Within a Sky Full of Earth

Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does—humans are a musical species.

Oliver Sacks’s compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people—from a man who is struck by lightning and suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of forty-two, to an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; from people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans, to a man whose memory spans only seven seconds—for everything but music.

Our exquisite sensitivity to music can sometimes go wrong: Sacks explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day. Yet far more frequently, music goes right: Sacks describes how music can animate people with Parkinson’s disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimer’s or amnesia.

Music is irresistible, haunting, and unforgettable, and in Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks tells us why.

Oliver Sacks is a physician and the author of nine previous books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings (which inspired the Oscar-nominated film). He lives in New York City, where he is Professor of Clinical Neurology at Columbia University.

Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks
KNOPF • HARDCOVER • OCTOBER 2007

The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Al Gore, former vice-president of the US, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in a dramatic statement about the importance of tackling man-made climate change.
The Nobel Committee said that Gore and the IPCC had been awarded the prize, "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
Al Gore, who served as vice president of the US under Bill Clinton, and was defeated by George W. Bush in the 2000 US presidential elections, has since become a global campaigner for action against climate change.
He has already won an Academy Award for his climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth and, in 2007, Gore also helped organise Live Earth concerts, which sought to raise awareness about climate change.
"He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted," the Nobel committee said in announcing the prize.
[SOURCE: NEWSCIENTIST ENVIRONMENT]

MORE INFO:
• AL GORE ON THE WORLD-NEWS
• AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH WEBSITE
• BLAME ARTICLE ON HUMAN ACTIVITIES
• (ARTI)FACTS OF A CONVENIENT UNTRUTH
• CONTINUALLY UPDATED SPECIAL REPORT ON GLOBAL WARMING
• HOME OF THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE

At the age of almost 88, Doris Lessing stepped out of a London Taxi and in front of her home she found a barrier of journalists waiting for her. "Have you heard the news?", they said, "you won the Nobel prize."
That's how she got the novelty. She didn't realize for the following moments what was the real content of that information. She was not in shock, she was pretty calm and it seemed it didn't pay much attention to the fact. At first she was just not surprised, not such as the literary world. No one was expecting her to win. Following her brief statement she told, while waving goodbye to the cameras, that she won all the prizes in Europe and she felt much honored to win this one. And then she seated down, on a little step in front of her door, and talked for a while with the reporters who brought directly to her ears the decision taken place in Sweden one or two hours before.
This is how she explained afterwards the whole mess (media) she got into:

I was coming back from the hospital with my son Peter who was sick. I stepped out of a taxi and there were all these cameras, a whole posse of photographers. As this street is very good for that kind of thing, I thought they were shooting a soap or an episode of Morse or something. But it was me. So I first heard that I had won the Nobel prize for literature from the reporters.
It is the most glamorous prize, and naturally it has got a lot of prestige, which none of the other prizes have, so it's the icing on the cake. At one point, sometime in the 70s, they [the Nobel academy] didn't like me - they said they didn't - but they seem to have changed their minds. Committees are like that. Of course I didn't expect to get it. I've been on the shortlist for 40 years. It is good to be the 11th woman on the list, I'm only sorry that one of the first or fourth or the fifth wasn't Virginia Woolf. But I don't think it is helpful to talk about writers in terms of male and female. A lot of British writers have won it, which is good. We produce a lot of good writers. I've been talking non-stop all day. I've spoken to my publisher and agent and old friends who rang me up, which was very good. There were lots of people who have wanted me to have it for a long time, so it is very nice that I have. I'm exhausted. To celebrate I'd have to go and buy champagne. I'm going to bed.

• SEE WHILE IT LAST A RELATED VIDEO AND THE ARTICLE ABOUT IT AT GUARDIAN UNLIMITED
• AND THIS IS THE ONE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

If you come today to the Hung Kong Miu area and enter our little red shop at the corner of the square you can listen to a set of music probably you might find familiar, but somehow unusual at the same time. Because today we have The Jacques Loussier Trio, it's a jazz band who performs sometimes classical music, and we are playing now, and during the whole day, Erik Satie's Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes. You heard it for sure on its original piano, the slow and tempered piano. They are beautiful played by this trio and will cherish a complement resonance with the Chinese temple in front of us. You should come along and hear it while you browse your fingers through our bookshelves. I guarantee you that will be a time well spend.

I have long considered Satie's Gnossienne to be some of the most emotionally touching and versatile pieces in music. So I went searching for as many versions of them as possible. I found everything from guitar to harp to dance floor remixes. But there was one interpretation that stood out from all of them: the Jacques Loussier Trio interpretations.
REVIEW ON AMAZON.COM

From Satie we flow on into Bach and Handel as well as some Baroque pieces, all by the Jacques Loussier Trio. You are most welcome to come. You still have time, we close at 8.00 P.M. today.

RELATED LINKS:
• Jacques Loussier WEBSITE
• Satie: Gymnopedies Gnossiennes / Jacques Loussier Trio ON AMAZON
• SEARCH FOR IT ONLINE

This isn’t your typical band biography. This isn’t your average, thrown-together-with-a-few-old quotes, hastily written cash-in piece of rubbish. You know the type of books I’m talking about here. People who write rock books day in and day out, with dozens of biographies under their belts, without access to the artists, without any understanding of what drives their chosen subjects.
This is not that book. This is the real deal. Warts and all. Even the bits that, as the singer confesses, make him look like a total prick.
Allowed total, unprecedented access to the band, first time author David Barnett, founder of one of the first Suede fanzines and now in the enviable position of running the band’s fanclub, has seen it all first hand since the band first hit the big time. All ten years of tears. Almost every show, everywhere, onstage, backstage, and on the front page.
Drug addled threesomes in nightclub toilets? Petty theft from the record company? The band raiding their own office safe for drug money? Punchups? Errant accountants running off with all the cash? Alcoholism, bisexuality, infidelity, suicide, overdoses, record company politics, and the pressures of fame, fortune, and failure. Smack. Crack. Black. Big Macs. The band have done it all. And it’s all here.
It’s a veritable check list of the seven deadly sins.
This is as near to the facts and the truth as you will ever get about Suede. This is the no holds barred, needles and all definitive account of a bands rise, fall, rise, fall, and rise again. Of global domination and personal abomination. Of success, excess, and progress.
This is about a great band that happened to become high on diesel and gasoline and psychotic drum machines. And who managed, by the way, to make some of the best pop music of the past decade.
It’s got it all : and then some. It’s the tale of four (and then five) aspiring nobodies desperately escaping from their nowhere Asda Towns, and somehow becoming the best (and for a while, biggest) British band of their time. It’s the tale of young geniuses, ripped to the tits on drink and drugs pissing it all up the wall in a fit of egos, drug paranoia, and sexual depravity, and somehow, at the same time, managing to sell millions of records, and tour the world time and time again.
Fuelled by ambition and opportunity, Suede did everything. Everything but Devil Worship.
This is everything you ever wanted to know and never thought you would. This is the inside story of one of the most talented and depraved bands in British history, told shamelessly and openly, with no holds barred, no stone unturned, no rock uncooked, no secret left untold.

