind, as does much of the literary establishment. The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news—things which on their own merits would get the big headlines—being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact A Few Notes on the Literary Establishment ]
• · And have yourself a wonderful Mangaian night
• · · How we became barbarians Getting in Touch with Your Inner Terrorist ; [Some of them are deliberate. The lies the spin doctors spin. Some are matters of blindness, some lack of imagination, some of shallowness. Some of propriety. Some of fear. The simple fear of saying things that no one else is saying. Sometimes it's from being stuck in the trees and never seeing the forest, let alone the earth from which it grows or the relationship to the sun and the air and sky and the rain and the rivers that run underground. Non-fiction is full of lies. ]
• · · · In Defense of Academic Publishing: An Interview with Willis Regier
• · · · · The Killing of the Monster: There are many virtues to the democratic spirit, and one of them is humility; a humility that sometimes stops intelligent men making asses of themselves in public... Whatever happened to heroes? [But for some of us hope is the thing that gets stuck to the bottom of your shoe like a bad book deal. I’m a living example of how the writing life goes wrong as evidenced by my own recent publishing misadventure. See, the life of a novelist is a perilous one ]
• · · · · · Artists’ are not the only people who are — or could be — creative.