Alain Finkielkraut, bouffon du roi

Par Dominique Vidal au Monde Diplomatique (janvier 2007) :

Le plus surprenant, avec certains intellectuels médiatiques, c’est qu’à chacune de leurs dérives, alors qu’on croit qu’ils ont touché le fond, ils réussissent à tomber plus bas encore. Alain Finkielkraut en est le prototype. Après avoir encensé la journaliste islamophobe Oriana Fallaci, couru au secours des victimes d’une « ratonnade anti-Blancs », diffamé dans Haaretz la révolte des banlieues qualifiée de « pogrom contre la République », le voilà qui, ce samedi matin dans son émission « Répliques » sur France Culture, agresse les jeunes des cités.

A Joël Roman argumentant patiemment, dans l’esprit de son essai Eux et nous, pour que la France traite enfin également tous ses enfants, Finkielkraut oppose un discours nostalgique et réactionnaire, avec le concours attendu de Thierry Jonquet, lui aussi invité pour son roman Ils sont votre épouvante et vous êtes leur crainte.

Hélène Cixous : "Je suis d'abord un auteur de textes qui n'ont pas de nom"

Télérama (13.01.2007) a un entretien avec Hélène Cixous, propos recueillis par Marine Landrot :

Vos livres parlent souvent de la mort. Votre premier deuil fut celui de votre père. Dans Osnabrück, vous avez même écrit : « Je viens d’un mourir, je viens du mourir de mon père… »

J’ai perdu mon père à 10 ans. Il y eut un fracas, un éclair. Brusquement, le monde avait disparu. Je ne savais plus où mettre les pieds. C’est ce qui est effrayant avec la mort d’un être cher. En disparaissant, cette personne qui est logée en vous, dans vos poumons, dans votre crâne, emporte le monde avec elle. Heureusement et malheureusement, la vie se reconstitue, surtout quand on est jeune, de même que les tissus du corps humain se régénèrent. La douleur reste toujours vive, mais elle devient une compagne, on vit avec elle. On lui parle et elle vous parle. Par la suite, cette douleur se répétera plusieurs fois, comme si c’était la première fois. Ce qui est terrifiant, c’est qu’on peut perdre LE monde (il n’y en a qu’un) plusieurs fois. Notre finitude, c’est ça : plus d’une mort dans la vie.

M. Bush, l'Irak et le syndrome vietnamien

Par Daniel Vernet au Monde (09.01.2007).

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Alain Badiou : Mao en chaire

Par Eric Aeschimann à Libération (10.01.2007).

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Le Voyage en Orient de Chateaubriand

Par Olivier Catel à Fabula Acta (11.01.2007). Sur Le Voyage en Orient de Chateaubriand, textes rassemblés et présentés par Jean-Claude Berchet, Editions Manucius, 2006. 347 p. :

Ce volume réunit les actes du colloque « Le Voyage en Orient de Chateaubriand » organisé par la Société Chateaubriand à l’ENS Ulm les 19 et 20 octobre 2006. Les contributions s’intéressent plus spécialement à l’Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem qui est au programme des agrégations de lettres pour l’année 2006-2007.

Il y a 200 ans, Chateaubriand partait de Venise pour entreprendre un grand pèlerinage culturel et religieux qui l’emmena sur les ruines de la Grèce, en Terre Sainte, en Égypte, en Tunisie et finalement en Espagne. Après le voyage américain où il avait exploré et chanté les forêts américaines, il devenait le voyageur pèlerin qui empruntait la route sacrée vers Jérusalem.

Ta Very Much!

From Ovi Magazine (12.01.2007), Asa Butcher's essay on "Thank you" and "Please", referring to "International Thank You Day" (January 11).

Japanese proverb : "There should be courtesy even between close friends."

The Scaffold! Natsukashiii! My aunt taught me how to sing their hit song "Thank U Very Much" almost 40 years ago. Too fast for a kid, I remember.

Saburô Ienaga : esthétique du Japon

Par René de Cecatty au Monde (11.01.2007).

LE DÉVELOPPEMENT D'UNE LOGIQUE DE LA NÉGATION DANS L'HISTOIRE DE LA PENSÉE JAPONAISE (Nihon shisôshi ni okeru hiteino ronri no hattatsu) de Saburô Ienaga. Traduit du japonais et préfacé par Bruno Smolarz et Hiroshi Matsuzaki. Ed. La Toison d'or (4, rue du Pré-aux-Merles, 94360 Bry-sur-Marne), 170 p., 15 €.

