Reading over my old translations, I’m struck by how much they need editing for flow and smoothness. There’s quite a road ahead XD
charmianland
RSSDaniel Waples - hang drum solo - HD (by Soniricall Recomienda)
Sazaedo
would like to go here someday
Courtesan of Hell by Kawanabe Kyosai, 1865
Some background on the Courtesan of Hell, or Jigoku Taiyuu.
(Source: vintagemarlene)
Just started reading this - I wanted to read it because it was highly recommended by the late Martin Skidmore, but was also slightly put off by its being, er, an 8-volume, several thousand page manga life of Buddha.
Anyway, 200 pages of sword-fights, tiger-fights, slave revolts, philosophy and betrayal later - and the Buddha hasn’t even been born yet! - and I’m adding all the other volumes to my wishlist. I’ve by no means read a lot of manga - five or six series, almost all quite modern - so this is my first exposure to an older series (and to the legendary Tezuka!) and his style is, for someone raised on Western comics, bewitchingly hard to parse. The hard-coding of the humour/cartoony and serious/detailed dichotomy in most Western comics from the 70s/80s onwards makes the tonal palette of Buddha come as a shock: wonderfully fluid, funny, kinetic cartooning in the service of a gripping, unflinching adventure story.
(Source: happyhappydurinsday)
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas predict ‘massive implosion’ in film industry | The Verge
“Bigger theaters, with a lot of nice things. Going to the movies is going to cost you 50 bucks, maybe 100. Maybe 150.” It will be more in line with sporting events, with films playing in these high-end cinemas for as long as a year. “And that’s going to be what we call ‘the movie business.’ But everything else is going to look more like cable television on TiVo.”
Later:
Today’s movies are in hotels two weeks after they hit theaters, he said. “There’s going to be eventually day and date with movies” — when films are available on demand at home the same day they hit theaters — “and eventually there’s going to be a price variance. You’re going to have to pay $25 to see the next Iron Man. And you’re probably only going to have to pay $7 to see Lincoln.”
Lucas jumped in: “I think eventually the Lincolns are going to go away and they’re going to be on television.”
Spielberg smiled, saying, “And mine almost was! This close. Ask HBO — this close!”
….I don’t want to pay $50 to see a movie >_> I guess they’re saying it’s going to be like going to the theater or an opera?
Coetzee’s comments on the current economic crisis are not only wrongheaded but fatuous. Nothing has really happened to the world economy, he writes airily to Auster, other than a change of statistics. It is unlikely that the Bank of England, not to speak of those who have had their homes or livelihoods snatched from them by financial gangsters, would be over-impressed by this argument. Neither, judging from his circumspect reply, is Paul Auster, though he is too respectful of his renowned colleague to say so outright. Mysteriously, Coetzee goes on to suggest that putting this right requires an entirely new economic system, a piece of logic that his correspondent wisely leaves untouched. The truth is that neither man knows anything about economics, and there is no reason why being skilled in handling a metaphor should grant you such insight. Only those who have inherited a belief in the artist as sage, prophet and visionary are likely to feel discomfited by the fact that neither of these bien-pensant liberals has much that is profound or original to say about the body politic. Indeed, Coetzee’s most piercing insight into the subject is to realize that he ought to shut up. “At this point”, he announces, wryly comparing himself to the demented Ezra Pound, “I think I should quit my role as commentator on economic affairs.” Yet why then allow his absurd speculations to be published in the first place? Auster, too, finally concedes that “It is a subject I am ill qualified to talk about”, though not before talking about it rather too much.
[…] Like a good many writers, these two novelists share a predictable distaste for critics. The more eminent the author, the less accustomed he or she usually is to negative comment, and thus the more prickly and thin-skinned when it comes along. Auster remarks of a notoriously abrasive assault on his work by the critic James Wood that it felt like being mugged by a stranger, a simile which those who have been coshed over the head and robbed might well regard as a touch hyperbolic. (How many people are mugged by friends?) The critic, Coetzee grumbles, is “like the child lobbing pebbles at the gorilla in the zoo, knowing that he is protected by the bars”. Apart from being untrue – critics have actually been punched by irate writers, as Auster himself concedes, or savaged by their wrathful responses – the zoo image is unwittingly revealing. Are all critics really infantile, and all writers helpless, lumbering victims of their poisoned shafts? Auster himself isn’t averse to a spot of character assassination, deploring the “arrogance, self-importance, and single-minded, all-consuming vanity” of a deceased friend, though this, admittedly, is for private consumption only.
—Terry Eagleton on ‘Paul Auster and J. M. Coatzee, Letters 2008—2011’
I love Paul Auster, but that is a sick burn!
