Britons find nudity hilarious. Germans take it very seriously. An apostil by Roger Boyes ...
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The New York Review of Books | Outlook India | L'Express | Revista de Libros | Gazeta Wyborcza | The Guardian | Die Weltwoche | Heti Vilaggazdasag | The New York Times Book Review
The New York Review of Books, 01.12.2005 (USA)
William Dalrymple visited the Madrassa Haqqania in Pakistan's North-West Frontier province, a radical religious school where many of the Taliban leaders, including Mullah Omar, were trained. Dalrymple meets the school's "unexpectedly cheery and dapper" director Maulana Sami ul-Haq: "I remarked that there didn't seem to be much evidence of the Haqqania suffering from the crackdown on centers of radicalism promised by President Musharraf. Sami's face lit up:'That is for American consumption only,'
he laughed cheerfully. 'It is only statements to the newspapers.
Nothing has happened.' 'So,' I asked, 'you are not finding the
atmosphere difficult at the moment?' 'We are in a good, strong
position,' replied Sami. 'Bush has woken the entire Islamic world. We are grateful to him.'"
Outlook India, 28.11.2005 (India)
The artist Rajeev Sethi sings a hymn to Indira Gandhi. 88 years after she was born, he remembers how he once had a conversation with the former prime minister – about cushions.
"I said: all these cushions... why do you have them?' She said she knew
of no chair she had ever sat on that her back had liked, and talked of
how, from an ergonomical point of view, cushions were the best adjuncts to bad design.
Holding up the cushions supporting her back, she looked up and smiled
again. 'These too, could be metaphorical you know!' I have since cursed
myself for being too tongue-tied to avail of the finest opportunity to
start a meaningful conversation with a woman I had seen becoming larger than life almost before my eyes."
L'Express, 17.11.2005 (France)
The
Islamic "boom" in France is dividing the French Left. L'Express invited
journalist Caroline Fourest and political scientist Francois Burgat to battle it out in a discussion that "couldn't have been more heated".
When asked whether the Left had "prepared the way for Islamism", Burgat
answered: "Yes I believe that a certain faction of the Left has
prepared the way for fundamentalism. It encounters a generation which
is keen to participate in the progress of history and which does so in
its own way and with its own vocabulary, with a sectarian and arrogant
rejection, a veto. One of the people with the say in this
leftist faction is you, Caroline Fourest. You contest that Muslim women
can improve things for themselves by using aspects of their own culture."
Caroline Fourest replies: "Let's talk about this Islamic feminism, that
you find more interesting than my lay feminism. According to Tariq Ramadan's (website) definition, women should take on activities which suit their 'nature'
– on the condition that this does not endanger their role within the
patriarchal family, and naturally, that they wear headscarves so as not
to bring their men into temptation. If that's your view of women's
liberation..."
Revista de Libros, 20.11.2005 (Chile)
"Sterile fathers: Borges and Nabokov." Chilean writer and journalist Rafael Gumucio has written a wonderfully melancholy pamphlet railing against the two domestic gods of the (not only) Latin American literati. "Their works are great, and their influence devastating I sometimes think at night. Both assure themselves that the rules which govern the world are inscrutable and accessible to no soul, that society can neither be changed nor preserved. Their contemporary epigones help themselves to their manias but the essence escapes them.
We have trimmed Borges' shamefacedness into a standardised puritanism
to shield us from ridicule. And we have turned Nabokov's lies into our
truths. So many hits with no certainty, so many games with no fun,
sometimes it makes me quite dizzy, it worries me sick. Because as much
as we might contest it and conspire against it: the earth is still
turning, and after all the literary games and showy scepticism, we are
still hungry and thirsty."
Gazeta Wyborcza, 19.11.2005 (Poland)
A year ago the rigged presidential elections in Kiev sparked the so-called Orange Revolution. The Polish Gazeta Wyborcza looks back:
"Pluralism, freedom of speech, freedom of expression and the creation
of a free press – these are the revolution's greatest achievements. But
people want more and faster", writes Marcin Wojciechowski
summing up the mood in Ukraine. He emphasises, though, that even those disappointed by the pace of change are unified behind
President Yushchenko's stated aim: the way into the EU.
For Viaczeslav Briuchowiecki, one of the leaders of the pro-Viktor Yushchenko party "Our Ukraine", the Orange Revolution was worth it. "Thanks to the events of a year ago, Ukrainians have become a political nation – they've taken their destinies in their own hands!" For Briuchowietzki, the major problem remaining is that the Ukrainians' hopes are all not realisable in this year.