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Simon Schama : Power of Art

John McDonald reviews Simon Schama, Power of Art (BBC Books), at SMH (06.01.2007) :

Power of Art feels as if it has been written in one breathless burst of enthusiasm, in a prose style that crackles like electricity. Schama sets out to investigate the creation of eight great works of art via a rapid jaunt through the biographies of eight great artists and the stages that led up to that eureka moment. "When they happened, in a bolt of illumination," he writes, "the works tell us something about how the world is, how it is to be inside our skins, that no more prosaic source of wisdom can deliver."

So the stakes are high - Schama wants us to understand how a work of art may change one's life, how it can make us see the world as we have never seen it before. He also wants us to realise how visionary these artists were, for their careers are punctuated by spectacular failures. Those failures were sometimes the fault of an uncomprehending, hidebound audience, but were often due to the difficulties of artistic temperament.

Anne Wiazemsky : le mystère Bresson

Par Frank Nouchi au Monde (11.01.2007).

JEUNE FILLE d'Anne Wiazemsky. Gallimard, 220 p., 16,90 €.

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Donald Richie : Through the Terayama looking glass

By Donald Richie at The Japan Times (07.01.2007).

THE EXPERIMENTAL IMAGE WORLD OF SHUJI TERAYAMA, DVD four-volume box set. Tokyo: Daguerreo Press, Inc./Image Forum Video, 2006, color/monochrome, English subtitles, bilingual menu, audio commentaries (Japanese only) by Nobuhiro Kawanaka, Tatsuo Suzuki, Sakumi Hagiwara and Henriku Morisaki, 346 min., 18,900 yen.

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Maggiori : Je vous écoute

Par Robert Maggiori à Libération (11.01.2007).

Peter Szendy, Sur écoute. Esthétique de l'espionnage, Minuit, 160 pp., 19 €.

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Interview with Katsuhiro Otomo

Kuriko Sato interviews Mr. Otomo at Midnight Eye (29.12.2007) :

You are known for science fiction. What was the interest in doing a period piece for you?

I've always been interested in jidai geki and in making one. As a Japanese, you grow up watching jidai geki. Every filmmaker probably wants to do one, to be like Akira Kurosawa. But not everybody can be Kurosawa. Also, I'm not interested in making films that someone else has already made. If I make a film, I want it to be unlike anything and when you find an idea that might allow you to do that, like in the case of Bugmaster, it really motivates you.

Joe Odagiri loves Domu: A Child's Dream, which is one of the ones that haven't been done yet.

In Venice I met Guillermo Del Toro, who's had the intention to adapt Domu for a while. But I don't know what's up with that right now. We tried to get it made once before, but there were problems with the producer. I gave Del Toro the rights, though, so as far as I'm concerned, if it ever gets made, it's he who will make it. Who knows, Domu is published in the US by Dark Horse, who also bring out Hellboy. So there is still a chance it will happen.

I wrote Domu like I would write a film. It's like the storyboard for one entire film. I've already made the movie Domu, in other words, and I'm not interested in making it again myself. I generally don't like revisiting or even reading my own manga. Maybe I just don't like my own work (laughs).

Before 'Howl,' the Hospital

By Scott Timberg at The LA Times (07.01.2007) :

"My argument is that he was in a state of collapse and that he needed that hospitalization," says Janet Hadda, a petite and energetic woman, in her Hancock Park home office. Now a retired UCLA professor of Jewish and Yiddish literature, she came to her conclusion after reading a wide range of personal and medical records, including some seen by only a handful of people.

Rather than squelching his creativity, this period of enforced rest and routine actually made the callow young man a great writer. "I think he was allowed to be crazy," Hadda says. "So everything came out — and he lived through it. Most people are terrified what will happen if they lose it. But it happened to him, and he survived. He didn't have to be afraid because everything had already happened."

In her article, "Ginsberg in Hospital," to be published in the Freudian quarterly "American Imago," Hadda describes this often overlooked period "as a seminal moment in the formation of Allen Ginsberg, poet and public figure, iconoclast and icon."

Jean-Pierre Vernant, grand résistant et helléniste, est mort

Par Philippe-Jean Catinchi au Monde (10.01.2007) :

Jean-Pierre Vernant est mort mardi 9 janvier, à son domicile, à Sèvres (Hauts-de-Seine). Celui dont les travaux ont bouleversé le regard sur l'homme et le monde de la Grèce antique, du CNRS (1948) à l'Ecole pratique des hautes études (1958), puis au Collège de France (1975), venait d'avoir 93 ans.

