Never before have there been so many private collectors making extensive acquisitions of contemporary art. Are they the real key figures of a global art business?...
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Le Nouvel Observateur | Le Figaro | Le Monde | Der Spiegel | The
Economist | Outlook India | Al Ahram Weekly | The Spectator | Tygodnik
Powszechny | Elet es Irodalom | L'Espresso | Polityka .
Le Nouvel Observateur, 18.08.2005 (France)
The French magazines are all talking about Michel Houellebecq's new novel, "La Possibilite d'une Ile" (published in French by Fayard), which will hit the bookshops on August 31. The English title will be "The Possibility of an Island". The Nouvel Obs prophesies
the book could be the "absolute hit" of the fall season. The science
fiction story about a character called Daniel and his clones will be
released with 200,000 copies. The expected sales have prompted other releases, for example an unauthorised biography of Houellebecq by Denis Demonpion, who writes for Le Point. Eric Naulleau's "Au secours, Houellebcq revient!" (Chiflet & Cie., more here) pans Houellebecq's work, calling him a "literary crash". Finally, Cherche Midi publishers have put out a "defense" written by Spanish author Fernando Arrabal, a friend of Houellebecq's. The title of Houellebecq's new book comes from a line of poetry by Arrabal.
Le Figaro, 18.08.2005 (France)
In the Figaro litteraire, author Angelo Rinaldi reveals a little about the content of Houellebecq's book: "It's about a future in which people are cloned, frozen and then thawed out when
needed. In this way they are always being born again. The narrator is
Daniel, who "is cloned very often". "When cloned for the 25th time,
Daniel wanders over a planet where the axis of rotation has been
changed. It is populated by 'neo-humans', old-model individuals who escaped the laboratory experiments and are now nothing more than Neanderthal-like gnomes
with grumbling stomachs. People shoot at them for enjoyment. Wasn't it
Cocteau who spoke of the 'deathly boredom of immortality'?" After
panning the book, Rinaldi wonders whether the entire novel "doesn't
attest to a sense of humour that's only appreciated by a few insiders."
His judgement: "Laughable", and: "A dud."
Le Monde, 20.08.2005 (France)
In Le Monde, Michel Houellebecq himself gives some personal information about his book, and confesses to be a "militant Schopenauerian, and so an anti-Hegelian". In his view, Nietzsche
"has effectively blocked access to Schopenhauer". Yet he thanks
Nietzsche for his first "public appearance". During a German class in
high school Houellebacq contradicted Nietzsche's text on the "last human". "I was kicked out of the class, which I left with the dignity of a martyr. Then I discovered Schopenhauer, and saw that Nietzsche only deals with a tiny part of his thinking."
Der Spiegel, 22.08.2005 (Germany)
Romain Leick has read Michel Houellebecq's new novel, "The Possibility of an Island"
and is thrilled. Of course, writes Leick, "Houellebecq, the depressive,
the exhausted, chivvied scandalous sex addict, the embodiment of
world-weariness" is, in truth, an "incurable romantic." Leick can also clear up another misunderstanding: Houellebecq's critics simply have no idea and are "in truth, mostly envious, hate-filled persecutors.
Just because Houellebecq describes a flat, decaying world with sexy
flatness doesn't mean that the result itself is flat and hollow. His
motif is modern trash, a concept which pervades all spheres of
today's superficial, fun-seeking society. But that doesn't mean his
novel is trash as well."
The Economist, 18.08.2005 (UK)
The title of the Economist was quoted on Thursday by the online edition of Der Spiegel, and that evening chancellor Gerhard Schröder held it up on a talkshow. It read: "Germany's surprising economy",
showing a gracefully muscle-bound eagle. After the restructuring of the major
businesses and the union agreement to longer hours and pay cuts, the
German economy is on the verge of an upswing, writes the magazine – "if
the politicians don't ruin everything after the federal elections next month." Unfortunately the article is not online.
But there is a Special Report drawing parallels between the bomb attacks by anarchists in the 19th century and those by Islamists today. There is also a critical review of Howard M. Sachar's "A History of the Jews in the Modern World".
Outlook India, 29.08.2005 (India)
The history of the modern suicide bomber dates back to 1972, when a member of the Japanese Red Army sprayed
bullets and grenades around Tel Aviv's Lod airport before blowing
himself up. In the current climate of Islamic terrorism, the cult of
the suicide bomber has unleashed a flood of conflicting explanations.
One explanation, summarises Ashish Kumar Sen in this week's issue, sees the bombers as under the influence of "apocalyptic visions of violent cultural change over the worldwide web." Others, for example, Robert A. Pape in his book "Dying to Win:
The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism" , argue that suicide bombers
have secular, strategic motives. The attacks are carried out to "to
compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory
which suicide bombers view as their homeland."
Currently in India the cultural and political elite are preparing to celebrate one of its greatest authors. Munshi Premchand,
born 125 years ago, brought the rooted, traditional world of Hindi
literature into the modern age. In the course of the celebrations,
though, we discover the big loser in the story, which fate brought to
the core of Premchand's literature - India's poor. Anuradha Rama reveals why.