One of the best rock biographies ever. Can’t get enough.
[WRITTEN BY MIKE REED AT THE FINAL WORD • 2004]

Suede: Love And Poison, by David Barnett
Andre Deutsch Ltd • ISBN: 9780233000947 • 336 PAGES • SOON AT BLOOM

Angry Young Men (or Angries for short) is a journalistic catchphrase applied to a number of British playwrights and novelists from the mid-1950s. The phrase was originally used by British newspapers after the success of the play Look Back in Anger to describe young British writers, though it was derived from the autobiography of Leslie Paul, founder of the Woodcraft Folk, whose "Angry Young Man" was published in 1951.

It has changed meaning over time, and has become a cliché when used more generically, to refer to a young person who strongly criticises political and social institutions.

Watch the day begin again
Whispering into the night
See the crazy people play
Hurrying under the light
A million cars, a million trains
Under the jet plane sky
Nothing lost and nothing gained
Life is just a lullaby
SUEDE • EVERYTHING WILL FLOW [taste it]

Doris Lessing, one of England's finest living novelists, invites us to imagine a mythical society free from sexual intrigue, free from jealousy, free from petty rivalries: a society free from men. An old Roman senator, contemplative at his late stage of life, embarks on what will likely be his last endeavour: the retelling of the story of human creation. He recounts the history of the Clefts, an ancient community of women living in an Edenic, coastal wilderness, confined within the valley of an overshadowing mountain. The Clefts have no need nor knowledge of men - childbirth is controlled, like the tides that lap around their feet, through the cycles of the moon, and their children are always female. But with the unheralded birth of a strange, new child - a boy - the harmony of their community is suddenly thrown into jeopardy. At first, in their ignorance, the Clefts are awestruck by this seemingly malformed child, but as more and more of these threateningly unfamiliar males appear, now unfavourably nicknamed Squirts, they are rejected, and are exposed on the nearby mountainside; sacrificed to the patrolling eagles overhead, the sentinels of their female haven. Unbeknownst to the Clefts, however, these baby males survive, aided by the very eagles sent to kill them, and thrive on their own on the other side of the mountain. It is not until an unusually curious young Cleft named Maire goes beyond the geographical, and emotional, divide of the mountain that this disquieting fact is uncovered - a discovery that forces the Clefts to accept and realign themselves to the prospect of a now shared world, and the possible vengeance of the wronged males. In this fascinating and beguiling novel, Lessing confronts head-on the themes that inspired much of her early writing: how men and women, two similar and yet thoroughly distinct creatures, manage to live side by side in the world, and how the specifics of gender affect every aspect of our existence.
[READ A GUARDIAN UNLIMITED REVIEW ABOUT THE SAME BOOK]

The Cleft, by Doris Lessing • FOURTH STATE & HARPER COLLINS • 2007

A escritora britânica Doris Lessing, hoje distinguida com o Nobel da Literatura a poucos dias de completar 88 anos, tem uma obra com reminiscências africanas, feministas e com compromisso político.

Doris Lessing é autora de uma obra rica e variada, com cerca de 50 títulos.
Nascida a 22 de Outubro de 1919 em Kermanshah, na Pérsia (actualmente Irão), filha de pais britânicos, Doris Lessing cresceu na Rodésia (Zimbabué), onde a família se instalou numa quinta quando ela tinha cinco anos.
Frequentou uma escola católica que viria a abandonar aos 14 anos para trabalhar como baby-sitter e a sua infância em África viria a marcar algumas das suas obras.
Foi impiedosa nas críticas aos governos racistas na África do Sul e da Rodésia, o que lhe valeu a proibição de entrada nesse países (na África do Sul entre 1956 e 1995).
Tem três filhos de dois casamentos e depois de dois divórcios instalou-se em Londres, em 1949, com um dos filhos. Encontrou emprego como secretária, mas viria a abandonar essa tarefa depois do sucesso dos seus primeiros livros.
Em 1950 publicou «A Erva Canta». Em 1962 lançou a obra que lhe daria fama internacional, «The Golden Notebook», e consolidou essa fama com uma série de títulos sobre temática africana como «African stories» (1964).
Comunista na juventude, Doris Lessing, que continuou sempre uma mulher empenhada na defesa dos seus ideais, publicou depois várias obras de ficção científica, a primeira das quais «Shikasta» (1981).
Em 1995, publicou o primeiro volume da sua autobiografia «Under My Skin». Três anos depois publicaria o segundo volume, com o título «Walking in the Shade».
Em 2001, ganhou o prémio Princípe das Astúrias de Letras.
Mais recentemente, criticou o regime ditatorial do presidente Robert Mugabe e foi de novo declarada indesejável no Zimbabué.
Actualmente vive nos arredores de Londres, tem-se dedicado à ficção científica e este ano publicou «The Cleft».
Doris Lessing gosta de cozinhar e de escrever todas as manhãs.
O Prémio Nobel da Literatura tem um valor, desde 2001, de 1,1 milhões de Euros.
[via DIÁRIO DIGITAL em texto da LUSA]

British novelist Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize for a body of work that delved into human relationships and inspired a generation of feminist writers, the Swedish Academy said on Thursday.The academy, which awards the prestigious 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.54 million) prize, called 87-year-old Lessing an "epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny."
She was the 34th woman to win a Nobel and the 11th to take the literature award. The awards began in 1901.
"We're absolutely delighted and it's very well-deserved, of course," Lessing's long-time agent Jonathan Clowes said in a statement read to Reuters.
Lessing debuted as a novelist with "The Grass is Singing" in 1950, a book that examined the relationship between a white farmer's wife and her black servant.
Her 1962 novel "The Golden Notebook" was widely considered her breakthrough work.
"The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th century view of the male-female relationship," the academy said.
She was born to British parents in what was then known as Persia and is now Iran.
This was the fourth of this year's crop of Nobel prizes, handed out annually for achievements in science, literature, economics and peace.
[SOURCE: REUTERS] [PHOTO CREDITS: Stuart Heydinger © HULTON GETTY/STONE IMAGES • 1962]

MORE ON DORIS LESSING:
• Doris Lessing homepage created by Jan Hanford
• Doris Lessing at the Open Directory Project
• Doris Lessing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Doris Lessing at www.contemporarywriters.com
• Joyce Carol Oates on Doris Lessing
• 1988, 1992 audio interview with Doris Lessing by Don Swaim

Although boredom is something that we have all suffered from at some point in our lives, and has become one of the central preoccupations of our age, very few of us can explain precisely what it is. In this book Lars Svendsen examines the nature of boredom, how it originated, its history, how and why it afflicts us, and why we cannot seem to overcome it by any act of will.
A diverse and vague phenomenon, described as anything from ‘tame longing without any particular object’ (Schopenhauer), ‘a bestial and indefinable affliction’ (Dostoevsky), to ‘time’s invasion of your world system’ (Joseph Brodsky), boredom allows many interpretations. In exploring these, Lars Svendsen brings together observations from philosophy, literature, psychology, theology and popular culture, examining boredom’s pre-Romantic manifestations in medieval torpor, philosophies of the subject from Pascal to Nietzsche, and modern related concepts of alienation and transgression, taking in texts by Samuel Beckett, J. G. Ballard, Andy Warhol and many others.
A witty and entertaining account that considers a serious issue, it will appeal to anyone who has ever felt bored, and wanted to know why.

