Stazione centrale di Milano, Binario 21

E' il binario da dove partivano i treni per Auschwitz. In questo luogo stanno costruendo un Memoriale della Shoah che dovrebbe essere pronto per il giorno della Memoria, il prossimo 27 gennaio. Ma per ora ne parlano di più in America che in Italia. "For nine years, a foundation and a pair of Milanese architects have been working to transform the grim, cavernous depot - all but abandoned after the war - into the Memorial of the Shoah.

When finished, the project will take up 75,000 square feet and will include a Jewish-themed library rising three stories within the vast space, as well as an auditorium, a room for silent contemplation and a cluster of open-sided cubes for showing video testimonials by European Holocaust survivors.

The names of deportees from the station, about 2,000, will be inscribed on a wall behind a preserved track from the depot, and four windowless wooden train cars will sit atop a second track. An elevator platform that was used to lift such cars up to the main station will be visible at one end of the track, as will the opening in the ceiling far above it, an ominous rectangle of light the exact dimensions of a train car. It was through this opening that the cars would emerge into the busy station before setting off unnoticed for Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen or Italian camps like Fossoli, near Modena.

The memorial, which is about a third built, has been plagued by delays. But Roberto Jarach, vice president of the Foundation for the Memorial and the head of Milan’s Jewish Community, a membership organization, said plans called for part of the site to open to the public in time for International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27". nyt.

Blue Nights

Joan Didion fotografata da Annie Leibovitz

E' il titolo del nuovo libro di Joan Didion (Knopf), che parla della morte della figlia Quintana Roo Dunne Michael. Lo recensisce, con commozione e intensità, Christopher Hitchens su Vanity Fair, "In this supremely tender work of memory, Didion is paradoxically insistent that as long as one person is condemned to remember, there can still be pain and loss and anguish". vf.

The Marriage Plot

E' il titolo del nuovo romanzo di Jeffrey Eugenides, in uscita presso Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Il romanzo è ambientato negli anni Ottanta tra neo-laureati idealisti appena usciti da Brown (il mio libro!). "In the book, Eugenides delves into the psychology of three college seniors (who, like the author, went to Brown) as they graduate in 1982 into a recession and a love triangle. There's Mitchell, who loves Christian mysticism and his classmate Madeleine Hanna; Madeleine, who loves romantic idealism and her classmate Leonard Bankhead; and Leonard, a polymathic biology student and manic-depressive, who loves lithium". Cliccando qui si legge un'intervista all'autore.

La prima copertina del Grande Gatsby

La prima copertina del Grande Gatsby è molto bella, rara e preziosa. Il prossimo 20 ottobre uno dei pochi esamplari verrà messo all'asta a New York da Sotheby's, che prevede di venderla a un prezzo tra i 150.000 e i 180.000 dollari. E' stata disegnata da Francis Cugat, fratello maggiore di Xavier, il "Rhumba King". Eccola nella foto a sinistra. booktryst.

Flann O'Brien

October 5th will mark the hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of the great comic geniuses, and one of the most inspired literary minds, of the twentieth century. He was born Brian O'Nolan in 1911, but is now most widely remembered as Flann O'Brien, the pseudonym under which he published At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman, two uniquely strange and formally inventive novels. Edna O'Brien (no relation, obviously) once wrote that "along with Joyce and Beckett, Flann O'Brien constitutes our trinity of great Irish writers". newyorker.

Ma in Italia non è tradotto!!!

Scrittori, al lavoro!

Le tre domande più chieste agli scrittori sono:

How do you write? Meaning whether the author writes in long hand, typewriter or computer.

When do you write? Meaning time of day, morning, afternoons, or evenings.

Where do your ideas come from?

(Raccomando a chi intervista scrittori di evitarle in modo da evitare a chi legge un sacco di noia. Praticamente tutti - scrittori e non - scrivono al computer, quasi tutti scrivono di mattina e nessuno sa bene come gli vengono le idee.) huffingtonpost.

Can’t You Take a Joke? :-)

1982: At precisely 11:44 a.m., Scott Fahlman posts the following electronic message to a computer-science department bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University:

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman
I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:
:-)
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:
:-(

With that post, Fahlman became the acknowledged originator of the ASCII-based emoticon. From those two simple emoticons (a portmanteau combining the words emotion and icon) have sprung dozens of others that are the joy, or bane, of e-mail, text-message and instant-message correspondence the world over. wired.

Il signore delle mosche

Sul Guardian Breve e interessante storia delle copertine di Lord of the Flies, uscito originalmente nel 1954 (a fianco l'ultima edizione, in paperback, di Faber). A proposito, il 19 settembre è stato il centenario della nascita di William Golding.

Publishing company Faber initially marketed Golding's novel as a guileless supplement to this tradition [si allude alla tradizione dei libri per ragazzi]. On the cover for the first edition the boys explore a tropical forest of fronds and creepers that is not at all threatening; they remain in formation as they march along, and although one of them wolfs down a banana, he is still wearing his school cap, which makes up for his rude gluttony. An "educational edition" in 1973 – a precursor of the new one, for which young readers are invited to design a cover of their own – used a still from Brook's film. Though the boys are hunting, they look as unlethal as the Darling children in Peter Pan.

Gradually, successive editions came clean about the book's diabolism. guardian.

In fila per l'apocalisse

Are you in line for the Apocalypse?
Is this the Apocalypse?
Excuse me, what are you waiting for?
The apocalypse.

Al Brooklyn Book Festival - lo scorso weekend - l'incontro più gettonato è stato "Apocalypse Now, and Then What?", tavola rotonda con Tananarive Due, Patrick Somerville e Colson Whitehead, newyorker.

Lo studio di Roald Dahl

è un piccolo cottage dall'apparenza molto idillica. E sta crollando per cui gli eredi chiedono soldi perché venga rimesso in sesto. Ma vale la pena?

Nella sua recente biografia di Dahl, Storyteller, Donald Sturrock parla di quando andò a trovare lo scrittore nel suo studio:

He opened the door to the hut and I went inside. An anteroom, stuffed with old picture frames and filing cabinets, led directly to his writing space. The walls were lined with aged polystyrene foam blocks for insulation. Everything was yellow with nicotine and reeked of tobacco. A carpet of dust, pencil shavings and cigarette ash covered the worn linoleum floor. A plastic curtain hung limply over a tiny window. There was almost no natural light.

newyorker.