Why is the originality so readily granted us in literature so mistrustfully denied us in our difficult attempts at social change? ... we, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will...
Nobel laureate, global bestseller, magical realist and friend of Castro: which is the real Gabriel García Márquez? "Whatever you write," he told Gerald Martin, his biographer, "that is what I will be." Martin's landmark biography, 17 years in the writing, explains at length what García Márquez has meant by insisting that, despite its frequently magical...
This month Wendy supplied us with a list of first lines and asks which books we’ve read and which would make it to our tbr list on the basis of the first line. Bold = the books I’ve read Pink = tbr pile 1. Call me Ishmael. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick 2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Jane Austen, Pride...
The late Tony Wilson once told me, "I'm not the one who will have his life turned into legend, in the way that happened to Baudelaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud. It won't be me. It will be John Cooper Clarke." "Bloody hell," says the poet. That conversation took place 20 years ago, I tell him – when Wilson was still running the Haçienda; years before the release of Control...
A novelist and friend of the late (but recently lit-knighted) Roberto Bolaño notes that all this myth building around him is getting to be a bit much. And worse still, the attention is giving a false impression of Latin America. Moya believes that, as the magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez began to lose its luster [...]
I’m not much into magic or magical anything. That eliminates most fantasy writing, a lot of video games and a host of other things. The one exception I do make is the novels and novellas of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the father of Magical Realism. Also, I like the Force and the mystical power that guides [...]
The myths surrounding the late Chilean author are false, says Bolaño's friend and fellow novelist, Horacio Castellanos Moya He's been compared to James Dean and described as the "Kurt Cobain of Latin-American literature", but the real Roberto Bolaño was very different to the myth created by the North American cultural establishment, according to the author's friend and fellow...
Seems everyone these days is talking about a "new paradigm". The Wall Street Journal: "Crisis Compels Economists To Reach for New Paradigm" "'We could be looking at a paradigm shift," says [Prince?] Frederic Mishkin, a former Federal Reserve governor now at Columbia University. George Soros : In response to the policy challenges presented by the economic crisis and the...
For approximately the 450th time (well, that may be a slight exaggeration) I tried to read more than 50 pages into The Forsyte Saga, by John Galsworthy. Two hours later I woke up with a page-dented cheek and put it back on the bookshelf with a sigh. I’ve done the same with Gabriel García Márquez [...]
I have received about 20 e-mails from people in Toronto. They are incensed by a memo sent to all churches in the Archdiocese of Toronto It has a requirement that all churches "must implement the changes outlined below" including "Temporarily suspend communion on the tongue". I have written more than once on this issue of (pace Gabriel [...] Post from: WDTPRS Communion in the Time...
This is an article by Graziano Freschi, experienced traveller and connoisseur. Cartagena is,without a shadow of doubt, one of the world's most beautiful cities. In addition it benefits from a stunning setting along the Caribbean Sea and weather almost too perfect to be true (sunny and breezy during the day, warm breeze at night). Cartagena's perfectly preserved city centre includes several impressive...
LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS Whilst rummaging through my near-complete collection of Mojo magazine prior to the house move, I came across an interview with Chrissie Hynde in the May 2007 issue. Aged 54 and semi-retired, she claims to be leading...
Just another sane Monday in movieland. * Halcyon, a somewhat odd firm with an all but empty website, has officially put its one and only asset and reason for being, the rights to “The Terminator” franchise, on the auction block. So reports Variety and Nikki Finke. Suddenly, over at Whedonesque — yes, the Joss Whedon fansite [...]
[This review first ran in the Monitor on May 12, 1988.] The Colombian-born writer Gabriel García Márquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, 15 years after the extraordinary fireworks display of his stunning novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. In all the years before and after the prize, ...
The new issue is finally (FINALLY!) on newsstands, and we’re so excited to talk about it. This month, mental_floss is covering all sorts of things, including exciting new cures for blindness, Crohn’s disease and MS; America’s next top energy source (icy methane bricks mined from the bottom of the ocean); and why Kashmiri men carry [...]
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