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Caffe Europa | London Review of Books | Die Weltwoche | The New Yorker | Al Ahram Weekly | Nepszabadsag | Elet es Irodalom | The Times Literary Supplement | Das Magazin |
The New York Times
Caffe Europa 04.05.2008 (Italy)
On May 9th 1978 Christian Democrat Aldo Moro was murdered by members of the Italian Red Brigades. Antonio Padellaro, editor-in-chief of L'Unita and chronicler of Italy's so-called Anni di Piombo or leaden years, reminds Alessandro Lanni how good Italy had it with its politicians of the 60s and 70s from de Gasperi to Togliatti. Moro could have achieved great things, Padellaro believes. "Moro was working on a huge project, a strategic coup: the coming together of the Catholic and the communist worlds. This would have been the first real step towards reconciliation in this country. The PD (Walter Veltroni's Democratic Party) came out of this thinking, albeit somewhat watered down. It was an extremely difficult process which the Church leaders fought with a vehemence that makes the Chuch's current course on ethical issues seem like a polite cough. There was aggression and threats which prevented Amintore Fanfani becoming president. Moro was shot and we should not forget that one of the reasons he was kidnapped was that several parties wanted to prevent the Church and the communists from moving towards one other. Whatever you think of him, Aldo Moro did something that was light years away from the lost-in-the-detail politics of today that has become the norm. He stood for a vision, a vision which is so terribly lacking in politics today."
London Review of Books 08.05.2008
R.W. Johnson delivers a damning eye-witness report from Harare about the countless political machinations in pre and post-election Zimbabwe which are propping up Mugabe against the MDC party leader Morgan Tsvangirai, and which have resulted in the current deadlock. South African President Thabo Mbeki, who shares Mugabe's paranoid vision, has played a key role. "In Mbeki's and Mugabe's minds Western imperialism is engaged in a struggle to overthrow the National Liberation Movements (NLMs) and restore, if it can, the preceding regimes – apartheid, colonialism or white settler rule. In so doing it will use various local parties as lackeys: Inkatha and the Democratic Alliance in South Africa, Renamo in Mozambique, Unita in Angola – and the MDC in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is the weakest link here, which means that the other NLMs must defend Zanu-PF to the death, for if Zimbabwe 'falls' South Africa will be the next target."
Further articles: Donald McKenzie is astounded by the soaring cost of insurance against "the end of the world" – the collapse of world markets - and sees it as an indication of the gravity of the credit crisis which his article analyses with great precision. Daniel Soar reports on the court case against the eight men charged with conspiracy to blow up an aircraft and who are responsible for the current ban on liquids in flight cabins.
Die Weltwoche 01.05.2008 (Switzerland)
Andre Müller interviews the violinist Julia Fischer who seems rather unwilling to cooperate. An excerpt:
"Do you want children?
Of course. Why else are we here in this world?For art!
I can combine the two if I want. Now you are going to ask if I have found the right man for the job.
No.
That's one of those stupid journalist questions which I refuse to answer."
The New Yorker 12.05.2008 (USA)
The focus of this week's New Yorker invention and innovation. In his essay, non-fiction bestseller writer Malcolm Gladwell introduces "Intellectual Ventures" a group of scientists, tinkerers and original minds brought together and financed by the multi-millionaire nerd Nathan Myhrvold. I.V. is about invention, invention, invention. And it's working better than anyone could have imagined. Currently I.V. files around 500 patents a year and it has a backlog of three thousand ideas. Gladwell lists justs a few facts in this success story: "Intellectual Ventures just had a patent issued on automatic, battery-powered glasses, with a tiny video camera that reads the image off the retina and adjusts the fluid-filled lenses accordingly, up to ten times a second. It just licensed off a cluster of its patents, for eighty million dollars. ... Bill Gates, whose company, Microsoft, is one of the major investors in Intellectual Ventures, says, 'I can give you fifty examples of ideas they've had where, if you take just one of them, you'd have a startup company right there.'"
