Must be a group member before inviting friends
Dermott Hayes's Blog: Postcard from a Pigeon, page 42
September 19, 2016
Lisa Dwan: ‘Beckett made these wounds universal’
A wonderful interview from The Guardian, with Irish actress, Lisa Dwan,
As her new play No’s Knife, adapted from a number of Samuel Beckett’s prose pieces, opens at the Old Vic, Lisa Dwan talks to Belinda McKeon about the danger of politicising work for your own ends
Lisa Dwan in No’s Knife at the Old Vic.
“I electrocuted myself last night,” Lisa Dwan says. She’s laughing, so I laugh too, thinking it’s a metaphor for one of Dwan’s famously self-punishing techniques – this is an actor, after all, who tied her own head to a banister while giving one of her acclaimed one-woman Beckett plays an early run-through at home. She has bled on stages around the world, such were the physical demands of her blindfolded, harnessed version of Beckett’s Not I, which she retired earlier this year. Now she’s preparing for the Old Vic’s world premiere of her newest Beckett work, No’s Knife, adapted by Dwan from his prose pieces Texts for Nothing, and the rehearsal process, she says, has been gruelling. But the electrocution was accidental, and decidedly non-metaphorical; a power surge in her London flat – thanks to a building site across the street – and a trip to the hospital. “When I complained to the builders,” she says, “they thought I was a blonde actress and told me to change the bulbs.”
September 18, 2016
Passionate
Henry was reticent, it was said and many people thought his shy demeanour stemmed from an innate reluctance, even an inability to display emotion. But when the music started and the fiddler played, people said he tapped his toes , his shoulders twitched and those who saw said he was passionate.
Jennifer Egan on Writing, the Trap of Approval, and the Most Important Discipline for Aspiring Writers – Brain Pickings
An honest insight to a writer’s motivation, sanity
Illustration by Kris Di Giacomo from Enormous Smallness by Matthew Burgess, a picture-book biography of E.E. Cummings
“You can only write regularly if you’re willing to write badly… Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.”
The long wait for F Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘lost stories’
17 September 2016
Image copyright Getty Images
News that a collection of previously unpublished stories by the author F Scott Fitzgerald will be released next year has got fans excited. Why haven’t they been published before, and what are they like?
F Scott Fitzgerald’s stories of romance and personal tragedy in 1920s America have led him to be regarded as one of the greatest authors of the 20th Century. But the man behind The Great Gatsby was less revered in his lifetime and in later years struggled to get into print.
Some of his short stories were deemed too controversial for publication and several of these are included in an upcoming book, I’d Die For You and Other Lost Stories. Others in the collection were accepted by magazines but never printed, its publisher Scribner says.
Viral Sex Tapes and a Suicide Prompt Outrage in Italy
By GAIA PIANIGIANISEPT. 16, 2016
Photo
The coffin of Tiziana Cantone being carried to her funeral service in Naples, Italy, on Thursday. Credit Ciro Fusco/European Pressphoto Agency
ROME — The suicide of an Italian woman who fought a long court battle to get videos of her having sex removed from the web has rekindled a national debate on the perils of social media and the internet.
The woman, Tiziana Cantone, was found dead on Tuesday in her family’s home near Naples, where she had apparently hanged herself.
Ms. Cantone knew she was being recorded in April 2015 when the six sex videos were made, a time of “fragility and depression” for her, according to Corriere della Sera, an Italian newspaper.
Dunkirk Pirate
Posted by Joe Gannon on September 6, 2016 at 11:00pm
View Blog
Gustavus Conyngham is known to history as the “Dunkirk Pirate,” but that was the name the British gave him. It was not a name that he ever would have given himself. He thought of himself only as, Gustavus Conyngham, USN (United States Navy). He was never, in fact, a pirate. He was a commissioned officer in the new U.S Navy fighting for his country and was one of the most successful naval commanders of the American Revolution.
(Right: Captain Gustavus Conyngham, Navy Art Collection, Washington, D.C.)