The Guardian, 18.11.2005 (UK)
The Labour government is planning a law against whipping up religious hatred, the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill (text here). The Guardian collects a series of statements by authors who speak out against it as a limitation to the freedom of speech, for example author Salman Rushdie: "The simple truth is that wherever religions, with their narrow moralities, get into society's driving seat, tyranny results. The Inquisition results. Or the Taliban."
Die Weltwoche, 17.11.2005 (Switzerland)
Aided by recent publications, Alain Zucker looks into the current and future roll of Google. The success of the firm, which made 4.2 billion dollars in the first nine months of this year, is based primarily on its personalised advertising through keywords. "For the first time, the effect of advertisement is measurable right down to the last click. That is reflected in the differing prices for various keywords. Someone who enters 'digital cameras' is probably more intent on buying one than someone who enters the singular. That's why you pay thirty cents more for the plural. Another fact is seen in the price for one of the most expensive keywords, 'mesothelioma', which costs upward of thirty dollars per click. That price is due to the high fees charged by lawyers with class-action lawsuits who are looking for cases of this cancer caused by asbestos."
Walter De Gregorio discovers from veteran Italian porn star and producer Rocco Siffredi about the sorts of moral squalidness he has encountered on his short jaunts into the serious film industry, for example with actress Amira Casar, with whom he played in Catherine Breillat's intellectual blue movie "Anatomy of Hell". "Amira said to me, 'You know, I've acted with Gwyneth Paltrow. Hollywood, tu comprends? Hollywood.' - 'Then you can bugger off to Hollywood, you dumb bitch!' She talked to me as if I was an idiot. If it's Vincent Cassel screwing her, it's 'art'. If it's me, it's porno. That kind of shit makes me puke."
Heti Vilaggazdasag, 17.11.2005 (Hungary)
Sociologist Janos Ladanyi writes that Hungary should also take a lesson from the strife in France: "True, Paris is far away, and the situation of immigrants under the influence of Islamic fundamentalism in France is only slightly akin to that of the Hungarian Roma. But the combination of poverty and ethnic marginalisation can spark off dangerous conflicts, here as well as abroad.... When our government, opposition and intellectuals debate about the necessary social measures to be taken, they shouldn't act as if the riots started up by ethnic minorities – a year and a half ago in Slovakia and now in France – were happening on a distant planet."
The New York Times Book Review, 20.11.2005 (USA)
Author Jonathan Lethem writes a hymn to his European colleague Italo Calvino, whose death twenty years ago came as a personal blow. "Calvino, it seemed to me, had managed effortlessly what no author in English could quite claim: his novels and stories and fables were both classically modernist and giddily postmodern, embracing both experiment and tradition, at once conceptual and humane, intimate and mythic. Calvino, with his frequent references to comics and folktales and film, and his droll probing of contemporary scientific and philosophical theories, had encompassed motifs associated with brows both high and low in an internationally lucid style, one wholly his own."
RSS
In Eurozine the 69-year-old Catalan philosopher Xavier Rubert de Ventos admits to his growing radicality. In Nepszabadsag the 75-year-old writer György Konrad declares: remembering is rebellion. In Artforum the 84-year-old philosopher Artur C. Danto thinks about art and revolution. In The New Republic Anne Applebaum takes a hammer to Nicholson Baker's pacifist polemic "Human Smoke". In Folio Christian Demand sends out a distress signal for art criticism. And the Spectator portrays the Anglican Church's only openly gay Bishop.
In the TLS, tenor Ian Bostridge writes about music under totalitarianism. The New Yorker introduces the millionaire-nerd-led group "Intellectual Ventures". Caffe Europe describes Aldo Moro's attempt to reconcile Church and communism. Nepszabadsag and Elet es Irodalom analyse the frequently misundertood concept of "competition" in Hungary. The London Review of Books explains Thabo Mbeki's motivations for backing Mugabe. And in the Weltwoche, violinist Julia Fischer demonstrates how to put up a wall.
Literaturen searches in the giant haystack of literature on '68 for a book on equal rights. The TLS rediscovers the man who sexed the English language. In Outlook India, political scientist Kishore Mahbubani closes the lid on Western cultural dominance. The New York Review of Books looks at the dominance of the national conservatives in Putin's Russia. Le Monde des livres reports on a clash of historians over the role of Islam in the Middle Ages. The Economist fears for freedom of the press in Eastern Europe. And the New York Times portrays Egyptian author Alaa Al Aswan.
In the Weltwoche, Tom Ford makes the case for full, natural pubic hair. Vanity Fair blames Bill Keller for the diminishing Timesness of the New York Times. In Espresso, Umberto Eco mourns the diminishing importance of the newpapers all together. The Times waves its fork about over the English breakfast. In L'Express, über ad-man Maurice Levy wants to give the industry a complete rehaul. The LRB experiences the joy of French painting, the TLS the joy of German Romanticism, the Economist the joy of Japanese "infantile capitalism and Al Ahram, the joy of Russian photography. The New Yorker conquers English with Li Yang.
