A Five Minute Interview with Maurice Sendak
As part of their TateShots series of artist interviews, the Tate Galleries spoke with Maurice Sendak about his books and career. I love this bit about his subject matter:
I do not believe I have ever written a children’s book. I don’t know how to write a children’s book. How do you write about it? How do you set out to write a children’s book? It’s a lie.
Also, he’s obsessed with William Blake and comic books.
Via: Papertastebuds
image out of context
Christianity and the Future of the Book
Alan Jacobs writes a beautiful exposition on the importance of understanding technology and theology, underscoring what makes books so incredible:
Consider the moment in the Confessions when, after hearing and obeying the voice telling him to “take it and read,” Augustine sees the words in what he calls “the book of the apostle” that changed his life. Note first that he can open the book to a random place, something that would have been difficult with a scroll; then, after reading the momentous passage, he closes the book, with his finger inserted to mark the place. He goes, “with a face now at peace,” to tell his friend Alypius what has happened, bringing the book with him, and when Alypius asks to see the passage, Augustine simply opens the book to the place marked by his finger and shows it to his friend. To us such a set of movements is absolutely natural — and yet not so many generations before Augustine the incident could not have played out in anything remotely resembling this famous scene. Nor, to anticipate a later stage in this exposition, would it have played out in the same way had Augustine been using a Kindle.
(thanks, Josh)
There’s no law that says you can’t ask anything you want
Yesterday I posted Errol Morris talking about Believing Is Seeing. Here’s Miranda July talking about It Chooses You.
Because, there you are
One of my favorite parts of Hillman Curtis’s book on Creating Short Films is that as soon as you turn the camera on, the person you are interviewing is there. You don’t have to do anything. They will show you who they are. I may not be remembering that part exactly right, but I’m not going to look it up, because it’s true.
Photographs are neither true nor false
Errol Morris talks with The Guardian about his book, Believing Is Seeing.
Guy Laramee, Carved Landscapes
Guy Laramee carves landscapes out of books. He says about his work:
Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains.
Many more examples at the link.
(via marginal revolution)
from the comments
As some have noted, it’s an interesting distinction as to which books we enjoyed as children and which as adults. Nowadays I think Owl Service, for example, is just about a perfect book, but the ending perplexed me when I was a teenager. And maybe there’s a difference too between what we read as “children” and what we read as teens. I loved Heinlein’s ’50s science fiction novels for boys (especially Tunnel in the Sky) in probably 6th and 7th grades. When I was younger than that I loved Phyllis Whitney’s mysteries. I too read Wrinkle in TIme, probably in 6th grade, but I’m not sure I read anything else by L’Engle for several years. I guess I started reading Arthur C Clarke and Ray Bradbury in 8th grade (or maybe 9th) and read a zillion science fiction books in high school. It was summer after 10th, I think, when I read Lord of the Rings; Gormenghast would have followed that in 11th; and maybe in 11th also came along Ballantine’s new “adult fantasy” series, playing off Tolkien’s popularity. It was probably 6th or 7th when I read Call of the Wild and loved it, and I guess it was about the same time when I read some of Kjelgaard’s animal books too. (Daryl’s Big Red may be a Kjelgaard — I can’t swear to it.) Probably before I went into science fiction, I went through a biography period, reading mostly from a series of highly fictionalized books about the childhoods of famous people, many by Augusta Stevenson. (I particularly enjoyed the Knute Rockne book.) I think I read Alice in Wonderland in high school, and loved it, and never read Winnie The Pooh until high school, when I read it because I played Christopher Robin in 11th grade: we did the short Pooh play for several elementary schools.
As an adult — as a retired librarian — what books have I loved? Well, gee whiz, even though I absolutely despise talking animals, I think Charlotte’s Web is one of the premier books of the 20th century, far superior to most “classics” for adults. It works because EB White is a superb writer — and yet its existence has never moved me to read Stuart Little or Trumpet of the Swan. The Book Thief, published within the past decade, I think, is a first-rate book for junior high-ish kids. Louis The Fish by Arthur Yorinks may be my favorite picture book. Where the Wild Things Are is classic of course. L’Engle’s Arm of the Starfish is a fine fine thriller. There are probably more good books for the under-18 crowd than for adults.
The Typographic Desk Reference
This looks beautiful. It’s meant to be an instant reference for all things typographic. You can order one from Amazon or Oak Knoll.
11/22/63
Stephen King interviewed by Errol Morris about his new novel on the JFK assassination:
It’s a little bit like the blind man describing the elephant. One’s got the trunk and says it’s a snake. And one’s got a leg and says it’s a tree. One’s got an ear and says it’s a banana plant. They all say different things because none of them can see the whole thing.
David Milch + HBO + William Faulkner = Television Heaven
David Milch is extending his relationship with HBO. Milch, whose latest series for the pay cable network, Luck, launches in January, has inked a new multi-year deal with HBO where he has been based for the past eight years. Under the new extension, in addition to executive producing Luck with Michael Mann, Milch will develop series and movies based on books by Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner William Falkner. Milch’s Redboard Prods has inked a deal with the literary estate of the iconic American writer who penned novels, short stories, a play and screenplays as well as poetry and essays. The pact covers all of the 19 novels and 125 short stories in the estate, as well as other works, with the exception of those currently optioned by other parties.
