Category: people

To celebrate Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, BBC Radio 4 listeners and a panel of historians and writers selected 60 of the Queen’s subjects (i.e., from the Commonwealth, not just the UK) who had the greatest impact on the 60 years of her reign.

Says the philosopher of his latest project, which will be based at a website called “Better Porn”, “Ideally, porn would excite our lust in contexts which also presented other, elevated sides of human nature – in which people were being witty, for instance, or showing kindness, or working hard or being clever – so that our sexual excitement could bleed into, and enhance our respect for these other elements of a good life.”

“A painting [titled The Spear] by a white Cape Town artist, Brett Murray, depicting South African President Jacob Zuma as Soviet leader Lenin – but with his genitals exposed – has caused a storm of controversy. Zuma and the ruling African National Congress have sued the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg to force it to take down the work.”

Beginning in 1974 (following dental surgery), the science-fiction author “experienced and indeed enjoyed a couple of nightlong psychedelic visions with phantasmagoric visual light shows. These hypnagogic episodes continued off and on, together with hearing voices and prophetic dreams, until his death eight years later at age 53. … Now, was this just bad acid or good sodium pentothal?” (Or something else altogether?)

“Rock-star looks aside, Marden eschews cool. In an age where so much painting is purely about itself, he remains entranced by the landscape, light and colour of the world around him.”

“‘The Booker made me a lot of money. I didn’t realise that all over the world, people will read a book just because it won the Booker prize.’ A delicious pause. ‘Not something I would do myself… But then one goes into some quite other, private region to produce a book.’ He gives me a knowing look. ‘I think the Booker can drive people quite mad. That’s why it’s good to be detached from it.'”

“‘The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you: your voice, your mind, your story, your vision,’ the British-born, Minneapolis-based novelist and screenwriter told the 526 newly minted graduates. ‘So write and draw and dance and play as only you can. … Leave the world more interesting for your being here.'”

“‘I started thinking about it,’ Norman Juster explains, ‘and I came to the conclusion that this kid had gone into a world where everything was correct but nothing was right. That was a feeling I understood.'”

“Fun, of course, is something [Jay McInerney has] long been interested in. He had lots of it upon arriving in New York in the early 80s, when he spent his time going to gritty night clubs, snorting coke and squiring various models. These experiences formed the basis for his scabrous debut, Bright Lights, Big City, which was an immediate success when it appeared in 1984, making him both rich and famous. He was soon a member of the literary ‘brat pack’ – its two other chief members were Bret Easton Ellis and Tama Janowitz – and continued moving in glamorously debauched circles, plundering his life in his fiction.”