other than the world that is

“You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work, so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always inexorably the actuality of Chapter Thirteen. But novelists write for countless different reasons: for money, for fame, for reviewers, for parents, for friends, for loved ones; for vanity, for pride, for curiosity, for amusement: as skilled furniture-makers enjoy making furnitures, as drunkards like drinking, as judges like judging, as Sicilians like emptying a shotgun into an enemy’s back. I could fill a book with reasons, and they would all be true, though not true at all. Only one same reason is shared by all of us: we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is. Or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know a world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator; a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.”

(John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, p. 86.)

february 1–15, 2016

Books

  • Eugène Sue, The Mysteries of Paris, translated by Carolyn Betensky & Jonathan Loesberg
  • Muriel Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry

Films

  • No, directed by Pablo Larraín

Exhibits

  • “Michael Shaowanasai’s Revisits,” Art Center, Chulalongkorn University
  • “Roa/Kult,” Bridge Art Space
  • “L’Amour,” Sathorn 11 Art Space
  • “Jean-Sebastien Faure: Lonely in Bangkok,” Kathmandu Photo Gallery
  • “Kodsoung Eangubon: Egoism,” Number 1 Gallery

january 16–31, 2016

Books

  • Kamel Daoud, The Mersault Investigation, trans. John Cullen
  • Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Sightseeing
  • Erin Hogan, Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip Through the Land Art of the American West
  • Tove Jannson, Sculptor’s Daughter: A Childhood Memoir, trans. Kingsley Hart
  • Olaf Stapledon, Odd John
  • Multatuli, Max Havelaar, trans. Roy Edwards

Films

  • The King of Comedy, directed by Martin Scorsese