(read the entire article for full entertainment value, such as the opening line: “It is a Romantic delusion to suppose that writers are likely to have something of interest to say about race relations, nuclear weapons or economic crisis simply by virtue of being writers.”
No one will be alive by the last book. In fact, they all die in the fifth. The sixth book will be just a thousand-page description of snow blowing across the graves.
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George R.R. Martin [when asked if he was going to let any Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire characters live] (via vaginawoolf)
This man is my hero
(via rifa)
I do intend to read the series once he finishes. No idea when that will be though.
(Source: let-them-eat-static)
What's XIM?
It’s the messaging component of the xkit extension. See http://xkit-extension.tumblr.com/
Tetraphobia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fear of the #4. In Japanese, it is pronounced the same as death (although this is not the original Japanese word for four, but the Chinese numeral, imported with the kanji). In Chinese, the pronunciation is similar but not the same. (The superstition also exists in China, but I wonder if it is weaker due to this?)
Author Iain Banks has died aged 59, two months after announcing he had terminal cancer, his family has said.
Banks, who was born in Dunfermline, Fife, revealed in April he had gall bladder cancer and was unlikely to live for more than a year.
He was best known for his novels The Wasp Factory, The Crow Road and Complicity.
In a statement, his publisher said he was “an irreplaceable part of the literary world”.
A message posted on Banksophilia, a website set up to provide fans with updates on the author, quoted his wife Adele saying: “Iain died in the early hours this morning. His death was calm and without pain.”
Publisher Little, Brown Book Group said the author was “one of the country’s best-loved novelists” for both his mainstream and science fiction books.
“Iain Banks’ ability to combine the most fertile of imaginations with his own highly distinctive brand of gothic humour made him unique,” it said.
After announcing his illness in April, Banks asked his publishers to bring forward the release date of his latest novel, The Quarry, so he could see it on the shelves.
On Sunday, it was revealed the book - to be released on 20 June - would detail the physical and emotional strain of cancer.
It describes the final weeks of the life of a man in his 40s who has terminal cancer.
Speaking to the BBC’s Kirsty Wark, Banks said he was some 87,000 words into writing the book when he was diagnosed with his own illness.
“I had no inkling. So it wasn’t as though this is a response to the disease or anything, the book had been kind of ready to go,” he said.
“And then 10,000 words from the end, as it turned out, I suddenly discovered that I had cancer.”
Little, Brown said the author was presented with finished copies of his last novel three weeks ago.
Banks’ first novel, The Wasp Factory, was published in 1984 and was ranked as one of the best 100 books of the 20th Century in a 1997 poll conducted by book chain Waterstones and Channel 4.
In 2008 he was named one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945 in a list compiled by The Times.
The writer also penned sci-fi titles under the name Iain M Banks. His most recent book, The Hydrogen Sonata, was released last year.
Fellow Scottish author Ken MacLeod paid tribute to Banks, saying he had “left a large gap in the Scottish literary scene as well as the wider speaking English world”.
“He brought a wonderful combination of the dark and the light side of life and he explored them both without flinching,” he said.
“He brought the same degree of craft and skill and commitment to his science fiction as he did to his mainstream fiction and he never drew any distinction in terms of his pride in what he was doing.”
Another contemporary, Iain Rankin, told the BBC that Banks was “fascinating, curious and full of life”.
“He didn’t take things too seriously, and in a way I’m happy that he refused to take death too seriously - he could still joke about it,” he said. “I think we all thought he would have a bit longer than he got.
“What made him a great writer was that he was childlike; he had a curiosity about the world. He was restless, he wanted to transmit that in his work, and he treated the cancer with a certain amount of levity, the same that made him a great writer.
“You never knew what you were going to get, every book was different.”
Other authors to pay tribute included Irvine Welsh, who tweeted: “RIP Iain Banks. One of the finest writers and greatest imaginations ever.”
Sci-fi writer John-Paul Cleary also said: “Tragic news about Iain Banks, my hero and inspiration, a writer of incredible creativity and wit.”
Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond said: “Iain was an incredibly talented writer whose work, across all genres, has brought pleasure to readers for over 30 years.
“His determination not just to complete his final novel but also to reflect his illness in the pages of his work, will make that work all the more poignant and all the more significant.”
After announcing his illness, Banks had described being “hugely moved” by the public support for him through his website.
“Still knocked out by the love and the depth of feeling coming from so many people; thank you, all of you,” he wrote on Banksophilia last month.
I wonder if people are still using LJ. I still read a few comms via RSS or directly.
In other news I joined XIM under one of my other tumblrs. (Ask if you want the screenname)
About charmianland
Epherema. For something more lasting, see Notesonleaves.