When an investigation into boredom is done well, as it is in A Philosophy of Boredom... it is positively gripping
The Times Literary Supplement

Lars Fr. H. Svendsen is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Bergen, Norway. He is the author of many books including Man, Morals and Genes: A Critique of Biologism (2001) and The Philosophy of Evil (2001).
John Irons the translator of A Philosphy of Boredom and A History of the Heart has been awarded the prestigious NORLA prize.

A Philosophy of Boredom, by Lars Svendsen • ANOTHER GREAT REAKTION BOOK • 2004

O grupo da União Europeia para a Cultura tem o prazer de apresentar o
14º Festival de Cinema Europeu de Macau e Hong Kong.

Contando com a participação de 13 países, este festival oferece o melhor do cinema contemporâneo, com vários filmes premiados. Contendo uma forte colecção de longas-metragens, do policial ao documentário passando pelo drama e desenhos animados, esta mostra revela-nos a riqueza da cultura Europeia, com todas as suas diferenças e semelhanças.
Sob a presidência portuguesa, com a organização a cargo do IPOR, e seguindo o sucesso dos anos anteriores, o festival de 2007 terá lugar no Consulado-Geral de Portugal em Macau, na Universidade de Macau e em diversas universidades de Hong Kong, tendo início no dia 9 de Outubro e prolongando-se até 30 de Novembro.
[O PROGRAMA + OS FILMES]

The European Union Working Group for Culture proudly presents the
14th Hong Kong and Macau European Film Festival.

From thirteen EU countries, the Festival features the best of contemporary cinema with several awarded movies. There is a strong collection of films - from romantic dramas or documentaries to cartoons – showing the richness of European culture with its differences and similarities.
Under the Portuguese presidency of the EU, organized by IPOR, and following the success of the previous years, the 2007 Festival will be held at Consulate General of Portugal in Macau, at the University of Macau and also in several universities campuses in Hong Kong , from October 9th to November 30th.
[THE PROGRAM + THE FILMS]

Uma mulher suicida-se na casa-de-banho de sua casa. O marido, uma estrela internacional de música pop, costumava descrevê-la como “uma bailarina sem escola, sem auto-consciência”. Impossibilitado de a voltar a ver, o marido isola-se num exercício de autocomplacência inevitável a qualquer indivíduo que experimente a morte. Disfarça-se para que ninguém o reconheça e parte à procura de memórias infantis. Carlos, jornalista português que vive no estado de Nova Jérsia, ambiciona escrever um livro sobre histórias verídicas que não podem ficar esquecidas. Um dia, seguindo uma pista de um grupo de actores que usa métodos secretistas para recrutar pessoas, deixa-se fascinar por Violet.
Um músico e um jornalista. Duas pessoas que acabam por se cruzar graças a uma terceira personagem: um homem que passa os dias a representar como forma de defesa. E é neste universo masculino, se pensarmos que aqui as mulheres são seres extintos ou inacessíveis, que Jacinto Lucas Pires volta a surpreender com a sua escrita, semelhante a um argumento cinematográfico ou a um texto dramático, onde delineia inúmeros movimentos de câmara e didascálias, demonstrando sensibilidade e capacidade para narrar momentos de desespero.

Jacinto Lucas Pires nasceu no Porto a 14 de Julho de 1974. Estudou Direito na Universidade Católica de Lisboa, frequentou a New York Film Academy, publicou o seu primeiro livro em 1996 e trabalha como dramaturgo e realizador.

A sua obra encontra-se publicada em português, português do Brasil, espanhol e tailandês. Várias peças suas estão traduzidas em francês, italiano, espanhol, inglês e norueguês. Em Portugal, os seus textos foram encenados por Manuel Wiborg, Ricardo Pais e João Brites. Alguns dos seus contos foram incluídos em colectâneas na Alemanha, em França, no Brasil e em Espanha. Tem contos em várias antologias portuguesas.

Perfeitos Milagres, de Jacinto Lucas Pires
LIVROS COTOVIA • 2007 • 320 PÁGINAS • EM BREVE NA BLOOM

«It was the second bewildering conversation we'd had in the past eighteen hours. Once again, Grace had been hinting at something she refused to name, some kind of inner turmoil that seemed to be dogging her conscience, and it left me at a loss, groping dumbly to figure out what was going on. And yet how tender she was that evening, how glad to accept my small ministrations, how happy to have me sit beside her on the bed. After all we'd been through together in the past year, after all her steadfastness and composure during my long illness, it seemed impossible that she could ever do anything that would disappoint me. And even if she did, I was foolish enough and loyal enough not to care. I wanted to stay married to her for the rest of my life, and if Grace had slipped at some point or done something she wasn't proud of, what difference could that make in the long run? It wasn't my job to judge her. I was her husband, not a lieutenant in the moral police, and I meant to stand by her no matter what.»
PAUL AUSTER in ORACLE NIGHT

Remaking Beijing traces China’s modern and contemporary experience, focusing on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, still the most exalted space in China today. Wu Hung describes the square’s transformation from a proscribed imperial space to a public arena of political expression, and from a monumental Communist complex to a holy relic of the Maoist era. For over half a century, since the square became the symbolic centre of the new socialist capital, it has determined the city’s development; in examining the square, the author examines the city as a whole.

Wu Hung also explores the importance of Tiananmen as a locus of visual production in China: as the site for Mao’s standard portrait on Tiananmen’s façade; as the location of museums and monuments showcasing masterpieces of socialist art; and as a parade ground for extravagant National Day celebrations. In recent years it has also inspired unofficial artists to create a large body of works – paintings, photographs, performances – which challenge its authority.

