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SERIES
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COLLECTIONS
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CATEGORIES
- b au courant (26)
- b brazen (9)
- b candid (22)
- b erudite (6)
- b geekly (17)
- b informed (42)
- b inspired (20)
- b radical (24)
- b.side (32)
- b.zarre (13)
Jul
1
Here, Caulfield stays frozen in time
July 1, 2009 | Leave a Comment
JEROME DAVID SALINGER’S best known character has been given a reprieve from aging and being thrust into an unfamiliar plot.
Swedish book publisher Fredrik Colting who published 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye under the pen name John David California, holds that the new work is “a legally protected commentary and parody”.
But today a federal judge indefinitely banned publication of the unauthorized sequel in the United States. If it really is that bad, I’d rather a copy got leaked on the intertubes so we can all enjoy a good laugh and Mr Colting doesn’t get to see another red cent as penance for using an awful title, pen-name and legal defense.
After all, banning something tends to generate curiosity and push up the price for satisfying it.
Feb
7
| A conversation with Aldous Huxley |
February 7, 2007 | Leave a Comment
IN SEPTEMBER last year, clipmarks pointed to the YouTube captures of a conversation with Aldous Huxley (left), Sum & Substance — often required viewing for literature courses in academic programs. On the back of b’s extract from Huxley’s The Doors of Perception yesterday, it seems fitting to showcase the interview here.
A writer’s circle is the breath of life to authors. It’s about the exchange of ideas, inspiration, recognition, networking. There have been hundreds of collaborations and inspirational, if heated, interactions — love triangles, stormy but enduring friendships and deadly emnity. These can stir and shatter the writer in turn. Vulnerability and betrayal dog them all their lives; passion can drive them to greatness or destruction. Often both. Artists of every kind are constantly besieged by insecurity regarding the value of their work. But all creators have their heroes, those by whom they measure their own work, drive, output, success. People who catalyse, inspire and provoke creation.
Feb
3
A new series : | off the shelf |
February 3, 2007 | Leave a Comment
THIS series was born to tempt your imagination with tidbits and morsels and delicious slices of fiction, non-fiction and sometimes poetry. Go to off the shelf to browse the extracts.
Why, you ask?
There is a torrent of undiscovered writing today: we have too much from which to choose and jewels get lost in the fray of publishing output. There is not enough time to find everything that speaks to us. The best we can do is rely on serendipity, electron magic and the beat of a butterfly wing to send our way the stories we need to hear.
Last year, these elements aligned and I found delancey place, styled as eclectic little excerpts delivered to your email every day, by the editor, Richard Wade Vague. Mostly non-fiction, the extracts pique interest, satisfy curiosity and most of all, open doors to new worlds.
Sep
13
Clytia
September 13, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Ovid wrote the transformation of Clytia from woman scorned to heliotrope, a plant that turns its body to the sun. It is said that Clytia was loved and left by Apollo, abandonned for Leucothea, the White Goddess.
For nine days Clytia sat naked, denied herself food and drink, only looking to the sun for Apollo. Her skin grew gold, then crisped to yellow and at last, crackled and browned. Petals found her, roots and leaves made her a child of the soil, and she was reborn as a flower. Some believe she blossomed marigold, but sunflowers know better: they carry her tale into dark places, for her sake, they turn their faces to the sun after winter chill.
They speak of loyalty and loss, of transformations wrought by despair. But they also know there is a magic that grants second lives…
Sep
8
Butterfly blues
September 8, 2006 | Leave a Comment
VLADIMIR NABOKOV saw the colours of words. For him phonemes and syllables carried their identities in hues, collections of rainbows where language might otherwise lie monochromatic and dead on a page. He was an unusual and versatile man: synaesthete, linguist, writer, designer of chess problems — and lepidopterist: student, lover and collector of butterflies.
It’s thought butterflies got their name because they were believed to steal milk (I love the image of tiny milky sips churned to butter in flight). Some scholars think they may have been named for the buttery hues of the Brimstones, the species that paints the end of winter in busy, bright dapples. And yet another naming legend, in British folklore, holds that the first word to describe these air-borne dashes of colour was flutterby, but confused tongues turned the word inside out.
Aug
16
Shattered thoughts
August 16, 2006 | 2 Comments
A BRILLIANT refusal, a quotation, shards of glass. An act of terror, the death of a poet.
Almost a week of fragmented days has passed since London airports ground to a standstill and an atmosphere of fragility remains. A great African scholar died two days before a frangible Lebanese-Israeli ceasefire took effect. Sunday night the two countries got in what casualties they could.
Today I read that one of the most brilliant mathematicians in the world has solved a century-old maths problem, but will probably refuse the 1-million dollar cash prize that accompanies the solution.
(That solution didn’t appear in a peer-reviewed journal; Grigory Perelman instead posted three manuscripts with its details in an online archive of maths and physics papers.