Elet es Irodolam knows that 'minor literature' doesn't have to be political to be political. World Affairs defends Hirsi Ali, Bruckner and Berman against Buruma, Garton Ash und Ramadan. Rue 89 works through a black book of censorship. In the TLS professor of geriatric medicine, Raymond Tallis, argues that too much brain is the death of literary criticism. Hector Abad speaks out against literary protectionism in Semana. Outlook India is thoroughly put out: revolution is simply not cricket. And Vanity Fair plunges into icy water with the Russians. 
The New Left Review introduces China's most influential intellectual magazine, Dushu. Outlook India would be embarrassed to be embarrassed by the Dalai Lama. "Generation 1,000 Euro" has made into Italian cinemas, Caffe Europa reports. In Nepszabadsag, philosopher Gaspar Miklos Tama declares an end to the days of anti-Semitic journalism. Folio is bowled over by the musical compositions of electronic engineer William Sethares. The New York Times is transported back to the founding of Liberia. And Vanity Fair picks apart Monsanto.
In the Blätter Jürgen Habermas joins the debate launched by signandsight.com and Perlentaucher about Islam in Europe. Merkur reveals how Adorno pinned his hopes on the Nazis and had them dashed. In La vie des idees philospher Philippe Lacour celebrates the true DJ of digital knowledge. In Literaturen Micha Brumlik reviews the new Carl Schmitt biography by Christian Lindner. Nepszabadsag takes the pulse of the unconscious body of Hungary. In Edge.org evolutionary biologist Iain Couzin explains the importance of one mormon cricket wanting to bite another in the rear. And New Republic puts its favourite Democrat on the cover.
Le debat explains why the press is on its way out. The New York Times is starting to look like the next victim of a hostile takeover by Murdoch, fears Howell Raines in Portfolio. The New Yorker sees the end in sight for the entire American newspaper industry. ResetDoc examines the role of immigrants in the Italian election campaign. In Europa, Leszek Kolakowski philosophises on success. Aharon Applefeld tells Rue89 what he will be writing about when he turns 268. And Die Weltwoche asks whether anyone in German literature is still taking risks.
Vanity Fair exposes a scandalously covert, Bush-approved operation in the Middle East. In the NYRB, Nicholson Baker extols the virtues of the Wiki vandal. Edwy Plenel announces the launch of a new independent online paper Mediapart. L'Espresso sniffs out the diabolicalness of cheese. Expert Sibir sounds out the Siberian art market. And the Economist inspects the tumorous bureaucracy in the belly of the tiger.
The London Review of Books is concerned about second-hand journalism in Britain. Prospect fills us in on the Chinese intellectual scene. Al Ahram explains why Egyptians prefer their flags made in China. Caffe Europa asks: where was Tariq Ramadan when Milan Kundera's book was banned at the Cairo Book Fair. And Gazeta Wyborcza examines the self-confidence of the Polish worker.
A healthy selection this week! Nigerian women should be punished, because they've only got oil on the brain, The Atlantic discovers. Nepszabadsag is amazed: Jan T. Gross has avoided offending the Turkishness of the Poles by the skin of his teeth. Columbian Hector Abad Faciolince sees the human face of Swiss conservatism. The precariat is today's working class, Telerama announces. Al Ahram introduces the first beauty salon for veiled women. And Denis Johnson discovers Paul Wolfowitz's wet dream in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The New York Review of Books sees the future of America in a Harlem hairdressers. In the Gazeta Wyborcza, Serbian historian Slavenko Terzic declares Kosovo's independence illegal. The London Review of Books considers the links between Modernism and liberalism, or the lack thereof. In the Novel Obs, Edgar Morin explains how he became a radical anti-Stalinist. Zanan is dead, long live Zanan! cries Al Ahram. The New York Times portrays the Turkish-Kurdish politician Abdullah Demirbas who wanted to ease the pressure on the Kurds and Armenians to assimilate in Turkey.
Why do Germans like Nicolas Gomez Davila, asks Semana. Le Monde diplomatique goes on a cruise with some Park Avenue ladies. The Spectator buries Venice. Nepszabadsag looks for real Hungarian liberal democrats. In Edge.org, Kevin Kelly looks to the future of the culture industry in the internet. And Portfolio has seen the nemesis of the culture industry in the internet.
The Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik warns about Google the monster snoop. Merkur has a transcendental experience with Gerhard Richter and Swarovski. Prospect worries about traditional book reviewing. In Nepszabadsag, historian Dusan Kovac looks into the likelihood of Hungarian-Slovakian reconciliation. And the New Statesman searches for the mild Anglican God.