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Monthly Archives: April 2011

· If there were an election, crown would trounce president.

Saturday, 30 April 2011

Five years ago 19 per cent wanted neither Charles nor William to become king: they wanted the monarchy scrapped. That number has declined by one third.

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· From the Windsor family archives: the near-queen and the silly prince.

Friday, 29 April 2011

It is well attested that Wallis tried to stop Edward from abdicating. She wasn’t in love with him, didn’t want to be queen and was horrified when she realised how much he was giving up.

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· Event: ‘Who and what are universities for?’ NYU Friday from 11:30 am.

Thursday, 28 April 2011

NYRB and NYU’s Humanities Initiative are sponsoring a free “half-day” conference on higher education starting at 11:30 am at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, 20 Cooper Square, 7th Floor, in New York City. The event is free and a reception will be held at the conclusion.

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· Oscar Wilde’s ‘Picture of Dorian Gray’ – full-length at last.

Thursday, 28 April 2011

Deciding that the novel as it stood contained “a number of things which an innocent woman would make an exception to”, and assuring his employer Craige Lippincott that he would make the book “acceptable to the most fastidious taste”, Stoddart also removed references to Gray’s female lovers as his “mistresses”.

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· The pleasures of theories conspiratorial denied.

Wednesday, 27 April 2011

That’s how far things have gone. In addition to anxiety caused by the border tension, Thais are being told that everything is not what they think it is. Last week’s satellite malfunction that resulted in blank TV screens nationwide was purportedly not a technical error, but a well-executed warning to the Thai military that if they plot a coup, they won’t have any channel to broadcast it on.

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Wagner’s other ‘ring cycle’ and its problems.

Tuesday, 26 April 2011

William Ashton Ellis: ‘Less than four months after the words last cited, Richard Wagner sees that even the transcendent ideal which has sustained him in his troubles hitherto must be renounced. Of his own free will he writes Mathilde in December, resigning his last claim to soul-communion, whilst he seeks to turn the mournful stream of his reflections by taking up a “comic opera,” Die Meistersinger.’

Filed in Chronicle & Notices, Music and Photography, The Fortnightly Review of Music | Tagged | Comments (0)

· OMG, there’s actual religiosity in Trollope’s spirituality?

Monday, 25 April 2011

Liturgy is where art and community life meet. Where spirit is not thought but made flesh through hands, knees, and vocal chords. In worship the stuff of art is offered up in the name of the community, not the ego of the artist—or the clergy.

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· Going to Easter services with a haruspex named James Joyce.

Friday, 22 April 2011

THE MIRACLES OF THE season vary over time. One century’s miracles are another’s footnote. What could be more miraculous than standing at an Orthodox Paschal liturgy in a northern Italian port city next to an Irish sceptic named James Joyce? By R. J. SCHORK [Journal of Modern Greek Studies] – In the autumn of 1904 […]

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· Three men, two kids, and an immoral US college admissions racket.

Friday, 22 April 2011

When do minuscule acceptance rates stop being something to boast about and start becoming signs of archaic, insulated, overly wealthy institutions that are badly out of step with their times?

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Ruskin and the distinction between Aesthesis and Theoria.

Thursday, 21 April 2011

Anthony O’Hear: Vain, yet not all in vain… from the lips of the Sea Sybil men shall learn for ages yet to come what is most noble and most fair. So long as we are able to learn this (maybe guided by Ruskin himself), the distinction between Aesthesis and Theoria remains. From Ruskin’s point of view, the distinction is necessarily timeless.

Filed in Art & Architecture, Principal Articles, Psychology, Philosophy & Education | Tagged | Comments (1)

· Hera’s beguiling girdle, worn for Zeus, found in Verlaine.

Tuesday, 19 April 2011

Yesterday I was studying Annibale Carracci’s stupendous ceiling frescoes on mythological subjects. There was Zeus, inching Hera toward bed: and bound firmly below Hera’s breasts was the oaristys!

Filed in Chronicle & Notices, Poetry & Fiction, The Fortnightly Review of Books | | Comments (0)

· The codex, in your hand, perfect-bound, in four minutes. Next?

Monday, 18 April 2011

Many of us worry about a decline in deep, reflective, cover-to-cover reading. We deplore the shift to blogs, snippets, and tweets. In the case of research, we might concede that word searches have advantages, but we refuse to believe that they can lead to the kind of understanding that comes with the continuous study of an entire book. Is it true, however, that deep reading has declined, or even that it always prevailed?

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· Event: Smile! You’re on candid kino. Vertov at the MOMA. (And here.)

Friday, 15 April 2011

Dziga Vertov, of course, considered his films to be documentaries, records of actuality, but all his work reflected his very personal, highly poetic vision of Soviet ‘reality,’ a vision he maintained throughout his life, long after the dustbin of soviet history had claimed him, too.

Filed in Art & Architecture, Chronicle & Notices, Film, Television, Video & Theatre, Noted elsewhere | | Comments (0)

· The literature of sports bras: a little support for the writer’s life.

Thursday, 14 April 2011

I know, I know, you’re thinking: How in the world did Marty become the go-to guy for running bras? Frankly, your guess is as good as mine.

Filed in Books & Publishing, Chronicle & Notices, Sport & Fashion | | Comments (0)

· Event: Fawzi Karim’s ‘Plague Lands’ launch, 14 April, London.

Wednesday, 13 April 2011

Karim is an Iraqi poet, writer, and painter, born in Baghdad in 1945. He was educated at Baghdad University before embarking on a career as a freelance writer. He lived in Lebanon from 1969-1972 and has lived in London since 1978.

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