Using a wide range of sources including government archives, newspapers, photography, architecture, literature, art exhibitions and advertisements, this book explores the history and complex meaning of Beijing’s public spaces. As a native of Beijing, Wu Hung witnessed the construction and transformation of the city; in this book he combines historical enquiry with his own personal experience, offering a case study of a particular type of modern metropolis whose construction is intertwined with the creation of a political nation-state.

Wu Hung is Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor in Chinese Art History at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books including The Double Screen: Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting (Reaktion, 1996), and curator of many exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art and photograph

Remaking Beijing, by Wu Hung • REAKTION BOOKS • 2005

Realidade e ficção, autor, narrador e personagens, como o contabilista Sicraninho e M., confundem-se nesta intriga com alusões a vários nomes da literatura: Jorge Luis Borges, Francisco José Viegas, José Eduardo Agualusa, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, Pedro Rosa Mendes, Enrique Vila-Matas, Machado de Assis, entre tantos outros. A realidade e a ficção constituem a matéria da Literatura e o autor explora aqui a ideia dessa grande viagem que a leitura – e a escrita – nos proporcionam.

«No dia em que Atla morreu, os homens juntaram-se na taberna diante do porto velho. Enquanto atiravam aguardente para as gargantas e olhavam as gaivotas com a persistente angústia que amofina os pescadores quando estão presos em terra, recordaram que Atla, enquanto viva, era a mais bonita mulher que jamais tinham visto, ali ou em qualquer outra parte do mundo. Dois ou três suspiraram profundamente, como se a estivessem vendo tal como ela era nos seus dias de mais espantosa beleza, quando trazia soltos os caracóis do cabelo e o sol lhe incidia no rosto moreno. Um deles derramou no chão algumas gotas do bagaço. Um outro disfarçou a lágrima que tinha no canto de um olho?»

Manuel Jorge Marmelo nasceu no Porto em 1971 e é jornalista desde 1989. Estreou-se na ficção em 1996 com o O Homem que Julgou Morrer de Amor. Publicou, entre outros livros, Portugués, Guapo y Matador (romance, 1997), Nome de Tango (romance, 1998), As Mulheres Deviam Vir com Livro de Instruções (romance, 1999), O Amor É para os Parvos (romance, 2000), Palácio de Cristal, Jardim-Paraíso (álbum, 2000), Sertão Dourado (romance, 2001), Paixões & Embirrações (crónicas, 2002), Oito Cidades e uma Carta de Amor (contos e fotos, 2003), A Menina Gigante (infantil, 2003), Os Fantasmas de Pessoa (romance, 2004), O Silêncio de um Homem Só (contos, 2004, Grande Prémio do Conto Camilo Castelo Branco), Os Olhos do Homem que Chorava no Rio (novela, 2005), O Peixe Baltazar (infantil, 2005), Porto: Orgulho e Ressentimento (crónicas, 2006), Zé do Saco, o Contrabandista (infantil, 2006) e Aonde o Vento me Levar (romance, 2007).
Tem publicado regularmente textos e contos em diversas antologias e publicações em Portugal, no Brasil, no México, em Itália e em França.

Aonde o Vento Me Levar, de Manuel Jorge Marmelo
Campo das Letras • ISBN: 9789896251307 • 2007

CELEBRATE THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF JACK KEROUAC'S ON THE ROAD

Kerouac's quintessential novel of America and the Beat Generation was first published 50 years ago. A special edition was published last September and is now on the way to Bloom and to you.

Few novels have had as profound an impact on American culture as On the Road. Pulsating with the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "beat" and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event that "set them free." Based on Kerouac's adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose four cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naïveté and wild abandon, and imbued with Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up. This hardcover edition commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of the novel in 1957 and will be a must-have for any literature lover.

Jack Kerouac was born in 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts. He attended local Catholic and public schools and won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York, where he met Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. His first novel, The Town and the City, appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road, published by Viking in 1957, that made him one of the best known authors of his time. Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven.

Em Janeiro de 1995 José Cardoso Pires, que fazia 70 anos no Outubro seguinte, sofre um acidente vascular cerebral. Foi uma pausa breve, um tremor, que durou apenas o suficiente para que na sua inconsciência pudesse presenciar a minúscula figura da morte. Se tivesse compreendido o que lhe estava a acontecer poderia ter suspirado e dito: “é assim que acontece, é assim que as pessoas morrem”, mas não teve tempo para isso. O que se lhe seguiu foi algo que até então desconhecia: a penumbra do esquecimento. Estava sentado, com uma chávena de chá na mão, lá fora uma manhã cinzenta, e de repente dentro de si, talvez uma janela mal fechada, desordenou essa corrente de ar que percorreu tudo o que era seu e que o compunha como ser humano. Sem dor, sem inteligência. A partir daí o Nada. “Silêncio brusco”. Um espaço em branco, vazio pela frente, que foi necessário descobrir e preencher de novo. Não como se tratasse de um reconhecimento, mas um paralelo de uma nova vida que sendo a sua era a de outra pessoa em simultâneo.
Tudo se tornou realmente diferente para Cardoso Pires e De Profundis, Valsa Lenta, escrito pelo ano seguinte e apresentado em 1997, relata precisamente esse percurso de descoberta e todo o período que se lhe seguiu. O neurocirurgião João Lobo Antunes, que faz a introdução à obra, usa os termos recém-nascido e amigo-novo. E explica de forma mais científica a razão pela qual o seu escritor conseguiu recuperar, “o escritor que veio do branco”, ao contrário da maioria dos pacientes que sofrem de crises idênticas e que ficam com profundas marcas para o resto da vida, a área que temporariamente «deixou à sede e à fome, e pela qual falava, lia e escrevia, tudo funções em que é exímio, era mais musculada que a do comum dos mortais.»
É um livro pequeno, de poucas páginas, que se lê de uma só vez no limiar de um sopro cardíaco. Dele fica sobretudo o hino à vida. A vida inversa que trouxe Cardoso Pires de volta. Feita de aprendizagem, das palavras, dos outros, dos mecanismos de construção do ser, que o deixou e o substituiu por alguém que se tornou apenas habitante do seu corpo. E este habitante vive um paradoxo: vê, estando às escuras, e, por estar às escuras, assiste à sua própria vida. É um escritor sem memória, a estrutura única do conhecimento que organiza o nosso mundo, que vive na experiência do caos e se vê a transitar pelas pessoas e a trocar o tempo e os seus significados.
“Sem memória esvai-se o presente que simultaneamente já é passado morto. Perde-se a vida anterior. E a anterior, bem entendido, porque sem referências do passado morrem os afectos e os laços sentimentais. E a noção do tempo... também isso se perde porque a memória, aprendi por mim, é indispensável para que o tempo não só possa ser medido como sentido.”
Tudo é luz e brilho nesta escrita de Cardoso Pires, apesar de toda a escuridão da “desmemória”, e ilumina-se da doçura de uma criança – no corpo de um homem de 70 anos - que escorre pela escassez do tempo do qual perdeu a conta e que vive agora de simples prazeres. Por ganhar a pouco e pouco o sentido, por estar a aprender o mundo que o rodeia, o nome dos objectos, a recordação das pessoas que lhe são queridas. A descoberta do significado afectivo e das referências emocionais próprias que vivem da existência da memória. A observação sistemática de si a ver-se retornar a um modo funcional e poder compreender, por exemplo, a necessidade de pegar num pente e não numa escova de dentes para se pentear.
É lúcido tudo o que escreve, embora distorcido e aos rombos, como se nunca antes tivesse sido assim tão profundamente claro, no que sente e no que deixa escrito, entre o grito de desespero por saber-se perto do fim e a pura alegria por estar a começar tudo de novo. Disso talvez tenha nascido a noção de que já não existia muito mais e tudo o que faltava conhecer estava ali, no desconhecido, e que veio por uma falha da brisa da sua mente.
Ao ler De Profundis, Valsa Lenta, somos assaltados por um número imenso de questões que flutuam pela noção de identidade. A velha questão do “eu e o outro”. Será a nossa identidade formada pelo conhecimento dos outros, pela figura que representamos, ou pelo conhecimento de nós próprios e por tudo aquilo que sentimos? Somos nós que nos fazemos, na posse de uma memória, ou os outros que nos constroem ao ritmo da sua percepção?
É tudo isto que faz deste livro, mais do que a sua narrativa, um dos símbolos não só de toda a carreira de um escritor mas também do seu poder criativo e, sem dúvida, da literatura portuguesa contemporânea, como se estivesse lá toda a pessoa, as vozes, as personagens que percorreram todos os seus livros, a lutar pelo poder da sua criação e pelo sentido da sua existência. Não é de todo uma obra que à partida se possa inserir no âmbito de uma autobiografia, não foi de todo essa a intenção do autor, deixar uma memória, porque na verdade trata-se da falta dela.
No ano seguinte a ter visto o seu livro publicado, Cardoso Pires, sofre outra série de AVCs que o deixam permanentemente em coma. Acabaria por falecer em Outubro de 1998.
No meio de tudo, do primeiro prenúncio, foi como se tivesse esquecido de escrever esta sua obra, um testemunho que dirige aos ventos de quem cá fica. Que retardou, por breves momentos, a última página da sua vida e a palavra "Fim".