This is pretty much my sweet spot. Here’s a quick glimpse into Milch’s new HBO series, Luck:
image out of context
dear clusterflock
To quote my friend, Rich, “let’s talk about all the things that are wrong with these two lists.”
SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY by Gary Shteyngart
Just watch it. (via Austin Kleon)
‘He was the Machiavelli of English kings’
The late 15th and early 16th centuries is a distinctive age in its own right. It’s a world in which England is still part of Christendom, owing allegiance to the Pope. England is still a feudal kingdom, one that’s recognisably medieval — but at the same time you have the emergence of what we think of as the early modern world — the discovery of America, new Renaissance ideas about politics and government, and the widespread appearance of print culture which in terms of communicating these ideas is absolutely crucial.
So this is a volatile world, a world in flux. In a sense Henry VII is typical of this age. He’s somebody who seems to come out of nowhere, seizes power and makes the throne his own.
And much more on the father of Henry the VIII….
Peter Jackson’s video blog while filming The Hobbit
At ten minutes, I was surprised how quickly this went, and how much I enjoyed it. Jackson talks about filming The Hobbit in 3-D, and shows how he and his team are doing it. It’s fascinating both from a technical (he has custom built rigs that incorporate 48 Red Epic cameras) and a story-telling (he has two artists sketch identical scenes in red and blue that render in 3-D to give the cinematographers an exact representation of key moments in the film) perspective. I’m looking forward to seeing the films that will come from this.
FYI
Moby Dick in Pictures
I’m partaking by reading Matt Kish’s Moby Dick in Pictures along with the classic novel. Have any of you read Moby Dick already?
Miranda July, It Chooses You
Each day this week, the Book Bench will feature an excerpt from “It Chooses You,” by Miranda July. The book, to be published on November 15th, recounts July’s adventures with a series of strangers she met through the classified ads in the PennySaver. The encounters helped her finish the script for her film “The Future” — and one of the strangers played a key role in it.
Lucy tweeted this miraculous find, and I’ve enjoyed very much what I’ve seen so far. Here are the links to each excerpt:
Michael. Large Black Leather Jacket. Hollywood.
Andrew. Bullfrog Tadpoles, $2.50 Each. Paramount.
Pam. Photo Albums, $10 Each. Lakewood.
Joe. Fifty Christmas-Card Fronts, $1. Los Angeles.
…
Sheila, I see a Freecycle version of this in your future.
quote out of context
Using Einstein’s E=mc² formula, which states that energy and mass are directly related, Prof Kubiatowicz calculated that filling a 4GB Kindle to its storage limit would increase its weight by a billionth of a billionth of a gram, or 0.000000000000000001g.
Book Cover Out of Context
Full disclosure: I haven’t read the book, but I have been on a bit of a bear kick lately.
(via)
Elmore Leonard
has a sharp ear for dialogue and no mistake, but one of my favorite Leonard characters never utters a word.
The alligator, a ten-foot female weighing about five hundred pounds, opened her eyes and, after several minutes, moved her head from side to side, drowsy, disoriented, not knowing where she was, not catching the scent of anything familiar other than grass and dry soil. No water close by. She raised her head and hissed in the night, in the sound of insects. The wind rose and with it came a scent she recognized as something she liked that she had smelled before sometime in her life and had eaten. After several more minutes she began to move in a sluggish sort of way as though half asleep, not entirely upright on her legs, brushing the grass with her tail. The scent she liked became stronger as she moved and kept moving until her snout touched something she had never smelled before. She sniffed and air came through it into her nostrils, bringing a strong scent of the thing she liked. Now she pushed and whatever it was in front of her bent against her weight until it gave way and the alligator walked through it and felt the ground cold now, smooth and hard. The scent she liked was here, though not enough in one place that it would become the thing itself she could fasten her jaws on and tear or take into her mouth whole. She settled on the cool ground, feeling it become warm beneath her as she went to sleep.
Elmore Leonard. Maximum Bob. 1991.
Erika Larsen, Sámi (2007-2011)
Sámi is the result of a four-year-long project in which Washington DC based photographer Erika Larsen immersed herself in the life of the Sámi people. The Sámi (Joni Mitchell and René Zellweger are both descendents), are an indigenous tribe living within the Arctic circle in the northern parts of Scandinavia and Russia.
from the comments
One of my favorite books, Kiln People, is about a society where you can create clay copies of yourself to do various tasks (menial, dangerous) while you do something else, then at the end of the day you download their memories back into you. This got me into a really creepy conversation with a friend about the difference between experiencing something first hand and remembering something. If the memory is yours (these clay copies have your personality, tactile sensations, everything) what are you losing by not experiencing it? Each moment is fleeting, at what point does something become memory instead of experience? Your senses take a measurable amount of time to transmit information and your body to physically react to things. Something 1/100 of a second ago, something 1/10 of a second ago, something 1/2 a second ago, something 5 seconds ago?
I think a harder question might be: would you rather travel the entire world asynchronously by surrogate and inload the memories, or travel 1/100th or 1/1000th as much but experience it all first hand in real synchronous time? I’m not sure which I’d pick.
dear clusterflock
Would you give up the experience of reading to have instant recall of all books?