Al Ahram Weekly, 18.08.2005 (Egypt)
Political scientist Abdel-Moneim Said rebukes all those who see the cause of Islamic terror in colonial humiliation:
"Take China, for example. It is a country of roughly the same area as
the Arab world, and its population similar in size to that of the
Muslim world. The Chinese once thought they were the centre of
the world and the most civilised of nations." Then came the British,
who demanded acces to the emperor and the Forbidden City, and began the
Opium Wars. In the end the Chinese empire broke apart, Said writes. The
Chinese had to sign the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, which granted the
British immunity, even if they committed crimes on Chinese territory. Opium was legalised, and at the same time thousands of Chinese were made slaves. "Similar things happened to the Arab and Muslim worlds,
though nothing as extreme as opium and slavery. And yet the Chinese did
not kill people in London. Instead they went about acquiring the elements of strength needed in a modern world."
The Spectator, 20.08.2005 (UK)
Douglas Davis is surprised by the new alliances forming "in the fight against the fight against terror": red leagues of Islamic fundamentalists and western Marxists,
like the 'International Campaign Against US and Zionist Occupations' (more here),
for example. "Possible differences between the far left wing and
radical Islam, on, among others, issues like democracy, human rights,
xenophobia, freedom of speech, homosexuality, abortion – should pose a
insurmountable barrier for such a union. But they don't. The barriers
are simply removed in the interests of matching hate agendas
towards America, Israel, globalisation, capitalism and imperialism. And
not much below the surface you also find anti-Semitism shining through."
Tygodnik Powszechny, 21.08.2005 (Poland)
Author Andrzej Stasiuk has travelled to Albania once more, to the "black hole of Europe", as he calls it. "This was where feudal Turkey reigned for 600 years, before a short paroxysm of freedom between the wars, then a catatonia of tribal communism. I don't know why I've come here. There is nothing exotic
about this place. All those exotic things, the smells and all the rest,
you can get elsewhere. Here, they are merely transcended, multiplied
and challenged like cheap perfume in a small, cramped room."
Joachim Trenkner tells the story of Roland Jahn, an East German rebel who openly supported the Solidarity trade union in the 1980s. "He wasn't afraid of the Stasi.
Even though he was persecuted for years, thrown out of university,
often beaten and put in solitary confinement, he remained a rebel.
He was one of the most unusual opponents in the history of East
Germany. A wilful individualist, an enfant terrible of the peace
movement in Jena."
Elet es Irodalom, 19.08.2005 (Hungary)
Literary scholar Laszlo Szigeti interviews Canadian author and Booker Prize winner Yann Martel
on why the identity is more complex than the national and linguistic
pigeon-holes it is often stuffed into: "My culture is French, but I
write in English. You know, today we look at every kind of complexity
with a certain distrust. But the identity is a very complex thing...
Our identities are formed by our race, culture, religion, sex, even our
face. Some more corpulent people integrate this state into
their everyday self-image. But when you get up in the morning, you
don't think about whether you have the identity of a fat person,
a vegetarian, a homosexual, a secular Catholic, an Italian or a
Canadian. You simply experience the morning... I agree with Chomsky
that language is nothing other than a sophisticated grunt.
Whether we grunt in Hungarian, German or English is irrelevant. The
real tragedy is not knowing a single language really well, because then
the richness of all languages remains hidden to you. But which language
you know makes no difference whatsoever."
L'Espresso, 25.08.2005 (Italy)
Marco Müller, director of the Venice Film Festival which starts next week, defends himself in an interview with Alessandra Mammi against the accusation that this year's choice of films is too conventional.
Film festivals are not there to bolster media stars like Michael Moore,
he argues, rather to bring films to the big screen that would otherwise
be lost without a trace. "Roberto Benigni's film is not at Venice
because he doesn't need it. But Ang Lee's homoerotic western, 'Brokeback Mountain', about two cowboys in love with each other, must be shown. Without Venice, Laurent Cantet probably wouldn't have got the attention he deserved for a film ('Vers le Sud') which so strongly described the sex tourism of wealthy, mature women, on the hunt for gigolos in Haiti."
For this month's cover story, Andrea Visconti asks the British-born, US-based journalist Tina Brown what she thinks is so great about "American Women", a subject to which the prominent photographer Bryan Adams has already dedicated an entire book. "In the United States, women have utter self-conviction. For them there is no limit
to what they can achieve. As the English women – who I know just as
well as the Americans – get older, they start to lose the sense of security they felt when they were in their twenties."
Polityka, 17.08.2005 (Poland)
Pope Benedict XVI will certainly be the star of the World Youth Day in Cologne, writes Anna Tyszecka. Only – how is the head of the Church perceived in his homeland? "For the Poles, having a countryman as Pope was a reason for pride and balm for the soul. In Germany, the land of the Reformation,
rebellious theologians and empty churches, the relationship to the
Papacy is ambivalent. What the Poles see with delight – the
continuation of the conservative doctrine of John-Paul II – is
met with resistance in Germany, even within the Church." Perhaps that
is why Lech Walesa had the idea of granting Benidict XVI with Polish citizenship.
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.