The artist and musician Libby Lavella, in her presentation about ambiguity in art and music on Sunday night at the Santa Monica Art Studios (in the Categorically Not! series - see my description here), ended by reading a lovely extract from some writing of Salman Rushdie. It really resonated with me, and so I thought it would share it with you. I found out from her where it was from. It’s from his novel “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”. You can see a longer extract in January Magazine here, but I’ll place here the part that she read:
Archive for the 'literature' Category
I’m a big fan of Haruki Murakami’s writing. (Photo right by Elena Seibert). A huge fan, even though I’m only on a second book by him.
I read “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” last year and am on “Kafka on the Shore” right now. In each case, I read the opening paragraph and was immediately sucked right into the book.
The writing is, quite simply, wonderfully stirring, with stunning light, chilling darkness and everything in between (including, notably, a great sense of humour). The light and darkness are to be found in the interior worlds of the characters that are explored in the writing and how they connect to the rest of the world as they move through it. A person’s place in the world, relationship to the world, and how they affect the world Continue reading ‘Summer Reading: Distance Writing’
Don’t forget - The LA Times Festival of Books is on this weekend. As I said earlier:
It’s a Los Angeles celebration of the written word, done in wonderful sunshine, with hundreds of marvellous events in three days for young and old - Yes, it is the LA Times Festival of Books, coming up the weekend starting April 25th. The main daytime proceedings take place on the 26th and 27th (Saturday and Sunday) and I recommend them to you if you’ve not been. Mark your calendar. (Once you’re over there on Sunday, stay for the Categorically Not! event in the evening (entitled “Loops”), which will involve among others, science writer Dava Sobel!!) (Above right: One of the 2008 theme images from the Festival’s website. More here.)
Enjoy!
-cvj
It’s a bit more than a month away. It’s always fun every year. It’s a Los Angeles celebration of the written word, done in wonderful sunshine, with hundreds of marvellous events in three days for young and old - Yes, it is the LA Times Festival of Books, coming up the weekend starting April 25th. The main daytime proceedings take place on the 26th and 27th (Saturday and Sunday) and I recommend them to you if you’ve not been. Mark your calendar. (Once you’re over there on Sunday, stay for the Categorically Not! event in the evening (entitled “Loops”), which will involve among others, science writer Dava Sobel!!) (Above right: One of the 2008 theme images from the Festival’s website. More here.)
The Friday evening will see the book prizes given out, kicking off the festival as usual. I remembered this just now because I found myself curious about the shortlist of books in the Science and Technology category. I wondered if there was something on Continue reading ‘Festival of Books’
Over on Correlations, my co-blogger Damon Gambuto has started a new series: “Science Fiction Friday”, and guess who is featured for the first one? Greg Bear!
I’ve really enjoyed his writing over many years, starting with the first books of his I read in quick succession (”Legacy”, and “Forge of God”, along with their follow-up works), right up to the very good “Darwin’s Radio”. I’ve not read anything more recent of his yet.
Anyway, the interview (which will be in several parts) looks really good and interesting Continue reading ‘Greg Bear on Correlations’
This was originally posted on Cosmic Variance on May 3rd 2006. It was a report on the Categorically Not! event that took place on 23rd April 2006, entitled “Really?”. I’ve decided to reproduce it here as a happy memory of the wonder that Artist and Educator Bob Miller brought into the lives of many. (See next post.) It was a marvellous event overall (probably my favourite Cat Not! event), with several excellent presentations, and so I’ll reproduce the post in its entirety (with slight corrections) to give you a sense of the evening. -cvj
Well, apologies to all concerned for taking so long to post this, but here it is. The Categorically Not! two Sundays ago was -as usual- extremely enjoyable and informative. This one was all about Illusion, in some sense, the theme being “Really?”.
We started out with a few opening remarks by Bob Miller, who specialises in what 
some might call “light art”. He’s well known for creating a large number of wonderful works using light and shadow, several of them forming the cornerstone of exhibitions in the Exploratorium in San Francisco, for example. Have a look at the “lightwalk”, linked here.
Bob did not talk much, because he wanted everyone to just play, learning from getting involved. And play they did. He’d been up all night preparing (with KC Cole’s help) various fun things for people to do (see the table in the picture above, for example). All simple, and all with a little printed explanation about what to do, and the operation of the thing they were playing with or effect they were seeing.
