“That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward.” Ernest Hemingway, letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (September 13, 1929) Continue reading Almanac: Ernest Hemingway on writers and depression at About Last Night.... Read Moree
Wow 40 Years in Australia and 50th Wedding anniversary - Zlata Svatba - at Loubkovice for Lidka and Franto ... Time Flies - Cas leti
And Memories of July 1980 and 1970 come back flooding as Franto helped to built the house in Vrbov and took many hikes at the High Tatra Mountains ... Like Lidka he tolerates snow well ;-) Janka, Milan, Pavol, Monika and grandchildren had a great day ...
WHY WOMEN ARE BETTER AT SEX GOSSIP.
Who Gets Fame, And Who Gets Remembered, As Being Part Of Dance Music? Tatranka folkloric dancers live forever
Aluna Francis: “We not only need to give credit to the artists that created the genre, we also need to establish a long-term plan to secure a healthy future for dance music that is culturally and racially inclusive.” – Pitchfork
The Handwritten First Draft of Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing
WRITING (AND LIVING) IN THE YEAR OF THE JACKPOT: A Bonfire of Vanities.
Awarded for the first time this year, they've announced the winner -- though not yet at the official site, last I checked -- and it is V Elvisovi sobi, by Sebastijan Pregelj; see, for example, the report in Večer.
Pregelj's A Chronicle of Forgetting is available in English; see the Litteræ Slovenicæ publicity page. See also the Goga publicity page for V Elvisovi sobi.
As far as summer-season filler-articles -- the inevitable variations-on-the-listicle -- the 'What our writers will be reading this summer' collection is at least among the more interesting -- so also that in this week's Times Literary Supplement, Holiday in the living room.
Jan Novák has written a biography of Milan Kundera which is just out in the Czech Republic and getting a lot of attention, and at Radio Prague International Brian Kenety has a Q & A with him, Milan Kundera is a 'moral relativist' with much to hide, says Czech author of controversial new biography.
The biography only covers Kundera's Czech years -- i.e. through 1975, when he went into exile in France (switching then also to writing in French).
Novák came to the US as a young teenager -- and attended the University of Chicago -- and has published books in both English and Czech. It'll be interesting to see whether this comes out -- in this form (it's almost 900 pages long ...) -- in English; see also the Argos publicity page.
The biography only covers Kundera's Czech years -- i.e. through 1975, when he went into exile in France (switching then also to writing in French).
Novák came to the US as a young teenager -- and attended the University of Chicago -- and has published books in both English and Czech. It'll be interesting to see whether this comes out -- in this form (it's almost 900 pages long ...) -- in English; see also the Argos publicity page.
“Being harassed by a senior colleague who threatened to kill my beloved dog” — one of the career “low points” of Anne Margaret Baxley (Wash. U. St. Louis), interviewed at What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher?
NEWS YOU CAN USE? NASA will pay you to design a space toilet that works in lunar gravity.
Related (From Ed): No word yet if the Wolowitz Zero-Gravity Waste Distribution Disposal System is among the prototypes being tested.
6-Figure Deal for Assistant Professor of Philosophy’s New Book
Ten publishers bid for a chance to publish the next book from Myisha Cherry, assistant professor of philosophy at University of California, Riverside. (more…)
Henry Fielding, Adam Smith, and other 18th-century intellectuals found no food finer than the potato. It was Enlightenment superfood — the kale of its time... it’s time
we say, when someone’s
sensitive. So touchy. So
dangerous and delicate and
ready to tip. Touching,
though, is sweet. And we
are touched by the gift,
the thought. Moved
into knowledge of care
if not love. Touched, too,
means crazy. God-kissed.
The brain lit otherwise. I hope
we’ve all known someone
who has got the touch, able
to ease a knot, make any machine
hum true, tune a string. And
Touch me, says Kunitz
in the poem that always chokes
me up. As if the hand of a wife
would bring me back
to myself or to the selves
we both once were. Don’t
touch: first warning.
The stove, the open socket’s
shock, the body unknown
to you and all the bodies
it, in turn, has, willfully
or not, allowed such
intimacy. When I first
felt yearning for the skin
I always kept hidden
to touch another’s
hidden skin, it was
the early decade of a different
terrible virus. The danger
was known and unknown
both, and in some small
way, the risk of infection
was not unlike the risk
of intimacy. In touch, when
we know how someone
is faring. Touch and go,
when we’re not sure
how things will turn out.
sensitive. So touchy. So
dangerous and delicate and
ready to tip. Touching,
though, is sweet. And we
are touched by the gift,
the thought. Moved
into knowledge of care
if not love. Touched, too,
means crazy. God-kissed.
The brain lit otherwise. I hope
we’ve all known someone
who has got the touch, able
to ease a knot, make any machine
hum true, tune a string. And
Touch me, says Kunitz
in the poem that always chokes
me up. As if the hand of a wife
would bring me back
to myself or to the selves
we both once were. Don’t
touch: first warning.
The stove, the open socket’s
shock, the body unknown
to you and all the bodies
it, in turn, has, willfully
or not, allowed such
intimacy. When I first
felt yearning for the skin
I always kept hidden
to touch another’s
hidden skin, it was
the early decade of a different
terrible virus. The danger
was known and unknown
both, and in some small
way, the risk of infection
was not unlike the risk
of intimacy. In touch, when
we know how someone
is faring. Touch and go,
when we’re not sure
how things will turn out.
There’s no replacement for the thrill of browsing in a bookstore - Washington Post – “…The covid-Zoom era has made bookshelf snoops of all of us. Late-night host Seth Meyers has reshuffled stacks of books on the endtable in his attic where he’s now taping his show, treating his copy of Colleen McCullough’s novel “The Thorn Birds” like it’s a discount Ed McMahon. (A Goodreads list is keeping track of his selections.) Celebrities and experts compelled to conduct interviews from home have been committing naked acts of performative shelving, putting on their best intellectual face for the webcams, inspiring plenty of speculation about the speakers’ inner lives — or at least a few rounds of “Spot ‘The Power Broker’.” But squinting at strangers’ bookcases is only so satisfying, and as weeks in quarantine have dragged on, I’ve wanted a browsing experience that’s more promiscuously bookish. For a dedicated reader like myself, it’s a serious loss: Shuttered bookstores are a reminder of how much of our reading lives is a process of discovery, and how online retailers’ attempts to re-create the discovery experience tend to be huge letdowns. Algorithms can tell you what you like based on what you’ve said you liked before. They can also make a few guesses at what you might like based on what other people say they like that’s related to what you’ve said you like. But they can’t introduce you to the thing you might like for the first time, all for yourself…”