Lilian Nattel's Blog, page 72
January 26, 2011
a look at baby universe
It was a long time ago, and it was a galaxy far, far away, but it's doubtful that any Ewoks, Hutts or Wookies would have had time to evolve there. In fact, the galaxy in question is so far away, and the distance its light must travel to reach Earth so vast, that astronomers see the galaxy as it appeared more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was just 3 or 4 percent its present age.
via scientificamerican.com
Filed under: Miscellany
Crooked Letter: A Review of Excellence
I loved Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin. The structure is perfect, the characters compassionately and truly portrayed, the suspense tight, the language never running away with itself and at times so lovely I had to re-read it.
This is a novel about a quiet hero who is misunderstood by his family and shunned by his community, though he has never hurt a soul, a man who is kind to chickens. It is a novel about another man who is haunted by a choice he made when young, understandable at the time, but which blighted the life of another. And at the end, I cried because the ending was perfect.
My older daughter came to read over my shoulder, wanting to find out what all the fuss was about. "You'd have to read the book," I said, "otherwise it won't make sense that I'm crying." Then she mocked me with an imitation of my boo-ing and hoo-ing, and I can't get mad over that. I know I am not a pretty sight when I weep over a book.
I was curious to read this novel right after American Rust because they have elements in common. Both revolve around a murder and the unlikely friendship between two boys, one a reader, the other an athlete in an economically faltering, single industry area. The setting is different, the rust belt vs the American south, and the literary approach is very different.
No stream of consciousness for Tom Franklin. (Before I go on, I have to tell you that a part of me just wants to jump up and down and say, oh it's so good! Read it!) He superbly uses third person narrative to shift between the perspectives of Larry Ott and his one-time friend, Silas Jones, currently a police officer in Mississippi. That Larry is white and Silas black complicated their friendship in the 1970′s, and that complication had long-term and painful consequences. Franklin also shifts in time between the present and the past, gradually and tantalizingly unraveling two related mysteries, a girl gone missing in 1982 and another in the present day.
I read it breathlessly, unable to put it down. Though I guessed at some of the revelations before they came, that didn't matter because what I really wanted to know was whether wrongs would be righted, whether people could outgrow their old limitations, if they would get the time to do so or if death would get them first. The book is rather shorter than American Rust. At 237 pages it wasted not a word. It's a tight book and a fabulous one. Just have a look at the opening paragraphs:
The Rutherford girl had been missing for eight days when Larry Ott returned home and found a monster waiting in his house.
It'd stormed the night before over much of the Southeast, flash floods on the news, trees snapped in half and pictures of trailer homes twisted apart. Larry, forty-one years old and single, lived alone in rural Mississippi in his parents' house, which was now his house, though he couldn't bring himself to think of it that way. He acted more like a curator, keeping the rooms clean, answering the mail and paying bills, turning on the television at the right times and smiling with the laugh tracks, eating his McDonald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken to what the networks presented him and then sitting on his front porch as the day bled out of the trees across the field and night settled in, each different, each the same.
Filed under: Literary Tagged: Crooked Letter Crooked Letter, Tom Franklin
revolting elites
The noxious thing about the cultural elite is supposed to be its bad faith. Everyone else in America more or less forthrightly confesses that they're trying to grab as much money as they can, and if somebody has meanwhile forced a liberal education on them, that doesn't mean they've had to like it. Upon making their money, real Americans are furthermore honest enough to spend it on those things that evolution or God have programmed humans to sincerely enjoy. In winter recreation, this might be snowmobiling — genuine petroleum-burning fun! — as opposed to cross-country skiing, a tedious trial of aerobic virtue.
via nplusonemag.com
Click on the link above for the rest of this fascinating essay about what elitism has come to mean. It's not those who have piles of money–as long as they love what all Americans love. Kerry was seen as an elite who is rich and has an ivy league degree, but not Bush who is richer and has 2 ivy league degrees because Bush and Palin take pride in stupidity. Rather, elites are those who use big words. How twisted. Anybody can look up a word! But since 1980 general prices have gone up 179% while the cost of education in the U.S. has gone up 827%. The rich right appeals to the poor right by prizing ignorance and eschewing self-improvement. How different from the 1930′s when workmen's circles eagerly attended lectures on science, philosophy, history and literature.
