The (Considerable) Consequences Of Memoirs
"At one minute past midnight on July 19, 1975, my father was hanged. For twenty-seven years, I told no one about it. Then I published a memoir. I have lived with the aftermath of that decision ever since, as does anyone who has published their own story, who has unwrapped what had previously been concealed: the skinned inner self dragged out and, shrinking in the light, placed beneath the bright hot gaze of strangers." … [Read More]
‘How To Survive A Plague’ Wins UK’s Top Prize For Nonfiction…
"Opening with a quote from Paul Monet, 'Grief is a sword, or it is nothing', [David] France's book chronicles how the activist community fought to develop the drugs that would turn HIV into a largely treatable condition. ... [The book] beat titles including Simon Schama's Belonging and Christopher de Bellaigue's The Islamic Enlightenment to win the £30,000 award," the Baillie Gifford Prize. … [Read More]
The Art, Hate The Artist?
"I expect art to be troubling because I expect people to be troubling. I am prepared to like and dislike something in every work. I can also appreciate the aesthetic genius of a moral monster without feeling that I am becoming inured to monstrosity. Just as I can read Heidegger without becoming a Nazi, I can look at one of Adolf Hitler's juvenile watercolour paintings and appreciate a bit of pink in the sky there, and understand it as a painting of its era and one by a tyrant at the same time. And if I do this and am judged immoral for it, is it because it is bad for just me or bad for society at large?" … [Read More]
