The Periodic Table
by Primo Levi
translated from the Italian by Raymond Rosenthal
Schocken; Reissue edition (April 4, 1995)
One itty-bitty superfluous whine: back when I was assigned The Diary of Anne Frank as a compulsory reading in secondary school, with all due respect to Frank, I remember thinking, “Why can’t we be given The Periodic Table instead?!” Read the rest of this entry »
Moments of Reprieve
by Primo Levi
translated from the Italian by Ruth Feldman
Written unplanned at different times and on different ocassions, Moments of Reprieve is a collection of fifteen short stories, each centred on one character only. There was Eddy, a self-absorbed green-triangle juggler and a thief, Tischler, a carpenter who recounts the story of Lilith. Bandi, a mild Hungarian whose name was Endre Szántó (reinforcing in Levi “the vague impression that a halo seemed to encircle his shaved head” to which Bandi explained laughingly: “Szántó means plowman, or more generically, peasant”), whom Levi taught to steal and cheat. Read the rest of this entry »
Ha. That got your attention. (Did it, did it?) Whatever. Something to keep you entertained on Valentine’s day, while you sneer on oh those poor, gullible folks, scrambling for long-stemmed roses, or chocolate bonbons, or lacy nighties, or strawberry champagne, or whatever those scams capitalists are ripping them off for. Yes, those whores of war, those losers. We’ll delight in exploding penises instead.
Anyway, back to the exploding and fencing penises: SBS has concluded the last part of Dr. Tatiana’s three-series (science musical) show. Instead of the book’s sassy sex advice columnist (who’d put whatsername of that Sex and the City to shame), Olivia Judson appears in the doco as a leggy, white-leather-clad Dr Tatiana the sexpert consultant, riding along in her Mustang for her research, consoling all-dancing, all-singing, hanky-panky creatures (“from frustrated fruit flies to lovelorn golden pottos”). Read the rest of this entry »
A Time for Machetes: The Rwandan Genocide: The Killers Speak
by Jean Hatzfeld
translated from the French by Linda Coverdale
Serpents Tail (June 30, 2005)
Shying away from close analysis of the big picture, Hatzfeld instead focuses on the hands and foot of the genocide, i.e. common men and a few local leaders. The interviews are compiled into chapters, each focusing on specific aspects, interspersed with some overviews and notes by Hatzfeld. Read the rest of this entry »
Drug Use in Australia: A Harm Minimisation Approach
edited by Margaret Hamilton, Allan Kellehear, Greg Rumbold
Oxford University Press, Australia, 1998
An introductory book containing essays about drugs and drug use in Australia that challenge the “prevailing” (?) judgemental, often insufferably simplistic views about drugs and drug use, and discuss instead the current “harm minimisation” approach, aimed mainly for tertiary students, but readable for general public. Read the rest of this entry »
During (and a few decades after) the wars Moravia was probably the most widely-known Italian novelist in English-speaking countries. The Conformist and Contempt have been made into films by Bertolucci and Godard. Then there’s also the friendship with Pasolini (another Italian chap I regard with the same mix of repulsion & reverence). Yet these days one hardly heard of him, jostled by popular favourites such as Eco and Calvino. Perhaps all his realistic pessimism sealed him into old days’ obscurity? Perhaps.
So enter NYRB’s enthusiastic revival of ‘underappreciated’ authors. And a recent adaptation of Boredom, L’Ennui by Cedric Kahn. While! To the coquettish delights of my scanty collection of Moravias, a newly-acquired ‘vintage’: Conjugal Love.
Yeah. Again. A year (and a half) in LJ, a year in blogzy (which is discontinuing, a pity), and now here in WordPress. Oh yes, it’d be just as temporary, perhaps even less (at least I hope so). Because my exquisite plan to move it permanently to my domain has been bowled over by yours truly’s equally dazzling fatuousness that caused the whole server to crash.
With that glorious splat.
But I shall not give up, to the cultivation of syncretic drecks, to the glory that is the manure to feed the cashcows. But this will have to do for my gratuitous bitching. For now.
Oh yeah, music, book, films: recommend?
Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature
by Richard P. Bentall
Penguin Global; New edition (December 28, 2005)
The book is divided into four parts. Part one deals with the history of psychology: it sketches the simplifying effect that Kraepelin’s classification had on the theory and practice of psychiatry and its growth, the triumph of APA, centred around Euro/American-centric ideas, that doesn’t sufficiently take into account cross-cultural differences, and how the production of DSM was greatly influenced by political and economic agendas (particularly DSM-III) as it strove to create a global standard in psychosis and to synchronise with WHO’s ICD, each subsequent DSM growing more fine-grained yet still failing to improve its kappa value. Read the rest of this entry »
Hello, this has been overwhelming, how shall I… let me count the ways… I’ve started working full-time in a theatre company, and it’s a physical, construction job (you know, the usual: painting, sculpting, chuxing, flossing, burning, cable-tying, drilling, metal-sawing, rigging, etc.) that involves no sitting down in front of a computer, let alone being bored enough to sneak off and read emails (or LJs, or porns). Extremely, supremely fun—I don’t regret it one bit that I rejected an offer from a better-paying, ‘posh’ air-conditioned webdesign company for this garage of a workshop—having once been a tree-hugger with an eager naivety for CoFA’s promises and ready to cynically smirk at almost anything, I found myself overcome by call it a tenderness I’d never go quite to the back of lest I got bogged. At the moment we’re doing an absolutely massive, humongous dragon prop for The Magic Flute for the Opera House in February (free tickets to see fat ladies singing in German, yay!), but starting the next following week we’d be starting on something else entirely. Read the rest of this entry »
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