Filed under: Miscellany
Revolting Elites
The noxious thing about the cultural elite is supposed to be its bad faith. Everyone else in America more or less forthrightly confesses that they're trying to grab as much money as they can, and if somebody has meanwhile forced a liberal education on them, that doesn't mean they've had to like it. Upon making their money, real Americans are furthermore honest enough to spend it on those things that evolution or God have programmed humans to sincerely enjoy. In winter recreation, this might be snowmobiling — genuine petroleum-burning fun! — as opposed to cross-country skiing, a tedious trial of aerobic virtue.
via nplusonemag.com
Click on the link above for the rest of this fascinating essay about what elitism has come to mean. It's not those who have piles of money–as long as they love what all Americans love. Kerry was seen as an elite who is rich and has an ivy league degree, but not Bush who is richer and has 2 ivy league degrees because Bush and Palin take pride in stupidity. Rather, elites are those who use big words. How twisted. Anybody can look up a word! But since 1980 general prices have gone up 179% while the cost of education in the U.S. has gone up 827%. The rich right appeals to the poor right by prizing ignorance and eschewing self-improvement. How different from the 1930′s when workmen's circles eagerly attended lectures on science, philosophy, history and literature.
Filed under: Miscellany
environmental heroes, a Chinese village fights back
Click here for a video report about an ordinary farmer with a middle-school education, who leads his village to fight for the closure of a polluting chemical plant in Anhui, China.
"I feel scared — I really don't want to be a hero," Zhang says as he rides the train to Beijing. "But the next generation will suffer. We risk our lives for their happiness."
Filed under: Interesting Tagged: environmentalism in china
Environmental Heroes, A Chinese Village Fights Back
Click here for a video report about an ordinary farmer with a middle-school education, who leads his village to fight for the closure of a polluting chemical plant in Anhui, China.
"I feel scared — I really don't want to be a hero," Zhang says as he rides the train to Beijing. "But the next generation will suffer. We risk our lives for their happiness."
Filed under: Interesting Tagged: environmentalism in china
new voices: "after that we are ignorant" by Bilal Tanweer
After That, We Are Ignorant
Yesterday, an old man, bloody idiot, surely off his rockers, got on the bus from the Lucky Star stop … tall in his height, some six-three, wore a new, bright red Coca-Cola cap that you get for free these days, bloody joker. His shirt I think he had been re-ironing since the creation of Pakistan. His crumpled brown pants seemed never-washed … He caught my eye as soon as he got on the bus. I pulled out my sketchbook and started to make his cartoon. The rectangular golden frame of his spectacles covered his long, thin face. Acha, at first he did not say anything, just took a seat, sat there and looked around. Then turned to the guy next to him and without any, whatsitsname, any hesitation questioned him, 'Who are you?'
via granta.com
Click on the link to read the rest of the story, one of the new voices in fiction presented by Granta Magazine.
Filed under: Literary Tagged: Bilal Tanweer, new fiction from Pakistan
New Voices: After That We Are Ignorant by Bilal Tanweer
After That, We Are Ignorant
Yesterday, an old man, bloody idiot, surely off his rockers, got on the bus from the Lucky Star stop … tall in his height, some six-three, wore a new, bright red Coca-Cola cap that you get for free these days, bloody joker. His shirt I think he had been re-ironing since the creation of Pakistan. His crumpled brown pants seemed never-washed … He caught my eye as soon as he got on the bus. I pulled out my sketchbook and started to make his cartoon. The rectangular golden frame of his spectacles covered his long, thin face. Acha, at first he did not say anything, just took a seat, sat there and looked around. Then turned to the guy next to him and without any, whatsitsname, any hesitation questioned him, 'Who are you?'
via granta.com
Click on the link to read the rest of the story, one of the new voices in fiction presented by Granta Magazine.
Filed under: Literary Tagged: Bilal Tanweer, new fiction from Pakistan
January 25, 2011
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