* no seu original em latim, Ab imo corde, modo com que João Lobo Antunes fecha a carta dirigida ao autor e que faz a introdução a esta obra.

De Profundis, Valsa Lenta de José Cardoso Pires • PUBLICAÇÕES D. QUIXOTE • 16ª Edição • 2006
[PUBLICADO NO TAI CHUNG POU DE HOJE, DIA 7 DE OUTUBRO]

This is a story about two writers. A story, in other words, of envy.

I met the man at an artists' colony, and I liked him from the first story I heard him tell, which was about how he'd once been jilted by a blind date, after which he went right out and bought himself some new clothes. He was working on his third book when I met him, but he had no particular interest in talking shop. He read the paper and watched sports on television. He was handsome in a shy, arrogant way, dressed safely but deliberately in his white shirts and black jeans.

He was, I soon learned, struggling.

There may be women out there who do not love this beyond all else in a man, but I'm not one of them.

He played pool after dinner in the barn-like common room of the colony, and I would watch him through the window of the phone-booth door as I made my nightly call to my parents across the country in California. My father, who was eighty-one and not in good health, had recently fallen. He had damaged his back and shoulder, but he was reluctant to go to the doctor, and my mother was becoming frantic with worry and exhaustion. The anticipation of those ten-minute phone calls—during which I did nothing but listen, and even that not very well—dominated my days.

The booth itself was tiny, barely big enough for its folding chair, shelf, and payphone. The air felt pre-breathed and thick with the molecules of other people's long-distance calls, of their quarrels and appeasements. A small, squat window was positioned at eye level if you were sitting down, and through it, while my parents' distress poured into my ear, I could see a slice of the man, a helping from his waist to the middle of his thighs, as he played pool. I watched him set his legs, wiggling them into place. As my mother spoke in the tense, coded voice that signalled that my father was in the room with her, I focused on the cue sliding forward and back across his body like a bow. As long as I kept my eye trained on that cue, I told myself, I would not get sucked through the tiny holes of the receiver.

One afternoon, on the threshold of the building in which we both had bedrooms, I ran into the man and, partly in a bid to keep him talking, told him about my parents and my uncertainty about what I should be doing to help them. His own father had died after a long illness, he told me, so he had some idea what I was going through.

Just then a staff member came by and complimented him on one of his novels, neither of which I'd heard of—a fact that helped to equalize the discrepancy between his two published books and my none.

We both watched her walk away again, awkwardness rushing in to fill the space she left behind. He looked back at me. 'You have to do your work,' he said. 'That's your first responsibility.'

He meant, of course, my writing, and he spoke with a confidence I had never managed to feel about those hours of daydreaming at my desk, stringing together decorative little sentences to describe small, made-up events. Work to me always meant a job you were paid to do, necessary labour that someone else depended on.

He may have been struggling, but he knew what his work was. That was the first thing I envied about him.

Envy is an essay by Kathryn Chetkovich, Jonathan Franzen's girlfriend, about living with a writer. Was published on Granta Magazine. You can follow it - and you must do it! - down here.
AGAIN: ENVY BY KATHRYN CHETKOVICH

[HEADS DIVIDED BY RING JOID AND THE SPEEDS FROM MARS © 2005 • FROM THE PROJECT 'HELLMET' • MADE WITH THIS and THIS]

The DEAL is: Take this song to your computer (right click your mouse and do 'save as...'), it's mine and it's free, don't worry; write a lyric for it, a short one, a simple song; using any of the sound editors available, on a MAC or a PC, sing it and put yours or someone else's voice on the music, save it. Send the result back to me! Be wild and let yourself go. It's that easy.

WE'LL POST THEM AND GIVE A GREAT PRIZE FOR THE BEST ONE! THANKS!

