“ ‘Oh, excuse me, I would so love to stay and discuss this, but you see, I brought my pet tortoise with me and it has run away, and I must try to find it before it buries itself in the dirt that is our lives.’ ”
(Ann Beattie, Mrs. Nixon, p. 3.)
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
january 1–15, 2016
Books
- Eka Kurniawan, Beauty Is a Wound, translated by Annie Tucker
- Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation
- Ellery Queen, Q.E.D.: Queen’s Experiments in Detection
- Ellery Queen, The Last Woman in His Life
- Ellery Queen, A Fine and Private Place
Films
- The Big Short, directed by Adam McKay
- Kramer vs. Kramer, dir. Robert Benton
- Cartel Land, dir. Matthew Heineman
december 16–31, 2015
Books
- James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice
- Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh, Floating on a Malayan Breeze: Travels in Malaysia and Singapore
- Ellery Queen (Avram Davidson), And on the Eighth Day
- Ellery Queen (Richard Deming), Wife or Death
- Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love, translated by Ann Goldstein
- Elena Ferrante, The Lost Daughter, trans. Ann Goldstein
- Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities, trans. Eithne Wilkins & Ernst Kaiser
Films
- Sudden Fear, directed by David Miller
- Ex Machina, dir. Alex Garland
Exhibits
- “Cory Williams/Allyson Ansusinha: Bend/Altered Space,” Bridge Art Space, Bangkok
- National Museum of Singapore, Singapore
- Penang State Museum, George Town, Malaysia
- Pinang Pernakan Mansion/Straits Chinese Jewellery Museum, George Town, Malaysia
december 1–15, 2015
Books
- Maurice Collis, The Land of the Great Image: Being Experiences of Friar Manrique in Arakan
- Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend, translated by Ann Goldstein
- Elena Ferrante, The Story of a New Name, trans. Ann Goldstein
- Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, trans. Ann Goldstein
- Elena Ferrante, The Story of the Lost Child, trans. Ann Goldstein
Films
- Mediterraneo, directed by Gabriele Salvatores
- The Immortal Story, dir. Orson Welles
- Čovek nije tica (Man Is Not a Bird), dir. Dušan Makavejev
- The Bad and the Beautiful, dir. Vicente Minnelli
- Fallen Angel, dir. Otto Preminger
- The End of the Tour, dir. James Ponsoldt
a kind of television with a keyboard
“We locked ourselves in her office and sat at the computer, a kind of television with a keyboard, very different from what she had showed me and the children some time before. She pressed the power button, she slid dark rectangles into gray blocks. I waited, bewildered. On the screen luminous tremors appeared. Lila began to type on the keyboard, I was speechless. It was in no way comparable to a typewriter, even an electric one. With her fingertips she caressed gray keys, and the writing appeared silently on the screen, green like newly sprouted grass. What was in her head, attached to who knows what cortex of the brain, seemed to pour out miraculously and fix itself on the void of the screen. It was power that, although passing for act, remained power, an electrochemical stimulus that was instantly transformed into light. It seemed to me like the writing of God as it must have been on Sinai at the time of the Commandments, impalpable and tremendous, but with a concrete effect of purity. Magnificent, I said.”
(Elena Ferrante, The Story of the Lost Child, trans. Ann Goldstein, chapter 101, p. 289.)
november 16–30, 2015
Books
- Chester Himes, The Big Gold Dream
- Chester Himes, The Real Cool Killers
- Dante Alighieri, The Inferno, translated by John Ciardi
- Chester Himes, The Heat’s On
- Henry James, The Awkward Age
- Chester Himes, Blind Man with a Pistol
Films
- Arabian Nights: Volume 3 – The Enchanted One, directed by Miguel Gomes
- Vanishing Point,dir. Jakrawal Nilthamrong
- Historias de Cronopios y de Famas, dir. Julio César Ludueña
- Остров (Islands), dir. Ruben Gevorkyants
- Pulp, dir. Mike Hodges
- Hammett, dir. Wim Wenders
- Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, dir. Sam Peckinpah
and yet
“And yet as someone will say, did not Rome progress and advance thanks to war? This is a question which would require a long response for some people who reckon progress in terms of money, luxury, and in supremacy rather than in security, kindness, independence from others and justice towards others.”
(Plutarch’s life of Numa, seemingly rather freely quoted by Corrado Augias in The Secrets of Rome, p. 4, trans. A. Lawrence Jenkens.)