Né à Provins (Seine-et-Marne) le 4 janvier 1914, Jean-Pierre Vernant reste orphelin à 8ans, après la mort de sa mère, puisqu'il n'a pas connu son père – ce qui lui fit dire qu'il ne savait pas trop ce qu'est le complexe d'Œdipe. Une boutade, puisque, même recomposée, la figure paternelle fut décisive. Engagé volontaire dans l'infanterie aux premières heures de la Grande Guerre, Jean est mort au front en 1915. Cet agrégé de philosophie, qui avait dû renoncer à la carrière universitaire pour reprendre l'entreprise de presse que son père avait fondée à Provins à la fin du XIX^e siècle, sut défendre avec Le Briard les options éthiques d'une lignée d'intellectuels engagés dans le siècle, anticléricaux, voire antireligieux, et dreyfusards de la première heure. Un héritage que ses deux fils, Jacques et Jean-Pierre, reçus tous deux majors de l'agrégation de philosophie – un exploit inédit ! – n'eurent de cesse d'assumer. Quand l'aîné, Jacques, dénonce à l'été 1939 la signature du pacte germano-soviétique, Jean-Pierre, le cadet, rappelle que "le vrai courage, c'est, au-dedans de soi, de ne pas céder, ne pas plier, ne pas renoncer. Etre le grain de sable que les plus lourds engins, écrasant tout sur leur passage, ne réussissent pas à briser". Partager cette profession de foi suffit à vous faire adopter comme frère d'armes, puisque la résistance ne peut qu'être un combat, pour soi et les autres.

Iwao Takamoto Dies

From Mainichi Daily News (09.01.2007) :

LOS ANGELES -- Iwao Takamoto, the animator who created Scooby-Doo and directed the cartoon classic "Charlotte's Web," has died. He was 81.

Takamoto died Monday of heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Warner Bros. spokesman Gary Miereanu said.

In a career that spanned more than six decades, Takamoto assisted in the designs of some of the biggest animated features and television shows for Disney and the Hanna-Barbera animation team. They included "Cinderella," "Peter Pan," "Lady and the Tramp," "101 Dalmatians," "The Jetsons" and "The Flintstones."

But it was his creation of Scooby-Doo, the cowardly dog with an adventurous heart, that captivated audiences and endured for generations.

The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction

By John Freeman at SFGate.com (07.01.2007). Reviews Denys Johnson-Davies (ed.), The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction, 486 Pages; $15.95 :

It's hard to think of a region neglected in translation like the Arab world. More than 320 million people live in the area, but Americans can purchase just one anthology of their modern fiction in English: Denys Johnson-Davies' recently released "The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Literature." Given its singularity, the book has much ground to cover, and Johnson-Davies does it by squeezing nearly 80 writers from 14 countries into just under 500 pages. It's not an ideal format -- as some writers only have three pages to make an impression -- but it presents a vital taste.

Almost all of the writers work in classical Arabic, and nearly half of them are Egyptian, both of which reflect Davies' background. He was born in Vancouver, educated at Cambridge University and has lived in Cairo on and off ever since. He started out as a translator in 1947, self-publishing a book of short stories by the great Egyptian writer Mahmoud Teymour. He has ferried more than 30 books into English in the six ensuing decades, many of them by Egyptian writers. During the '60s, he edited the literary journal Aswat, which provided a place for the writers in this book to publish their work. Many of the excerpts in this book come from short stories.

Edouard de Rothschild : "Une vraie rupture avec l'époque July"

Entretien avec Edouard de Rothschild (premier actionnaire de Libération), propos recueillis par Pascale Santi, au Monde (05.01.2007).