O Tai Chung Pou em português continua o seu rumo. Histórias da cidade e das suas pessoas, de quem intervém nela. Nos seus mais variados aspectos, mas muito pela criação e inovação, aqueles que a fazem efervescer.
A edição de hoje traz-nos Ung Vai Meng, Director do Museu de Arte de Macau. Não é um caso único em Macau mas sem dúvida uma excepção ao modo como se vive e se enfrentam as vicissitudes deste território, na sua permanência lúdica e predadora do Jogo. Guilherme, o seu nome em português, encara a vida como um objecto de criação, uma obra de arte, em que a experiência 'artística', que se assemelha à explosão crónica de um fogo-de-artifício, e o modo como ela acontece, em processos mentais únicos, vale por tudo o resto e arrasta todos os planos de uma existência, das relações humanas ao conhecimento de si e dos outros, trazendo no seu fluxo o encanto da pura felicidade. Qualquer pequeno momento encolhido no meio da rotina diária é motivo para um pequeno diálogo em que a criatividade se desenrola por si. Num pedaço de papel, num traço esquecido no rebordo de uma mão, ou apenas no modo de pensar e de olhar. É dessa maneira, no encontro e na diferença, que se forma uma pessoa. O indivíduo e o seu reflexo como rosto de uma engrenagem social.
O Tai Chung Pou custa 2 patacas, pode ser adquirido pela cidade fora, lá dentro estão estas quatro páginas, no seu papel crespo e longo, escritas em português. Não perca, porque é da construção de uma cidade com uma profusão de vértices de que se fala.
Pode também ser sintonizado aqui.

LIGAÇÃO RÁPIDA: • TAI CHUNG POU EM PORTUGUÊS

AN INTERVIEW:
What's the meaning of Hellmet?
Hellmet is something you put on your head, a kind of shell or some simple hat or cap, that transports you immediately into Hell.
Just like that?
Yes. As soon you put it on. Is a designation. A script.
So, Hellmet is a new word that should come in the next editions of English dictionaries but is more than that, more than the word or its meaning, is it real?
It is real, yes, in the way as it can be expressed as a symbolic feeling or way of life. But also can be judged as an object. Even if it starts as a metaphor, the image of Hell and all, or as an idea, the idea of getting you in the deepest of pains and troubles, can lead to a potential real object or device.
Something self inflicted, like a sadist way of turning your life into a nightmare, a prelude of a suicide? Is there any project of building it?
There's many ways of built it. Nowadays there's already a virtual reality implanted into life costums that spreads through a multitude of instruments, so would be not difficult to make it specific on top of the realm of evil and suffering. But that's not the idea. Although you can find Hell situations around the world and through History, there's no real need to build one. Man already have the keys to jump into those nightmares alone with no help for an external gadget. You name it. Wars, Hunger, Selfishness. It goes from A to Z.
You used this term into your music, into sound, tell us how.
The concept is the same. Smashing noise and music into rapture it makes a way of getting you out of your own self, leading you to another world through an overwhelming different set of emotions. "Just close your eyes and let yourself go", into hell or whatever dark side you have, go with that flow, that's the motif . You'll learn something very useful for your future. The meaning of Hell can be the inverse from where you stand now. It goes through the lack and shortage of time. Time you have to live, time you have to perform your life. It's never enough. Going into Hell is a shortcut to a whole insert of experiences. Even if you get wounded it's always temporary, even if you get a scar from the travel, when you get back you will hold it as a trophy. A mark on your timeline. In short terms is a way to take you out of boredom. That's what Hellmet is about.
Will it come out or will stay just as a project? What are your plans?
I don't know how to make music. I just use some helpful tools to make it. It takes a while, but one after the other, I want to make a record on my own and bring me and 'The Speeds From Mars' into life. I mean, into something people can hold and hear from scratch till the end.
What about The Speeds from Mars, who are they, some David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust re-modeling?
They are whatever you want them to be. They're just a complement. They're out there and they're part of my garage band, living on another planet. And they are the bugs inside of me that are kept whispering into my dreams every night. The are my noise addiction. My speed hallucination. My space invaders. Yes, the name came from 'Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars" one of the best records ever made that symbolize that multitude of the Self, clearly expressed into David Bowie's work and embodied through out his existence. It still makes me shiver and it will till the end of my life. That's how life is such beauty fool. From star to dust.
THAT'S IT. AN EXCLUSIVE OF BLOOMLAND.
[AND JUST FOR YOUR PLEASURE MORE OF ZIGGY STARDUST]

And if it's all about style, David Bowie has it all. He can beat them forever and ever. And don't forget we can be heroes probably not for all the time but surely, like the swim of the dolphins, not just for one day.
• DAVID BOWIE - HEROES

FROM THE EPISODE'S PLOT AT WIKIPEDIA:
At Moe’s hotel room (where he lives) Lisa Simpson discovers Moe has been writing his random thoughts on post-it notes. She arranges them and gives them a title of her own invention, and sends it to a poetry journal where it becomes a smash hit, and he is acclaimed as a Charles Bukowski-like poet.

Moe is invited to “Wordloaf,” a writer’s convention in Vermont, by Tom Wolfe (who voices himself). While driving there, Homer avoids drinking and driving by driving only between sips of beer. Moe and the Simpsons finally arrive at the convention while being pursued by the police of every state in New England. At the convention, Moe mingles among noted authors Tom Wolfe, Gore Vidal, Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen. After Gore Vidal is ejected from the gathering when he reveals he took the titles of his various books from things he saw, as opposed to creating the title himself “as any true author does,” Moe takes credit for the poem’s name saying it was a solo effort. This breaks Lisa’s heart and she abandons him. Moe seems to show no remorse and even asks Lisa to craft another poem for him, but she refuses.

“Moe’n’a Lisa” is the sixth episode of the eighteenth season of The Simpsons, which originally aired on 19 November 2006. It was written by Matt Warburton and directed by Mark Kirkland. The title of the episode is a pun on the Mona Lisa as well as an allusion to the title of the season one episode "Moaning Lisa".

Jonathan Franzen arrived late, and last, in a family of boys in Webster Groves, Missouri. The Discomfort Zone is his intimate memoir of his growth from a "small and fundamentally ridiculous person," through an adolescence both excruciating and strangely happy, into an adult with embarrassing and unexpected passions. It’s also a portrait of a middle-class family weathering the turbulence of the 1970s, and a vivid personal history of the decades in which America turned away from its midcentury idealism and became a more polarized society.

The story Franzen tells here draws on elements as varied as the explosive dynamics of a Christian youth fellowship in the 1970s, the effects of Kafka’s fiction on his protracted quest to lose his virginity, the elaborate pranks that he and his friends orchestrated from the roof of his high school, his self-inflicted travails in selling his mother’s house after her death, and the web of connections between his all-consuming marriage, the problem of global warming, and the life lessons to be learned in watching birds.

