March 16, 2006
Around the web #10
- Two smart review-essays about Franz Kafka's life have appeared this month. The first, by Robert Alter, ran in the New Republic and is reprinted online at Powells.com. The second, by Jeff Fort, is in the current issue of The Believer. Their respective first lines: "There is a tantalizing gap between our increasingly detailed knowledge of Kafka's life and our imperfect understanding of his achievement as a writer"; "Franz Kafka’s greatest wish was to disappear."
- Morgan Meis, at 3 Quarks Daily, uses R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet to muse on Homer, Tacitus, and the differences between (and intertwining of) parataxis and hypotaxis. It's more engaging than it sounds, just like Kelly's epic tale.
- The Los Angeles Times runs a story on musical Minimalism on the occasion of the LA Philharmonic's "Minimalist Jukebox" series, running from this Saturday through April 2 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. If I could attend only one event in the program—and I'm very upset that I cannot attend any—it would be "Hallucination City," which features Glenn Branca conducting his Symphony No. 13 for 100 Guitars, on Wednesday, March 29.
- A few art links: An interview with Arthur Danto at KultureFlash; the Art History Newsletter points to Donald Kuspit's "A Critical History of 20th Century Art," which is being serialized at Artnet, and to Doug Harvey's LA Weekly column from last year, called "The End of Donald Kuspit"; in January, Artforum hosted a panel discussion called "Curating the Biennial," and the RealAudio webcast is now online (direct link to RA file); and Adrian Searle, writing for the Guardian, does a better job of reviewing Hilma af Klint's exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre than he did the Tate Triennial.
- Pankaj Mishra published an eminently sensible review of David Foster Wallace's new essay collection in last Sunday's NYTBR.
- The wild card: WFMU's Beware of the Blog posts seven video clips from Kure Kura Takora (Gimme Gimme Octopus), an early '70s Japanese children's television show. The clips must be seen to be believed.
- I have been on the fence about subscribing to the Virginia Quarterly Review, a literary journal, but yesterday's announcement that it was nominated for six National Magazine Awards, more than any other publication except The Atlantic, pushed me over the fence. See the other nominees here.
- Continuing my writing-about-writing theme started with the mention of Kevin Kopelson's book a few posts below this one, here is an ode to an Olympia typewriter by Michael Erard, published at The Morning news.
- Last, but not least: I had coffee the other day with my friend Mirjam Varadinis, who is a curator at the Kunsthaus Zurich and the proprietor of A-Z Public Limited Editions, which publishes "limited edition" artworks as downloadable PDF files. AZPLE's first edition, by the artist Annelise Coste, is only online through the weekend, so download while you can; the next artwork will be posted on March 20.