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Un peintre contre un poète : René Char et Roger Van Rogger

Par Olivier Belin à Fabula Acta (06.01.2007). Sur Les Voisinages de René Char – Bœuf écorché no. 11, Éditions de Vallongues, 2003, 155 p. :

1983 : alors que René Char se voit consacré de son vivant grâce à la publication de ses Œuvres complètes dans la Pléiade, le peintre Roger Van Rogger meurt d’un cancer, après des années de travail acharné et d’efforts souvent vains pour faire reconnaître son œuvre. La juxtaposition de ces deux événements pourrait paraître insignifiante si elle ne venait illustrer, d’une manière cruellement ironique, la divergence de deux trajectoires qui se sont pourtant entrecroisées, quelques années durant, jusqu’à ce que Char rompe violemment et définitivement avec Van Rogger. C’est l’histoire de cette relation que ce numéro spécial de la revue Bœuf écorché, cahier annuel de la Fondation Van Rogger, entreprend de retracer. Réalisé à l’occasion d’une exposition intitulée « Roger Van Rogger – Les voisinages de René Char » en 2003, l’ouvrage présente les pièces nécessaires à la redécouverte d’un peintre que Char a délibérément éliminé de ses références après leur brouille en 1951 : une série d’œuvres de Van Rogger composées dans le sillage de la présence de Char, la « Correspondance » entre le peintre et le poète, et un article de Catherine Coquio, « Chronique d’une utopie partagée », qui cherche à comprendre comment cette amitié fusionnelle a pu déboucher sur une relation de défiance et d’hostilité.

Avnery : Kiss Of Death

By Uri Avnery at Gush Shalom/Counter Currents (07.01.2007) :

Since Judas Iscariot embraced Jesus, Jerusalem has not seen such a kiss.

After being boycotted by Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert for years, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) was invited to the official residence of the Prime Minister of Israel two weeks ago. There, in front of the cameras, Olmert embraced him and kissed him warmly on both cheeks. Abbas looked stunned, and froze.

Somehow the scene was reminiscent of another incident of politically-inspired physical contact: the embarassing occurrence at the Camp David meeting, when Prime Minister Ehud Barak pushed Yasser Arafat forcefully into the room where Bill Clinton stood waiting.

Le roman de Balthus

Par Bernard Géniès au Nouvel Observateur (04.01.2007).

Le plus grand peintre vivant est mort, par Pierre-Jean Rémy, Seuil, 368 p., 22 euros.

Continue reading "Le roman de Balthus"

Primo Levi : "Bear Meat"

Fiction by Primo Levi at The New Yorker (08.01.2007 Issue). Translated by Alessandra Bastagli. I wonder : Is his English collection of short stories going out?

Update :: 15.01.2007

The New Yorker editors should have added this notice : "Primo Levi's collection, A Tranquil Star,  will be published by Norton in April."

See Norton homepage.

A Woman Called Iran, a Refuge Called America

From The NY Times (05.01.2007), Michiko Kakutani reviews Davar Ardalan, My Name Is Iran, Henry Holt :

What keeps the reader reading “My Name Is Iran” is the remarkable trajectory traced by members of three generations of Ms. Ardalan’s family, as they moved back and forth between the East and West, Iran and America, trying to balance a personal equation of tradition and modernity, religious faith and individualistic freedom.

The story of her maternal grandfather, Abol Ghassem, is in itself a remarkable tale of perseverance and will. At the age of 40, Abol — who grew up in a remote village in the Bakhtiari tribal area of Iran — enrolled in the American Mission School, learned English alongside 7- and 8-year-olds, and eventually received a scholarship to study in America.

Faulty Towers: Reform, Radicalism and the Gothic Castle, 1760-1800

By Frances A. Chiu at Romanticism on the Net No. 44 (November 2006). Abstract :

Who has not been on an amusement park ride that proceeds through a haunted house, complete with cobwebs, coffins, once opulent furnishings, and a ghost or two? It is an idea that we have encountered countless times through novels, movies, and amusement parks yet one that continues to mystify us. How did the trope of the haunted Gothic castle/mansion materialize so quickly in the late eighteenth century? Although we have more or less recognized Walpole’s castle of Otranto as its prototype, we are yet unacquainted with the rapid construction of the so-called “haunted castle/mansion/house” trope, particularly between 1777 and 1800. This essay contends that far from being accidental, the foundations of this trope were heavily impacted not only by populist histories that detailed the beginnings of Britain’s stately castles, abbeys, and houses and the dark tales of their presiding tyrants, but more significantly, the simultaneous campaigns for parliamentary reform and religious toleration. I demonstrate how historians began to identify the chief features of Gothic architecture as Norman during a period in which reformers and radicals were also beginning to revive the myth of the Norman Yoke and stir up resentment against the church and aristocracy. I also show how reformers were increasingly inclined to deploy architectural metaphors in their discussions of Britain’s political institutions and establishments: just as conservatives argued for the retention of the Gothic castle, progressives argued for its destruction, regarding it in some instances as either haunted or filled with harpies (i.e., Jeremy Bentham). Finally, I analyze the means by which Jacobin and Gothic novelists adopted the Gothic castle as a criticism of Britain’s so-called “establishments” and, more interestingly, came to explore the idea of identification between villains and their dark abodes in their novels.