These chapters of a Midwestern youth and a New York adulthood are warmed by the same combination of comic scrutiny and unqualified affection that characterize Franzen’s fiction, but here the main character is the author himself. Sparkling, daring, arrestingly honest, The Discomfort Zone narrates the formation of a unique mind and heart in the crucible of an everyday American family.
[TEXT FROM JONATHANFRANZEN.COM]

The Disconfort Zone, by Jonathan Franzen • Farrar, Straus and Giroux • SET 2006
[Jacket design by Lynn Buckley • Jacket art: "Map of a Man's Heart", from McCall's Magazine, January 1960]

More than any other single book, Kafka's The Trial changed my life. There are so many books I fell like plugging, but a particular kind of comedy that I'm suited for and most susceptible to is the comedy of not knowing yourself. - of desperately avoiding the news about yourself. The Trial was the first book where I really encountered that. It's a giant instance of that comedy! Kenzaburo Oë's A Personal Matter is also right up there. Everyone should read that. Short, too - you can do it in an evening. I thought Stendhal's The Chaterhouse of Parma was going to change my life. I briefly thought I would quit writing fiction for a few years and become a political journalist. Then I found out how boring it is to be a political journalist.
JONATHAN FRAZEN for TIMEOUT

Jonathan Franzen (born August 17, 1959) is an award-winning American novelist and essayist. Franzen was born in Chicago, Illinois, raised in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, and educated at Swarthmore College. He lives on Upper East Side of New York City, and writes for The New Yorker magazine. In 2001 he won the National Book Award for Fiction. Discomfort Zone, A Personal History is his most recent book.
[AN INTERVIEW WITH HIM CAN BE FOUND HERE – FROM 'DIE ZIET' AT SIGNANDSIGHT.COM]

Did you know that "Gulliver's Travels" author Jonathan Swift refused to talk to anyone for an entire year? That Voltaire got rid of boring guests by pretending to faint? That Balzac's hobby was hypnotism?
A collection of over 300 lists - everything you could possibly ask about famous books and writers - is here: authors who wrote standing up, famous last words, writers who couldn't spell, unusual work habits, sexual peccadilloes, unintended double entendres in the classics, bad reviews of future classics, and even writers who were spies.
Find out about the weird and wonderful behaviour of all these wordsmiths such as the poet who, while at Trinity College, Cambridge, kept a bear in his rooms because there was a rule against keeping dogs or cats, or the poet who tied a cat to a kite during a thunderstorm in the hope of seeing it electrocuted.

Aubrey Malone was born in Co Mayo, but moved to Dublin in 1969. He has worked mainly in journalism and is the author of numerous publications including The Brothers Behan (Blackhall), the best-selling The Cynic's Dictionary (Prion); Historic Pubs of Dublin (New Island); and a biography of Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway: The Grace and the Pressure (Robson Books). His most recent book is a biography of the American poet Charles Bukowski, The Hunchback of East Hollywood (Headpress).

Literary Trivia by Aubrey Malone • PRION BOOKS • 2004
[A new edition is coming in January 2008, but we still have this one left. It's an enjoying book about literary facts that will fill your curiosity about authors and their creative process to write and to live for it.]

Entre os dias 10 e 19 de Novembro de 1919, Franz Kafka, insatisfeito com a fria recepção paterna diante do anúncio de seu noivado com Julie Wohryzek, escreveu ao pai, o comerciante judeu Hermann Kafka, uma longa carta, mais de cem páginas manuscritas. Kafka tinha então 36 anos, uma vida pessoal acanhada, nunca se casara ou constituíra família, uma carreira mediana de funcionário burocrático e uma ambição literária ainda longe de estar realizada. Na carta, que nunca foi enviada ao seu destinatário, Kafka põe a nu toda a sua mágoa em relação à autoridade do pai, que ele chama, alternadamente, de "tirano", de "regente", de "rei" e de "Deus". Numa experiência de auto-análise, além de uma belíssima peça literária, mostra como, a seu ver, o jugo paterno lhe minou a auto-estima, condenando-o a uma personalidade fraca e assustada.

Carta ao Pai, além de torturante prova da trágica ligação de Kafka com o velho Hermann, é um de seus mais célebres escritos. A carta, nunca enviada, encerrou literariamente, para o escritor, a tensão de um dia-a-dia asfixiante com a família, dominada por uma figura paterna tirânica e injusta, que não concedia misericórdia a ninguém. Lendo este texto e os Diários, é quase impossível separar a oficina literária de Kafka de suas preocupações como pessoa, os seus sentimentos e ideias a respeito dos que o cercavam, e do momento em que vivia.
Hermann Kafka não aceitava Franz, e essa não-aceitação extrema estava ligada ao facto do filho, entre outras coisas, se dedicar à atividade literária. Kafka chegou mesmo a afirmar que seus textos possuíam o único objetivo de tentar mostrar ao pai seu valor e sua importância. Escrevendo: "A minha actividade de escritor tratava de ti, nela eu apenas me queixava daquilo que não podia queixar-me junto ao teu peito".

Além de disponibilizar ao leitor de um dos textos mais emocionantes da literatura ocidental, estava edição destaca-se por dar prioridade à dimensão biográfica do seu autor. A leitura da carta e de tudo o que a envolve abre a luz sobre o drama humano universal do autor e faz-nos entrar dentro da sua angústia, que gerou obras-primas como O Processo, A Metamorfose ou América, entre outras.

Claro que não quero dizer que aquilo que sou se deve apenas à tua influência. Seria um grande exagero (e eu até tenho tendência para estes exageros). É bem possível que, mesmo se tivesse crescido completamente fora da tua influência, não conseguisse vir a ser um indivíduo a teu contento. Ter-me-ia tornado, talvez, um indivíduo mais fraco, mais ansioso, mais indeciso, mais inquieto, nem um Robert Kafka, nem um Karl Hermann, mas um ser completamente diferente daquilo que sou, e teríamos conseguido darmo-nos às mil maravilhas. Ter-me-ia sentido feliz por te ter como amigo, chefe, tio, avô, e até mesmo (se bem que com alguma reserva) como sogro. Só que como pai foste forte de mais para mim, sobretudo atendendo a que os meus irmãos morreram de tenra idade, e que só muito mais tarde viriam as minhas irmãs, pelo que tive de aguentar o primeiro embate completamente sozinho, sendo eu fraco de mais para isso.

Carta ao Pai, de Franz Kafka • RELÓGIO D'ÁGUA • MAR 2004

From a Russian who began to write for children when, in the 1930's, his avant-garde adult poetry couldn't be published (and who died a political prisoner): a deceptively simple cumulative tale about a boy whose sled runs, one by one, into a hunter, a dog, a fox, and a hare, carrying them all together until they smash into a bear. "And since then,/I've heard it said,/Willie never/rides his sled.'' Vladimir Radunsky profiles the action, close up in the picture plane, on a cloud of windblown snow. First seen as a thoughtful lad gazing skyward, Will encounters the stolid hunter head-on, landing beneath him; the headlong journey spins ever more out of control as it hurtles on a collision course toward the big red bear. The dynamic action will intrigue little children, but this fable will most interest those old enough to appreciate the subtext and the powerful art.

