This from PEN World Voices: Rushdie, Eco, and Vargas Llosa by Dorothy W. at Metaxu Cafe:
Then Lopate asked a couple questions solicited on index cards from the audience; the first question, asking the writers to describe their writing methods, got only boos from the audience because of its banality, and I was delighted to see Richard Ford yell out “Next question!” Before they moved on, though, Eco, looking inordinately pleased with himself, explained his writing method — he starts on the left side of the page and works his way over to the right. This got a laugh.
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Alexis Rowell writes about Sustainable Consumption and Production in Europe:
Food is something that affects us all. We all have to eat. But very few people know the extent to which oil underpins our food system, how much carbon is used in the production of food, how much water is used, and the impact the food system therefore has on climate change.
The current all-time highs in oil prices – $117 a barrel in April 2008 – is sending convulsive shudders down the food chain . . .
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The Right Brain vs. Left Brain Test.
Do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise? I’ll tell you what I see . . . later . . .
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A panel at the PEN World Voices session came up with the following titles:
Antonio Muñoz Molina: Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
Catherine Millet: The Lily of the Valley by Honoré de Balzac
Yousef al-Mohaimeed: first the Arabian Nights, then poetry (including haikus), and then, of all things Nikos Kazantzakis Zorba the Greek
Olivier Rolin: Under the Volcano by [...]
Mario Balzic is the Police Chief of Rocksburg, a town in Pennsylvania where the mills have closed and the mines shut down. In this 1974 novel, as in other novels in the series, the Chief lives with his wife Ruth, their two daughters, and Balzic’s elderly mother.
It had taken years for the hedges to [...]
American poet, Gary Snyder was recently awarded the Ruth Lilly Prize - a $100,000 lifetime achievement award.
This is one of his poems:
For a Stone Girl at Sanchi
half asleep on the cold grass
night rain flicking the maples
under a black bowl upside-down
on a flat land
[...]
Marlon James at the PEN American Center writes about the Mean Streets panel at New York’s World Voices Festival, with Jo Nesbo (Norway), Roberto Saviano (Italy), Christian Jungersen (Denmark) and Juan Gabriel Vasquez (Colombia).
Funnily enough it was Saviano, the only writer dealing explicitly with non-fiction, who reminded us that the very notion of the hero [...]
David Rising at Associated Press writes about the mixture of bones in Friedrich Schiller’s grave, none of which belong to the dead poet:
Schiller’s remains had been interred in a mausoleum in Weimar’s Jacobs cemetery that the state kept for distinguished citizens. But the remains were mixed with others, and when a total of 23 skulls [...]
This piece by geoff on Metaxu Cafe, reports on the PEN World Voices Festival: The Secret Lives of Cities panel, which brought together authors whose work has focussed on a particular city: Juan de Recacoechea on La Paz, Yousef Al-Mohaimeed on Riyadh, Francisco Goldman on Guatemala City, and Joshua Furst on Minneapolis.
One of Goldman’s riffs [...]
The Guardian reports on the honourable dealings of the much loved supermarket chain:
Writers criticise Tesco for ‘chilling’ Thai libel actions
· Leading authors sign letter to retailer’s chief executive
· Supermarket chain urged to uphold human rights
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Jacob Russell looks at beginnings:
I wanted to begin with opening paragraphs rather than sentences, precisely to get past the “hook” –the [...]
I’m not going to go on at length about the latest Mike Leigh film because he is one of my favourite directors and the film falls a long way short of his best work.
Sally Hawkins as Poppy is a primary-school teacher who is relentlessly cheerful. No negative thoughts or attitudes inhabit this thirty-year-old woman. She [...]
The New York Times Sunday Book Review has an interesting piece on the book trade:
In 2007, a whopping 400,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from 300,000 in 2006, according to the industry tracker Bowker, which attributed the sharp rise to the number of print-on-demand books and reprints of out-of-print titles. [...]