Žižek : Is this digital democracy, or a new tyranny of cyberspace?

Slavoj Zizek (without accents) criticizes cyberspace, referring to "Person of the Year" (The Time Magazine), at The Guardian (30.12.2006). Concludes :

And therein lies the threat of cyberspace at its most elementary: when a man and a woman interact in it, they may be haunted by the spectre of a frog embracing a bottle of beer. Since neither of them is aware of it, these discrepancies between what "you" really are and what "you" appear to be in digital space can lead to murderous violence.

"A frog embracing a bottle of beer" -- Where does this metaphor come from? Is it just a beer label?

Taiwan, the Island between Heaven and Hell

By Bradley Winterton at Taipei Times (07.01.2007). Reviews Liao Ping-hui and David Der-wei Wang (eds.), Taiwan Under Japanese Colonial Rule 1895-1945, Columbia :

“According to legend, the place is hell, but once one sees it, it becomes heaven.” Most people will think this view, expressed about Taiwan by a Japanese painter in 1935, is a little extreme at both ends of the spectrum. Even so, it incorporates well enough the wide range of attitudes found in this new compendium of articles on a perennially interesting subject.

Simultaneously eclectic and comprehensive, Taiwan Under Japanese Colonial Rule doesn't aim to present a smooth historical overview. Despite its publisher's implicit claim that it's more wide-ranging and sophisticated than any book ever before published on the topic, it did originate as a collection of papers read out at a conference (in 2001), and so is essentially experts speaking to experts. No one clearly wanted to make a fool of himself by offering generalizations, however impressive, so instead we have 17 dissertations (eight by Taiwanese writers) on often highly specialized subjects. But there is a wealth of interest here nonetheless.

Isaac Bashevis Singer Comes Back From Dead as the Anti-Theist

By Ron Rosenbaum at The NY Observer (08.01.2007 Issue). Reviews Florence Noiville, Isaac B. Singer : A Life, FSG (October 2006) :

It’s remarkable, however, the way commenters on the new Singer book have failed either to grasp or to articulate the seriousness of Singer’s position, its centrality to him and his work, and the significance it has for the atheism/theism debate.

None has seen fit to give a name to Singer’s Third Position in the debate. So I will: It’s not atheism, not theism, but rather anti-theism, a provocative, profoundly different stance from either of the others. Simply put, contrary to the atheists, Singer believes in a God, but, contrary to the theists, he doesn’t believe in a just, loving or merciful God; he believes in a God who doesn’t deserve worship, a God who deserves our condemnation.

David Slade : Hard Candy

By Christian Perring at Metapsychology (02.01.2007) :

The writer and director are right to defend themselves against accusations that they are just making money off an attention-grabbing topic: this is a sophisticated and interesting film. Yet it is also troubling and unsatisfying experience because the interaction between Jeff and Hayley has seemed just a game, with little context and very few details to provide any emotional closure. The figure Hayley as the troubled, smart and angry adolescent girl is a great one -- Nelson expresses his admiration for Buffy the Vampire Slayer in one of the DVD extras -- but here she just appears and disappears, as if by magic. Combined with her unnatural strength and intelligence, she seems more of a mythical figure than someone we can relate to. It verges on exploiting the gender wars, and the implausibility of some of the plot details as it develops undermines its emotional power, but nevertheless it is one of the most distinctive movies to have been released recently.

Low budget but thrilling. I've seen a movie with the similar situation a long time ago but I can't remember what it was.

Download Torrent file (55.7K).

The Line of Beauty

Eric Griffiths reviews Meyer Schapiro, Romanesque Architectural Sculpture : The Charles Eliot Norton lectures, edited by Linda Seidel University of Chicago Press, 256pp, £25.50, at New Statesman (08.01.2007 Issue) :

Schapiro began his 1967 Norton lectures at Harvard, published here for the first time, with this multinational outburst of carving that gave to the churches "the kind of speaking face which comes from sculpture". There had been nothing like it for a long time, because, as he pointed out, the Romans broke with the Greek habit of putting statues around their temples, and saved their monumental energies for triumphal arches and other such stately boasting.

