“Hoover needed to know if Existentialism and Absurdism were some kind of front for Communism. To him, everything was potentially a coded re-write of the Communist Manifesto. That was the thing about the Manifesto–it was not manifest: more often it was, as Freud would say, latent. Thus FBI agents were forced to become psychoanalysts and hermeneuts… Thus we find intelligence agents studying scholarly works and attending lectures.”
Category: people
Peter Maxwell Davies: Our Culture Is In Grave Danger
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies said the situation has reached a “serious tipping point” whereby centuries of great works could be lost to future generations more interested in “vacuous celebrity culture and inane talent shows.”
Remembering Doris Lessing (Making The World A Better Place)
“Not many people would describe her as a greater writer than John Updike or Philip Roth. Harold Pinter said, as he received his award, that he wrote in order “to force entry into oppression’s dark rooms”; this was also almost exactly what Doris Lessing did.”
Syd Field, 77, Author Of Screenwriters’ Bible
“Screenplay has sold millions of copies; been translated into more than a dozen languages; served as a reference for James Cameron, Judd Apatow, Tina Fey, Frank Darabont and scores of other successful screenwriters; and inspired plenty of sneers from those who insist that art is born of inspiration, not what Mr. Field, … [argued] is the crucial stuff of a good screenplay: plot points.”
William Weaver, 90, Revered Italian-To-English Translator
“Before him, the professional translator was considered little better than a superior sort of typist. Weaver helped to bring the art of translation out of obscurity and give it a literary credence and recognition. His versions of Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco are models of exactitude and seamless craft.” (Eco said Weaver’s translation of The Name of the Rose was better than the original.)
Margaret Atwood Says Doris Lessing Inspired ‘Colonials With Scant Prospects’
“Some of Lessing’s energy may have come from her outland origins: when the wheel spins, it’s on the edges that the sparks fly. Her upbringing also gave her an insight into the viewpoints and plights of people unlike herself. And if you know you will never really fit in – that you will always be ‘not really English’ – you have less to lose.”
Writing A Viral And Deeply Adored Blog Isn’t Always Puppies And Roses
Author and illustrator Allie Brosh: “I feel this moral responsibility to give as much as I get. But I don’t feel like I can do that with the people who comment on my posts; I can’t give them the level of interaction that they deserve, and that drives me nuts, not being able to listen as well as I can to all the people who want to interact.”
Doris Lessing, 94, Author Of ‘The Golden Notebook’
Upon winning the Nobel for literature in 2007, she said, “I’m 88 years old and they can’t give the Nobel to someone who’s dead, so I think they were probably thinking they’d probably better give it to me now before I’ve popped off.”
Can Actor Jon Hamm Ever Escape The Shadow Of Mad Men’s Don Draper?
“Don Draper is a pretty dismal, despicable guy, so why I would want to take him home with me I don’t know.”
Shakespeare Scholar Anne Barton, 80
“She is perhaps best known in the U.S. for her introductions to Shakespeare’s comedies in “The Riverside Shakespeare,” the backbreaking tome American undergraduates have been lugging in their knapsacks for generations.”