Animal Farm turns 80

Every evening, my father would read what he’d written to my mother under heavy blankets in bed. It was the only warm place in the flat. They would discuss the developing story and where it might go next. Lettice Cooper, the novelist and my mother’s Ministry of Food colleague, remembered my mother updating them every morning with the animals’ latest adventures. That my father and mother worked together so closely is no surprise. My father respected my mother’s talents greatly and later told a friend she had helped plan Animal Farm. [...]

But Animal Farm is more than just a satire of the Russian Revolution. This “fairy story” (as my father called it) is an eternal warning against political leaders who hijack potentially noble movements for their own selfish purposes. My father thought all politicians should be watched hawkishly, confronted truthfully (whatever the price) and kicked out when they put their interests before those of their country. Richard Blair, The Guardian 

Richard Blair è l'unico figlio (adottato) di George Orwell 

Brown’s first coed dorm, 1969: More family-style dinners, less sex

It's ten o'clock on a Sunday morning in the Diman House Lounge. The main attraction of the moment is the New York Times. Boys and girls scattered around the room swap sections back and forth and read choice items aloud to each other. A couple sitting on the couch makes a half-hearted stab at the crossword puzzle. A girl curled up in a corner chair with a philosophy text addresses the room at large, "Does anyone know the meaning of the word hylozoism?" No one is sure and one of the boys goes off to consult his dictionary. Brown Alumni Magazine

The Magic of Translation

In fact, as Calleja demonstrates through several fascinating and detailed translations in progress, shepherding a piece of writing from one language into another requires so many minute responses, thought processes and decisions that the translator would find it impossible to suppress their own voice and experiences; and that if they managed it, the result would probably be worse, inert and undynamic. Alex Clark, The Guardian

recensione a Fair: The Life-Art of Translation, Jen Calleja (Prototype) 

anche: this year’s Booker prize longlist looks in new directions 

The History of Advice Columns

The word “advice” comes from two Latin words: the prefix ad, which implies a movement toward something, and vīsum, “vision,” a distinctly vivid or imaginative image. To ask for advice is to reach for a person whose vision exceeds yours, for reasons supernatural (oracles, mediums), professional (doctors, lawyers), or pastoral (parents, friends). It is a curious accident of language that “advice” contains within it the etymologically unrelated word “vice,” from the Latin vitium, meaning “fault” or “sin.” Yet the accident is suggestive. [...] 

Mary Beth Norton’s book “ ‘I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer’: Letters on Love & Marriage from the World’s First Personal Advice Column” (Princeton) collects nearly three hundred specimens of the advice that the Athenian Mercury, as it’s usually known, offered. London was at the time Europe’s largest city, a place where crosscurrents of trade, finance, robbery, and prostitution pulled recently urbanized inhabitants into previously unimaginable relationships with strangers. In the age of print, Hamburg was the birthplace of magazine publishing, and Paris the birthplace of the literary review and the gossip rag; but restless, immoral London was where the advice column first transformed people’s private lives into object lessons for ethical behavior. The anonymity of the modern city gave rise to a distinctly modern form. Merve Emre, The New Yorker

Like

Reynolds smartly and lightheartedly shares various scenarios in which she feels using the word “like” in conversation offers an advantage. As she suggests, “like” is a great alternative to “said” when recounting to a friend how an incident made one feel. “And then I was like….” The ability to use “like” in this context “has fundamentally changed the way we tell stories.”As Reynolds explains, when feelings are the focus, “we no longer have to recite (or remember) precisely what was said.” Kirkus Reviews

il libro di Megan C. Reynolds, Like, di cui qui si parla è edito da HarperOne. Notate il sottotitolo! 

interessante anche: Keith Houston, Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of Emoji (Norton)