Schapiro was keen to bring out how responsive these religious works were to the world they faced. Romanesque sculptures on exterior walls appear "neither as ornament nor as theological illustration but as 'argument'"; they are conversation as well as conversion pieces. In them, the Church is "in a posture which relates to conflict, to conviction, to persuasion, to threat, to the imaging of consequences", and those who look at them are "people free to move, to regard things according to their own inclination or position at the moment, and to shift their point of view"

Singing a New Song

The NY Times Magazine has an interview with Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) :

For all your devotion to education and good deeds, government officials in various countries have tried to link you to extremist groups, including Hamas. What do you think of Hamas?

That’s an extremely loaded question.

Can you try to answer it?

I have never supported a terrorist group or any group that did other than charity and good to humankind.

O.K., but many of us here in the States would like to see moderate Muslims make more of an effort to denounce the extremist fringe of the faith. Very few mainstream Muslims have publicly criticized their radical brethren.

If I am not an example of that, then tell me, Who is?

So would you say you have contempt for a terrorist group like Hamas?

I wouldn’t put those words in my mouth. I wouldn’t say anything on that issue. I’m here to talk about peace. I’m a man who does want peace for this world, and I don’t think you will achieve that by putting people into corners and asking them very, very difficult questions about very contentious issues.

Disappointed although I love his songs. If he could deny all kinds of violence, even Hamas...

Saint Augustin et la postmodernité

Par Nicolas Weill au Monde (04.01.2007).

DES CONFESSIONS Jacques Derrida - Saint Augustin, essais réunis par John Caputo et Michael Scanlon. Traduit de l'anglais par Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, Stock, 498 p., 35 €.

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Pulvers : Japan is 'beautiful' -- and don't you dare disagree

By Roger Pulvers at The Japan Times (07.01.2007).

Continue reading "Pulvers : Japan is 'beautiful' -- and don't you dare disagree"

Anna et Lou, soeurs

Par Geneviève Delaisi de Parseval à Libération (04.01.2007).

Lou Andreas-Salomé et Anna Freud, A l'ombre du père : Correspondance, 1919-1937. Préface et traduction de l'allemand par Stéphane Michaud. Edition de Daria A. Rothe et Inge Weber, texte établi par Dorothee Pfeiffer. Hachette Littératures, 657 pp., 35 €.

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Retour à Palo Alto

Par Robert Maggiori à Libération (04.01.2007).

Jean-Jacques Wittezaele, Teresa García : A la recherche de l'Ecole de Palo Alto, Seuil, 430 pp., 27€.

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Blogging, the Nihilist Impulse

By Geert Lovink at Eurozine (02.01.2007) :

Media theorist and Internet activist Geert Lovink formulates a theory of weblogs that goes beyond the usual rhetoric of citizens' journalism. Blogs lead to decay, he writes. What's declining is the "Belief in the Message". Instead of presenting blog entries as mere self-promotion, we should interpret them as decadent artefacts that remotely dismantle the broadcast model.

Le grand retour de Mister Barnes

Entretien avec Julian Barnes par François Rivière au Figaro (04.01.2007).

Arthur et George de Julian Barnes traduit de l'anglais par Jean-Pierre Aoustin Mercure de France, 555 p., 24,40 € . En librairie le 11 janvier.

Continue reading "Le grand retour de Mister Barnes"

Humming Along

By Michael Wood at LRB (04.01.2007 Issue). Reviews Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Cape, 2006.

Ummmm.... Basta...

Žižek : Denying the Facts, Finding the Truth

Slavoj Zizek (without accents) appears in The NY Times Op-Ed section. Is this the first time? :

The United States as a global policeman — why not? The post-cold-war situation effectively called for some global power to fill the void. The problem resides elsewhere: recall the common perception of the United States as a new Roman Empire. The problem with today’s America is not that it is a new global empire, but that it is not one. That is, while pretending to be an empire, it continues to act like a nation-state, ruthlessly pursuing its interests. It is as if the guiding vision of recent American politics is a weird reversal of the well-known motto of the ecologists — act globally, think locally.

Haruki Murakami, façon Godard

Par Nils C. Ahl au Monde (04.01.2007).

LE PASSAGE DE LA NUIT (After Dark) de Haruki Murakami.. Traduit du japonais par Hélène Morita, Belfond, 240 p., 19,50 €.

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John Updike : "L'Amérique, comme un cloaque"

Entretien avec John Updike, propos recueillis par Lila Azam Zanganeh au Monde (04.01.2007).

Continue reading "John Updike : "L'Amérique, comme un cloaque""