USALIBRI
Rassegna della stampa culturale americana e inglese. Segnalazioni di novità in libreria, articoli, interviste, dibattiti, idee e pettegolezzi.
13.10.24
The Jazz Singer
Il primo film sonoro – prodotto dalla stessa Warner e proiettato per la prima volta il 27 ottobre 1927 – fu Il cantante di jazz (The Jazz Singer) nel quale, oltre a varie canzoni, si udivano una frase rivolta al pubblico dal protagonista e un breve dialogo tra questi e la madre. Il protagonista, interpretato da Al Johnson, è un ragazzo ebreo che non vuole cantare in sinagoga, come hanno fatto tutti i maschi di famiglia prima di lui, perché ama il jazz. Nel film canta però Kol Nidre, in una versione molto commovente. A proposito del Kippur appena trascorso.
Why not a tetanus shot?
Nationwide, routine vaccination rates have declined since the pandemic, whether due to vaccine hesitancy, disruption in routine healthcare or an increase in the uninsured rate. And it’s taking a toll on public health. Measles outbreaks have been reported in states including Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Oregon. Lynn Arditi, The Public's Radio
7.10.24
7 ottobre, un anno dal pogrom
What shocked many people about the student letter was its heartlessness. Even as the bodies were being counted, the signers told us not to blame the killers but to redirect our gaze, and fix all responsibility on Israel. The Chronicle of Higher Education
6.10.24
Rebecca Watson: ‘What are siblings: twisted reflections of ourselves? Allies? Enemies?
I Will Crash by Rebecca Watson is published by Faber.
29.9.24
The 2024 Booker prize shortlist
Shortlisted alongside them are American
writer Rachel Kushner with Creation Lake and Yael van der Wouden, the
first Dutch writer to be shortlisted and lone debut novelist to feature
with The Safekeep. Completing this year’s shortlist is Percival Everett
with James, his retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of
the enslaved Jim. The Guardian
22.9.24
Tell me everything
sempre sul Guardian, un elenco dei libri di narrativa e saggistica in uscita quest'autunno
15.9.24
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
The first time Pevear, 81, and Volokhonsky, 78, translated a
Russian novel together, it felt as though another man had joined their
marriage: Dostoyevsky.
“It was a mariage à trois,” Volokhonsky said. “Dostoyevsky was always in our mind. We just lived with him.”
Since that first translation published in 1990 — it was “The Brothers Karamazov,” Dostoyevsky’s immense final novel — Pevear and Volokhonsky have become reigning translators of Russian literature, publishing an average of one volume per year. Their work includes classics by Tolstoy and Chekhov, as well as lesser-known books and works by contemporary writers like the Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich. In their reach, the couple are making vast swaths of Russia’s written word available to the West, for which they have received both adulation and full-throated condemnation. Instagram New York Times
8.9.24
Science meets art in Brown engineering course
Using the scientific principles behind fluid mechanics, students in a School of Engineering course produced stunning imagery brought to life via high-speed photography.
Conducting the experiment as part of Engineering 0350: Art Fluid
Engineering, the students’ goal was to capture stunning imagery, using
high-speed photography, of the different ways liquids can splash. The
end product is meant to show how the work of scientists and engineers,
and the fundamental laws and principles they rely on, can also be
applied to artistic creation. News from Brown
1.9.24
Katerina
Appelfeld’s 1989 novel Katerina (translated by Jeffrey M Green) is stranger still than Badenheim 1939, but ultimately no less satisfying. It opens in simple, fable-like style – “My name is Katerina, and I will soon be 80 years old” – as it tells the story of her life as a Ruthenian (eastern Slav) growing up in the 1880s. She is taught suspicion of Jews – “there’s nothing easier than to hate the Jews” – but when she becomes pregnant and is taken in by a Jewish family, she questions her prejudices. Yet antisemitism, we know, does not lie down quietly. John Self, The Guardian
in questo articolo vengono recensiti tre libri di Appelfeld di recenti usciti presso Penguin, Badenheim 1939, Katerina and The Story of a Life
25.8.24
Tamara
buona lettura di mezz'estate!