[CLICK ON THE IMAGE]

“The Story of a Boy Named Will”, by Daniil Kharms & Vladimir Rudunski
translated by Jamey Gambrell © North-South Books • 1993

I am interested only in nonsense, only in that which has no practical meaning.
DANIIL KHARMS • 1937

When I write poetry, the most important thing for me is not the idea, not the contents and not the form and not the obscure notion of "quality", but something even more obscure and unintelligible to the rational mind, but understandable to me... This is purity of order. This purity is the same in the sun, in the grass, in man, and in poetry. Real art stands side by side with the first reality. It creates the world and is its first reflection.
DANIIL KHARMS • 1928

«In “Jakob von Gunten,” the 1909 novel by the German-speaking Swiss writer Robert Walser, the hero adopts the motto “To be small and to stay small.” The words apply just as well to Walser himself, whose life and work played out as a relentless diminuendo. The up-and-coming young novelist of the period before the First World War, capable of producing three novels in as many years, turned to shorter forms, and saw his audience and his income dwindle gradually through the war years and the nineteen-twenties. Once a fixture of smart Berlin society, Walser exchanged the world of salons for a series of tiny furnished rooms and, finally, in 1929, a mental institution. Even his handwriting diminished; he was able to squeeze a last novel—a short one, but still—onto just twenty-four sides of octavo-size paper. For years, some scholars believed that the script in which Walser composed this novel, “The Robber,” and many other later works was an uncrackable private code, and not until 1972, fifteen years after his death, did transcriptions from the so-called Bleistiftgebiet, or “pencil area,” begin to appear. The publication, starting in the eighties, of six volumes of painstakingly transcribed texts brought to light some of Walser’s most beautiful and haunting writing, and reinforced his posthumous reputation in German. The incredible shrinking writer is a major twentieth-century prose artist who, for all that the modern world seems to have passed him by, fulfills the modern criterion: he sounds like nobody else. [...]»
...
This is part of an article written by Benjamim Kunkle for one of the The New Yorkers of last August, is still fresh - Walser is always fresh! - and the whole text can be found right here. The New Yorker and Robert Walser lay down on the shelves of BLOOM everyday. They are one of the many reasons to come and discover what's above and beneath them.

O mundo, em especial o mundo urbano, reino de delírio e alucinação onde a luz das imagens sobrepostas provoca cegueira, tornou-se estetizado, e esta estetização resulta numa forma de anestesia, diminuindo consequentemente a nossa capacidade crítica. Neil Leach, professor de Teoria da Arquitectura, parte desta evidência para fazer o ponto da situação no limiar de um novo século, usando a arquitectura enquanto objecto exemplificativo da sua tese. Com efeito, a arquitectura encontra-se potencialmente comprometida com a estética, com a aura de fantasia da imagem, e os arquitectos são particularmente sensíveis a uma estética que fetichiza a imagem efémera. Neste mundo embriagante e obcecado da imagem, onde todos passamos a maior parte do tempo no interior de criações arquitectónicas, a estética da arquitectura ameaça transformar-se na anestética da arquitectura.

Neil Leach parte das ideias de Walter Benjamin, estendendo-se a autores como Jean Baudrillard e Guy Debord, para desenvolver uma nova crítica, fortemente incisiva, às consequências da crescente preocupação com as imagens e a sua produção na cultura arquitectónica contemporânea. Na actual cultura do consumo estético, uma «cultura do cocktail», os discursos significativos dão lugar a estratégias de sedução, e o design arquitectónico fica reduzido ao jogo superficial de formas de sedução vazias.

Pegando na história da arquitectura portuguesa no século XX, principalmente para a metade primeira, assistimos a um bom exemplo desta incapacidade de tratamento, em profundidade, do que de fora se vai podendo ver ou saber que existe. A capacidade com que um mesmo arquitecto fazia ao moderno ou outro estilo qualquer, consoante programa da encomenda e encomendador, era, não só papável, como assumido por alguns. Este ecletismo tardio terminou? Ou será que sofreu um abrandamento com as décadas de 1950 e 1960 e voltou a estar presente desde essa altura?
A falta de linhas de força reflexivas, teóricas e históricas, a superficialidade com que tantas vezes o lado da arquitectura como conhecimento foi encarado, alimentam em enumeras situações uma considerável superficialidade da arquitectura portuguesa. Nesse sentido, perfeitamente coerente com muito do que se passa no resto do mundo que tem poder económico para construir Arquitectura. Que se estende ao exemplo bem vivo de Macau.
A resposta mais madura chegará quando se consiga estar olhos nos olhos com qualquer tipo de produção arquitectónica, mediática ou não, e se souber dela ler as linhas de força que lhe dão especificidade. Os brilhos, só por si, são mais anestesiantes do que matéria prima do trabalho que é necessário fazer à volta e de dentro da arquitectura. Talvez o bom senso não seja uma atitude a secundarizar.
[TEXTO DAQUI E DALI]

A Anestética da Arquitectura, de Neil Leach • ANTÍGONA • SET 2005

A primeira incursão de Frederico Lourenço no humor satírico

A seguir aos diálogos mais literariamente perfeitos de Platão (Protágoras e Banquete), a grande obra-prima da prosa grega é essa jóia que dá pelo nome de Caracteres. Foi composta no século IV antes de Cristo por Teofrasto, escritor natural da ilha de Lesbos, que se estabeleceria em Atenas para estudar com Platão e Aristóteles; consiste numa sequência de trinta caricaturas miniaturais em prosa, que delineiam, em poucas palavras, toda uma personalidade com traço certeiro, sarcástico e genialmente lacónico: O parolo, O forreta, O pedante, O parlapatão, etc.

Frederico Lourenço, numa primeira incursão no humor satírico, modernizou e aportuguesou os Caracteres de Teofrasto, compondo uma sequência de tipos cómicos em número igual (30) aos do autor grego, mas com personalidades contemporâneas: A pata brava, O poeta mundano, O gay homofóbico, A política de direita, O monárquico de esquerda, O médico filosófico, O surfista, O piroso, A pintora chique, etc. Pediu a Richard de Luchi - cujo traço lembra o de dois ilustres conterrâneos seus, Osbert Lancaster e Ionicus, e que já colaborara com Frederico Lourenço na adaptação para jovens da Odisseia - para ilustrar cada retrato.

Além de retratos “humanos”, os Caracteres de Frederico Lourenço incluem outros, zoomórficos, já que, como diz o povo português, a muitos animais “só lhes falta falar” – ao passo que, no respeitante a muitos seres humanos, “mais valia estarem calados”.
É uma novidade da editora Livros Cotovia, que segue, no seu rumo, o mesmo padrão de independência com que têm fomentado a diferença na sua colecção de títulos.

Caracteres, de Frederico Lourenço • COM DESENHOS DE RICHARD DE LUCHI
LIVROS COTOVIA • ISBN: 9789727952175 • OUT 2007