German mystics, cigarettes, watermelon sugar, etc.

Anna Mahler: True art reflects 'the true essential reality - in the language of the medieval German Mystics - the Ground of all Being.' (1962)

Mike Wallace interviewing Bennett Cerf in 1957: 'Bennett, I shall confront you with the charge that book publishers are wantonly exposing young readers to obscene trash. My name is Mike Wallace, the cigarette is Philip Morris. ... today's Philip Morris has what I call a man's kind of mildness.'

John Madera has a blog post in which many authors list their favourite novellas. Certain titles and names recur in these lists, esp. that of Richard Brautigan. Sarah Hall wrote a note on Brautigan last June. All this has convinced me to read something by Brautigan. I've ordered a collection of three of his stories and will probably begin with In Watermelon Sugar.

A lengthy piece on Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's doctoral work gave him expert knowledge of 'neurosyphilis', knowledge which influenced at least three of his stories.

Another list of New Wave tunes. I guess the New Wave bands from my own humble shire (Canada) didn't get much exposure elsewhere, since none of them make this list. I made a short list of them several days ago.

This is not New Wave but I really like it:

Globe & Mail 2009 book lists

The Globe & Mail (Toronto) lists the top 20 Canadian fiction titles of 2009 (they should have specified that these are the top English-Canadian titles). It has also just released its top 100 list for the year. Here's their list of foreign (that is, un-Canadian) fiction.

Canadian New Wave Music Videos (all 80's)

At Retrospace there's a great list of 150 new wave fav's. Some good Canadian groups didn't make the list, perhaps due to lack of exposure south of the border. So, I thought I'd start my own small list here.

In this list, the first links on each line are to band histories while the links to particular songs (after colons) are to YouTube videos.

Strange Advance: We Run and Worlds Away;

The Spoons: Nova Heart and Romantic Traffic (with Toronto subway footage, inc. the old red trains);

The Extras: Can't Stand Still (nice song and one of the best animated videos I've seen);

Platinum Blonde (part British): Doesn't Really Matter and Standing in the Dark;

Men Without Hats: Pop Goes the World and Safety Dance;

Blue Peter: Don't Walk on Past (Warning: ankle injuries have been sustained by people trying to imitate the dance moves that start at 3:01);

The Box: Must I Always Remember?

Chalk Circle: April Fool;

Images in Vogue: Lust for Love; and

Saga -- I'm not sure that they were New Wave but I love this band and they do work the synthesizers. They were bigger in Germany than at home. Among their best tunes were:

Don't be Late (German concert version), On the Loose and Wind Him Up.

Update (Dec. 6, 2009): NPR has a list of 50 favourite New Wave tunes.

Potpourri (Nov. 23, '09)

The photo is of Tamara Dobson in Cleopatra Jones.

'Only the Nobel Prize eludes [Philip Roth]. “I try not to think about it,” he says.'

'Anyone wishing to sketch a picture of Dutch literature of the past fifty years must look at five major writers: Willem Frederik Hermans, Gerard Reve (both now deceased), Harry Mulisch, Cees Nooteboom, and Hella S. Haasse.'

A 1945 letter by Kurt Vonnegut, POW

Terry Eagleton on Walter Benjamin

A review of The Wall in My Head: Words and Images from the Fall of the Iron Curtain

Imre Kertész stirs controversy in Hungary: 'He reckons that in today's Hungary, it is extremists and antisemites who have their voices heard, and the tendency of lying and suppressing the truth is stronger than ever.'

Eric Hoffer 'was a crank, in the best sense, in an age of poseurs.'

A Guardian interview with Mavis Gallant

Aussie radio interview of Michael Gazzaniga on split brains, etc.

Aussie radio on Seneca and Aristotle

Annabel Lyon interviewed about her Aristotle novel: 'I would come home from going on a date which was kind of miserable, and I’d feel gross and wasn’t ready for bed right away, and I would start reading Aristotle. No wonder I didn’t get more dates.'

Aussie TV documentary on BIID (in which someone with a healthy arm or leg wants it amputated)

Sartre's mescaline visions

Selection bias in the Stanford Prison Experiment?

Frank Wilson on 'Philip K. Dick's deconstruction of madness'

Retrospace lists the best 150 New Wave tunes

WSJ article on cafes (inc. a bit about Vienna cafes) (ht Books, Inq.)

One impact of The Impact Agenda: 'Forty-eight academics, including ten Nobel laureates and 26 fellows of the Royal Society, write an open letter to Research Councils UK calling for the withdrawal of the "ill-advised" policy.'

National Film Board (Canada) posts a 72-minute documentary about Troy Hurtubise's quest for a grizzle-bear-proof suit

The Five Stairsteps:

Two reviews of Jonke's System of Vienna

In December, the Dalkey Archive Press is releasing an English translation of the late Gert Jonke's short novel, System of Vienna, of which two early reviews have appeared. The reviews are in Emprise Review and The Collagist. The translator, Vincent Kling, had a nice remembrance of Jonke in Calque last summer. Here's a complete list of Jonke's works.

Update (Nov. 29, 2009): Here's a review of System of Vienna by John Madera at The Millions.

Potpourri (Nov. 12)

Photo of the Vienna International Chamber of Commerce Convention (1953) -- from the Life.com archive.

"Something [Coetzee] does not yet seem to have found a way to joke about is the cold class and money exclusions of the Southern Suburbanites of Cape Town. One gathers that even Australians seem warm and friendly after them." From a review of Summertime, the Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg, South Africa)

"London, more interested in Mesopotamian oil than rewarding its erstwhile allies, responded with brute force: 2,200 British troops and 9,000 natives died in the ensuing bloodbath." From a review of The Arabs: a history in The Scotsman

Six greatest fantasy books selected by Lev Grossman

Whither withering Detroit? "The fact that Urban Farming moved to Detroit is exactly the effect I’m talking about. To anyone with aspirations in this area, it is Detroit that offers the greatest opportunity to make your mark. It is the ultimate blank canvas."

"In Germany romanticism did not stay within the boundaries of art and philosophy, it gave momentum to political nationalism, to an irrational Lebensphilosophie and to a fatal departure from the path of the Enlightenment. All this, as Safranski narrates in detail, added to the ideological powder-keg that eventually exploded in Hitler’s Germany."

"Intellectual voyeurism is alive and well, especially when it is permitted to intrude into the private life of a classically repressed personality like Max Weber. Joachim Radkau’s biography accomplishes the task of scholarly snooping well, and will satisfy even the most prurient curiosity."

"Anyway, my friends reminded me, writing for a porno mag is an important American literary rite of passage...." (ht Books, Inq.)

Yankee physician in Toronto defends Canadian healthcare in an Alabama paper.

Martha Nussbaum interviewed on Aussie radio about Stoics and Epicureans.

New on-line journal

Interesting new journal on-line, The Berlin Review of Books.