Al Ahram Weekly 01.05.2008 (Egypt)
Magdy El-Shafie has written Egypt's first graphic novel "The Metro" – which now, months after its publication - has been banned for alleged obscenity and libel. Rhania Kallaf introduces the comic, which is about a bank robbery, as well as its author and his influences. "El-Shafie also mentioned the influence of bloggers on the style of his book. 'Bloggers first appeared in Egypt in 2004 during the demonstrations calling for more democratic freedoms at the time. Their writing was raw and sincere and not based on any particular ideology. It affected me a great deal.' Told in black and white, the plot of the novel takes place in the Cairo district of Maadi, which is seen as divided into two sharply polarised parts: the part lived in by the upper middle class and the part lived in by the poor. It dwells on the lives of the poor, showing how Wanas, one of the novel's characters, resorts to begging after the government demolishes the kiosk he uses to mend shoes and earn a living." (Read an excerpt from "The Metro" in English translation)
Further articles: During the London Book Fair last month the Independent asked whether Khaled Hosseini's novel "The Kite Runner", which has been translated into 42 languages, might kick off an Arab literature boom in the West. Mona Asis has her doubts: Western ideas about the Arab world are riddled with cliches, the West seems to feel it has the monopoly on "universalisism" and there is not enough basic knowledge of the Arab literature classics. Khali El-Alani sees a desperate need for reform in the founding Egyptian division of the now global Muslim Brotherhood.
Nepszabadsag 03.05.2008 (Hungary)
Hungarians are forced to compete in today's market economy, even if they often lack the competitive spirit, psychologist Marta Fülöp explains in an interview with Laszlo Rab. The size of the small country and the lack of socialisation account for the tough competition: "A fierce competitive atmosphere requires many different aptitudes and a varied workforce, but no matter how you look at it Hungary doesn't need seamen. An oceanographer isn't going to have an easy time here. It's more difficult in Hungary for someone with a special training, compared with America or Japan for example. In Hungary you have to fight hard for every little advantage, and that's why competition is so ruthless. Here your competitor is not an honoured rival – like in Japan for example – someone who motivates you to a trial of strength. On the contrary, he's often considered an enemy, unworthy of respect, who you try to liquidate symbolically. In this hostile atmosphere, people resort to aggressive means and don't bother sticking to the rules."
Elet es Irodalom 30.04.2008 (Hungary)
Hungarian politics is another sphere with no clear concept of "competition", writes Anna Szilagyi, who analyses the linguistics of Hungary's right-wing populist opposition. Populists try to stigmatise their opponents with their language, often casting them as criminals with academic-sounding terms: "The Right and the Left use language entirely differently. While the Left fight political adversaries, the Right fight an enemy. … Stigmatising someone as a 'miscreant', 'criminal' or 'lunatic' transmits one key message: the enemy is beyond help. This leaves just no option but to isolate him from the nation or cut him off with other means, and the nation must be 'cleansed' and 'healed'. This language is so effective and disarming because pseudo-scientific jargon conceals the intent of eliminating political opponents, and uses neutral terms usually associated with medicine or law for political, even authoritarian, ends."
The Times Literary Supplement 02.05.2008 (UK)
World famous tenor Ian Bostridge reviews "The Rest is Noise" (first chapter), a history of 20th century music by New Yorker critic Alex Ross (blog). The monumental work deals among other topics with the role of music in totalitarian regimes. And according to Bostridge, "Germany" is where all the problems start: "For Ross, the Nazi infatuation with music is the crux of his story. If nineteenth-century German politics, philosophy and musical endeavour made classical music unprecedentedly momentous, its implication in the near-annihilation of European civilization by the mid-century robbed it of moral authority, a collapse with which classical music still lives, sixty years on. As Ross points out, trivially but accurately, 'when any self-respecting Hollywood archcriminal sets out to enslave mankind, he listens to a little classical music to get in the mood'."
Also in this issue: Historian Mark Mazower reads Bernard Wasserstein's " Barbarism and Civilisation - A history of Europe in our time" (more here). Jon Garvie reviews Cass R. Sunstein's "Republic.com 2.0" (more here), but doesn't share the author's left-wing conservative scepticism about digitalisation, inspired by Jürgen Habermas.
Das Magazin 02.05.2008 (Switzerland)
Climate changes have always played a role in human history, says climatologist Josef H. Reichholf in a discussion with Matthias Meili: "During the High Middle Ages, the climate was extraordinarily mild. Central Europe was for the most part warmer than today. The population grew from 17 to over 70 million. … A large number of cities were founded during this Medieval population increase. Many convents were established as well. … and many young women of child-bearing age became nuns. Women play a crucial role in population growth, and back then convents were part of society's birth control measures."
