Category: words

“Cold War modernism,” then, doesn’t refer to experimental artwork produced between the end of World War II and the Reagan administration, but to “the deployment of modernist art as a weapon of Cold War propaganda by both governmental and unofficial actors as well as to the implicit and explicit understanding of modernism underpinning that deployment.

“Don’t get me wrong, we’re doing pretty great on our own, better than ever really. We’ve gotten a bit more independent, not putting all of our eggs into any one basket, gotten better at establishing boundaries. Still not sure, after all that, how we got this all so wrong. Didn’t we both want the same thing? Maybe it really wasn’t us, it was them. Most days it’s hard to remember what we saw in Google. Why did we think we’d make good partners?”

“Those students most in need of great books are by and large too strafed by their environments to invest the necessary force of mind.”

“It is a place of learning and ideas, with books salvaged from the wreckage outside … A photocopy of an old history book, a shelf full of children’s stories, and self-help books by Tony Robbins, sit alongside a J.M. Coetzee novel, a volume of Islamic scholarship, and slim editions of Arabic poetry by Mahmoud Darweesh or Nizar Qabbani. They are read by candlelight during lengthy power outages or at the war front by rebel fighters.”

“The results are imperfect, since the puzzles can be tricky and there is a lot of overlap between English and foreign words. But the broad trend is clear. The puzzle today uses one-third fewer non-English clues and answers than it did at its peak in 1966, and makes two-thirds fewer international references than its peak in 1943.” (includes interactive puzzle)

“‘Most Chinese grew up thinking Tagore was mild and romantic, all stars, gardens and flowers,’ Mr. Feng said in a recent interview in his Beijing studio. ‘So with my translation, many people felt like their Tagore, the Tagore from their childhood textbooks, had been challenged.'”

“‘It’s not that we’re selling by the yard,’ said the store manager, Nicky Dunne. ‘But if they’re interested in a subject’ — 19th-century French topiary, Brutalist architecture, salmon husbandry or something more obscure — ‘and haven’t properly explored books on that subject, then they come to us.'”

“The world of comics in 2016 resembles the music business in 1977-1980, when agile indie labels such as Rough Trade and Factory outmanoeuvred the major record companies and the majors were forced to respond.”

“Mutter says it’s not far-fetched to think the great online retailer would turn to physical stores. E-book sales have plateaued. They’re popular for niche use, but printed books, he says, are experiencing a resurgence.”