Author: Matthew Westphal

This Tiny Company In India Is America’s Third-Largest Publisher Of Translated Fiction

“Founded in 1982, the Kolkata-based company [Seeagull Books] publishes everything from literary fiction and poetry to philosophy and even cultural anthropology. But these books aren’t what you’d find on the catalogues of publishing giants such as HarperCollins or Penguin Random House. At Seagull Books, the focus is on translated writing from around the world, much of which has never before appeared in English, in India or anywhere else.”

The Text On Historical Markers Has Become Another Front In The Culture Wars

“Stories of Pilgrims and Puritans, Founding Fathers, westward-bound settlers, and brave American soldiers dominated this consensus-driven picture of the nation’s past. The vast majority of historical markers reinforced these themes on a local level, pointing out important events or notable residents – most of them white and male – as travelers wound their way to their final destinations. … This [particular] consensus view of American history has not held up.” New historical markers – for example, one commemorating the KKK Greensboro Massacre of 1979 – now get fought over long and hard. (In that case, even the word “massacre” was contentious.) “Not surprisingly, no event has proved to be more controversial to recognize through historical markers than the American Civil War.”

Why Are Some Of Us Still Reluctant To Take Sylvia Plath At Her Word About Ted Hughes’s Abuse?

“[There’s a] cultural bias against women’s voices and the domestic truths of women’s lives and the deep role this has played in painting Plath as both a pathetic victim and a Cassandra-like, genius freak. It is only in a culture where these two things be claimed simultaneously that Hughes, a known philanderer and violent partner, can spend forty years botching the editing of, or outright destroying, his estranged, now dead wife’s work, then win every conceivable literary prize and be knighted by the Queen.”

British Student Arrested Under Terrorism Laws For Owning ‘The Anarchist Cookbook’

Josh Walker, 26, traveled to Syrian Kurdistan to volunteer with the People’s Protection Units, a secular, social democratic group fighting ISIS. Upon returning to Britain, he was detained at the airport and later released without charge. Then police searched his apartment in Wales. “The authorities have not alleged that he was involved in any kind of terror plot; rather, they claim that because he obtained parts of the Cookbook – which is freely available in its entirety on the internet – he collected information ‘of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.'”

‘The World’s First Kung-Fu Holocaust Exploitation Flick!”

“Exodus to Shanghai is a film that claims to tell the story of Ho Feng-Shan, Chinese consul for Vienna, a rescuer of Jews in prewar Austria. While indeed based on true events, it may be the first Holocaust film that heavily features martial-arts-action scenes. The cast includes German actors, as well as Romanians, some Asians, and two young blond models. It was completed in Israel and sponsored by the Fashion TV channel. Sounds delusional? Not in the eyes of the filmmakers.”