The New York Times 04.05.2008 (USA)
Pop literature might be dead in Germany, but in China it's just getting off the ground. Aventurina King portrays several of its protagonists, first and foremost 24-year-old cross-dresser Guo Jingming, whose novels relate teen woes. "Guo is hardly universally beloved. Last fall, he was voted China's most hated male celebrity for the third year in a row on Tianya, one of the country's biggest online forums. Yet three of his four novels have sold over a million copies each, and last year he had the highest income of any Chinese author:1.4 million dollars."
China is also the focus of the Book Review. Jonathan Spence reviews Mo Yan's new novel "Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out." Other books reviewed include Jiang Rong's mega-bestseller "Wolf Totem" (here), Wang Anyi's "The Song of Everlasting Sorrow" (here) and Yan Lianke's "Serve the People" (here). And Ian Buruma portrays composer Tan Dun in the Sunday Magazine.
RSS
The New York Times investigates the new hunger for reality. In Salon, Andrzej Stasiuk sees only individual realities. In the Gazeta Wyborcza, the ethnologist Tomasz Rakowski describes the reality of the Polish poor mines. Sometimes you can turn reality on its head, El Pais reads in the Financial Times. Le Monde diplomatique gives the low-down on the ACTA talks. And the New Yorker dreams of less polish and a bit more grit.
In Magyar Narancs Agnes Heller demands more civil courage of the Hungarians. Mohammed Ali Atassi explains in Qantara, why conservatives in Egypt see women as candy: either wrapped or covered in flies. Oliver Roy outlines in Resetdoc, why's there not so much as a hair's breadth between the Christian right and the secular left. In Magazin, the philosopher Ludwig Haslar tells the Swiss that if they want mediocrity today, they cannot expect the superman tomorrow. Jonathan Safran Foer tells Prospect why he neither wants a chicken in his bed nor on his plate. The NYT embarks on a human-flesh search and finds a kitten killer.
The New Yorker tells the story of how corrupt podiatrists almost brought down the US health system. In Polityka, the Kapuscinski biographer Artur Domoslawski explains how he thinks the legendary reporter should be read. In Tygodnik, Zygmunt Bauman calls for more understanding for Kapuscinski. Magyar Narancs celebrates the ban on Holocaust denial in Hungary. In Le Point, Jorge Semprun asks whether Claude Lanzmann is the only person who's allowed to talk about the Holocaust. Wired describes how Google learned how to tell the difference between a hot dog and a poached pooch.
In Eurozine, the Transylvanian-Hungarian-Armenian writer Kinga Kali tells the story of a "virgjinesha". Prospect celebrates the next art superstar, Argentinian painter Guillermo Kuitca. The Gazeta Wyborcza explains how young people use the web. The New Yorker sends out a message to the depressed: stay away from psychiatric literature. Outlook Indian learns to play Carnatic music online. The London Review swims with the salmon sages.
The Atlantic finds out why the Chinese are not enemy number one in cyberspace. Elet es Irodalom asks why no one in Hungary is interested in former informers. In New Statesman, Tariq Ramadan can't tell us what a moderate Muslim is. The Guardian hearkens to the ticking bomb in Emily Dickinson's bosom and links it to the shards of crockery on the floor. And if it can't smoke, El Pais Semanal wants everything painted black.
In Prospect, Tim Berners-Lee invites the world to play with the British government's data. England, not Nigeria belongs on the terrorist list, literary Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka informs The Daily Beast. In Rue 89, Beppe Grillo explains why Sarkozy is more dangerous than Berlusconi. In Tygodnik Powszechny, Stefan Chwin mourns for the Polish idealist. Polityka reveals where a Pole turns to when he's not allowed to marry. Olga Tokarczuk walks her Polish tangle around Amsterdam for Salon. And the Guardian thinks about Armenian women rubbing their soft breasts on a stone.
In Wired, Chris Anderson celebrates the next industrial revolution - taking place in garages near you. The Boston Globe serenades the camel - Nabati style. In El Pais Semenal, the sociologist Edgar Morin complains about European lethargy. Outlook India asks why the Australians hate the Indians. Odra and Tygodnik are still debating the impact of freedom on literature. In OpenDemocracy, Salome Zourabichvili mourns for the wilted petals of the rose revolution. In Prospect, Martin Amis divides the literary sheep from the goats, according to the pleasure principle. The NYT profiles a dyed-in-the-wool jihadist from Alabama.