Aha. I’ve been meaning to get around to some Doris Lessing for a long time. The Academy is trying to tell me something:
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2007 is awarded to the English writer Doris Lessing “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny”.
Do you have any favourites of hers you recommend?
Here are some passages from her biography on the Nobel site, talking about some of the works that really got her a great deal of wider recognition, emphasizing her important intersection with other genres such as feminism and science fiction (to pick Continue reading ‘Even More for my Reading List’
The MacArthur Fellowships were announced today. These are particularly great, as it’s awarded across so many different fields, and I always learn about interesting work going on by reading the synopses at the website. Congratulations to all recipients!! Before I point to the list, I’d like to make a plea that will, of course, go unheeded.
Please please, people of the media, stop calling them “genius grants”. Just stop. By way of explanation, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the term just seems to strike the wrong tone about what these things should be about. It seems to me to push the recipients away as being “other” rather than encouraging us all to embrace the qualities that they are being encouraged to show by getting the fellowships. Ok, that’s the end of my plea.
Here’s a reminder of what the Fellowship is about (extract from their site):
The second of the Point of View campus events in the Visions and Voices series is on Thursday. It is at 7:00pm at the Gin Wong conference center (which is near Fine Arts and Architecture, by the way.) See the bottom of this post for some earlier events of this type, and this post for the background on Visions and Voices.
This time we’ll have a Poet, a Dancer, and a Physicist! Here’s some blurb that KC Cole (my co-conspirator in this business) wrote about who is appearing and what they’ll be saying:
The next Categorically Not! is Sunday 25th March. The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). It’s a series - started and run by science writer K. C. Cole - of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. I strongly encourage you to come to them if you’re in the area. There’s a new website showing past and upcoming events here. You can also have a look at some of the descriptions I did of some events in some earlier posts (such as here and here), and the description of some of the recent special ones on Point of View and Uncertainty that I organized with K. C. as USC campus events (here, here (with video) and here).
Here is a description from the poster for the upcoming programme:
Continue reading ‘Categorically Not! - Vulgarization’
Well, it’s been a very busy week here, and today was one of the most exhausting. So I’m ending the day fading quite a bit. I’ll leave you with a shot of Zadie Smith in full flow, chatting to the LA Times Books editor in front of a paying audience at UCLA this evening. (Part of the UCLA Live series, which is regulalrly interesting.) 
I went along to hear what she had to say, accompanying a friend who had a spare ticket. Ran into my good friend Marc Kamionkowski there, who is apparently a fan of her work. I found the chat to be… nice. Nothing profound, but she’s got a good sense of humour which is vey familiar to me, since it comes from a similar place to mine, I imagine: We have similar backgrounds. I dozed a bit, which was not a reflection on her…. I just doze sometimes during a busy work week.
In terms of the length, I am not sure that it really needed to be as long as 90 minutes, but then that’s probably just me. Frankly, it was better than it could easily have been. Sometimes you go along to hear someone talk about their work, etc, and they end up making great pronoucenments on all sorts of things and you just wish they would shut up and you can go back to appreciating what they do. Not in this case. She is actually quite interesting to listen to, and did not attempt to be an authority on anything other than what she does. There was a lack of depth there that probably comes from the fact that she is young. Were I not so tired, I’d be more charitable and say that she had a “refreshing lightness”… or something like that. Really, I’d like to do it again in 20 or 30 years when she’s had time to really absorb more of life…. to compare and contrast. She has a good ear and eye for observation, so a lot of good stuff will stick over the years, and she’ll be a really special treat to hear from in time.
Was amused to see (the prodigously talented) Tracy Ullman standing just off to my left, while we picked up tickets at the box office. Amused for at least a couple of reasons, and none of them because she stared at me for a moment as though I was familiar. One was because before arriving, I told the friend I was escorting that I might go into stealth mode to avoid the no doubt lots of English people who will turn up, since (1) it is the West LA, and the English Abroad are everywhere on the West side and (2) it is Zadie Smith. Did not expect Tracy Ulman though. Was expecting more anonymous expat English. The other reason? I am not at liberty to explain at this point. Sorry. Maybe later.
The title of the post? (1) Always wanted to use it. (2) I hope that it will be clear tomorrow, or the day after.
Well, I am tired down to the bone and brain, and so will do things involving the following: Gimlet. Sofa. Movie. Pillow.
-cvj
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