Gustavus Conyngham was born in Larganreagh on Rosguill peninsula in northwest County Donegal in 1747. In 1763 his family immigrated to Philadelphia. His cousin, Redmond Conyngham, had arrived in Philadelphia more than two decades earlier and become part of a successful shipping company with fellow Irishman, John Nesbitt. Redmond placed young Gustavus on a ship with Captain Henderson, one of his most experienced captains, and he eventually would command his own merchant ship for the company. His cousin Redmond said of him, “his natural genius, pointed out the sea as the element on which Gustavus was to live.” Redmond and his family were staunch supporters of the revolutionary movement in the colonies. His son, David, traveled to Europe in 1774 as a secret agent for the colonies.
By 1775 Gustavus had joined in his family’s revolutionary cause and had also married Anne Hockley, the daughter of a Philadelphia merchant. He was dispatched to France commanding the brig “Charming Peggy” with orders to return with gun powder and other military items. He arrived in Dunkirk in November. Conyngham got the supplies loaded, but he’d had the misfortune of having a British ship moored alongside and his activities had been observed.
September 17, 2016
PRICELESS
Borowitz Report
Emotional Obama Tearfully Thanks Trump for Granting Him Citizenship
By Andy Borowitz
, September 16, 2016
[image error]
PHOTOGRAPH BY WIN MCNAMEE / GETTY
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Calling this “the greatest day of my life,” a visibly moved Barack Obama held a news conference on Friday to thank Donald Trump for granting him U.S. citizenship.
Odd Couple
Cartwright, dressed impeccably, knows appearances matter but what matters most is how you pull it off. Walk through any door, dressed like a tramp but, with the right impression, you get away with it. Even so, convincing them Neytiri, the towering Pandoran and he, are together, that could be tricky.
Get Up, Stand Up
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov
This was the image I captured of the moon over the roof of the old church behind my apartment last night. Apart from the odd dot, a trick of light not an orbiting potato, it looked quite brilliant.
‘Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon who is already sick and pale with grief…’
(Romeo to Juliet, the balcony scene)
So I got up early, put Bob Dylan on ‘shuffle’ and started writing. But before I did that, I made myself some coffee and then breakfast, a hard boiled egg, pickled cucumber, salsa and some georgeous, nut and seed encrusted, coarsemeal sourdough bread. This day will be a good one.
September 16, 2016
THE FLAX GOLDEN TALES
I thought this was worth reblogging since The Flax Golden Tales now stretch to 13 and the latest addition, One Single Memory is a poignant poem of young, unrequited love by writer, Caillen James.
A book of children’s poems found in a charity shop and a mysterious birthday message, a collage of carefully selected images and coded messages, have found new life here in the gathering collection of stories, prompted by a message left in a book, from Sylvia, the girl in Shel Silverstein‘s song, writing to her ex-boyfriend, to a philanderer, exposed and shamed, a big sister writing to her brother, an infatuated schoolgirl discovers betrayal, a story of international intrigue and assassination, another of a man discovering a girlfriend’s dark secret and a tragedy from her past and the latest, Cath Humphris‘s unusual tale of an impatient courier on her first day on the job, A Lifetime Full of Stories, a poignant tale of loss, longing and regret, The Invitation, a childhood memory of a little girl and her mother and a strange sense of foreboding or Blissobirds‘ contribution about young love, longing and adventure and, in Happy birthday, Scott, a classic tale of young, unrequited love as a young sister gets a crush on her older brother’s best friend.
When Fijay of Blog On! and I first engaged in this project, we never envisaged the interest it would spark. The creative torrent it has unleashed is humbling and I feel grateful and privileged to have a part in it.
So here’s a thanks to you all and an invite, again, to anyone else to take part, have a go and put your spin on the tale of the The Book and the Message.
To Sir with Love
The Book
Sylvia’s Letter
Invisible Boy: Where did you go?
Unposted Letters 1&2, Unposted Letter 2, Unposted Letter 1
Postcard from a Pigeon
- Dermott Hayes's profile
- 4 followers
![[image error]](http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Borowitz-Tearful-Obama-1200.jpg){kind=link}