Das Magazin reports on the dramatic increase in the number of pupils who have threatened to gun down their classmates. The Spectator warns City bankers about gun-wielding dominatrices in Switzerland. In Sinn und Form, Marc Fumaroli remembers the man whose name shall not be mentioned: Mario Praz. In the New Humanist, Laurie Taylor remembers the holy men who sexually abused him as a child. The Guardian asks why Theo von Doesburg slipped into avant garde oblivion. And in the NYRB, Garry Kasparov asks why computer chess programmers are so uninspired?
OpenDemocracy explains why a novel called "Paranoia" suddenly disappeared from Belarussian bookshops. Prospect fears that a ban on Islam4UK could undermine British democracy. The Gazeta Wyborcza explores Polish-Jewish relations. Le Monde diplomatique watches the carving up of Africa. In El Pais Semanal, maths whizz Marcus du Sautoy explains the sex appeal of suduko. And Gerhard Richter manages to surprise the Nation.
The New Yorker buries itself in the Arab novel. In Le Monde, Bernard-Henri Levy heaps scorn on the state-run caricature of a debate. Qantara points to the person responsible for all the misery in the Arab world: Daddy. In L'Espresso, Umberto Eco takes a pin to the overblown daily paper. The Nation has earmarked 30 billion dollars to save journalism. In Tygodnik Powszechny, the writer Wojciech Albinski explains what makes Poland exotic. And the Spectator waves a tear-stained old hanky as shabby chic fades into the past.
In Merkur, art historian Wolfgang Ullrich defines a new type of artist: the contractor. In Nepszabadsag, writer Peter Nadas considers the crisis in Hungary and how it might end. In NouvelObs, Francis Ford Coppola explains why DVDs should be free. Eurozine introduces Lithuanian literature. In the New York Review of Books, Wyatt Manson asks why Pleiade is omitting Celine's anti-Semitic trilogy from the collected works. In Express, Philippe Gavi reminds us that Mohammed was not a crazed killer. A Californian marvels in NZZ Folio, at the reincarnation of an Indian factory worker. And confronted with the recent proliferation of literary cuddling, the New York Times yearns for a bit of Philip Roth.
Wired tracks James Cameron's 32-year quest to out-Lucas Lucas. In Nouvel Obs, Alain Finkielkraut and Alain Badiou tear each other apart over immigration and national identity. Tygodnik Powszechny introduces the pioneering artist Miroslaw Balka. Andras Bozoki asks why Hungarians are undermining democracy. In The New Statesman, Leo McKinstry explains why the bombing of Coventry was an inspiration to the British Air Staff.
Vanity Fair goes in search of a superpartner. Elet es Irodalom reads a new collection of essays by Imre Keresz. Outlook India complains about journalistic corruption. The New Yorker reads a new Koestler biography. Nepszabadsag foresees the next French revolution. Rue89 wonders about the provenance of prawns. And in the New Republic, Moshe Halberthal celebrates the sublime humility of Amartya Sen.
In Wilson Quarterly, the economist Tyler Cowen sings an ode to multitasking. Prospect has seen the monsters of the left. The Boston Globe follows James C. Scott to the new Shangri-La in the mountains of Tibet. Weltwoche is up in arms about the criticism of Switzerland's anti-minaret vote. In the Novel Obs, Pierre Nora applies his mind to the bestseller. New Criterion knows why the Pop art bubble won't pop. NZZ Folio examines the chicken nugget. Al Ahram asks what political Islam wants. The Walrus mourns for the first victim of the C-58. In Resetdoc, Joseph Massad explains why Arab homosexuals are an invention of the West.
Slovenian poet Ales Debeljak argues for a fusion of cultures in Eurozine. Umberto Eco agrees in Le Monde. The Nation portrays the Salvadorian author Horacio Castellanos Moya, who himself explains in Babelia why 200 years after independence there's nothing to celebrate in a number of Latin American countries. Polityka lies Poland down on the couch. La vie des idees reads a book on Jews and the resistance in France. Americans read more than Europeans, writes historian Peter Baldwin in Merkur. And in The New York Review of Books Robert Darnton makes two bold proposals for a new Book Settlement.