Cancer, Habermas, Rodin, Birth, Renoirs
Ahmed Ahmed On Ovarian Cancer
Sophie Roell | Five Books | 29th May 2018
A surgeon’s reading list for understanding what little we know about ovarian cancer. “When I went to medical school I thought everything was known. You quickly realize that we know a bit about how things work, but a lot of the details are lacking. You start picking up on some diseases that seem more enigmatic than others. For me, ovarian cancer was a very enigmatic disease. There has been limited improvement in survival, limited improvement in understanding how it starts” (5,500 words)
An Interview With Jurgen Habermas
Borja Hermoso | El Pais | 25th May 2018
Topics include patriotism, philosophy, nationalism, Germany, France. “Macron inspires respect because, in the current political landscape, he’s the only one who dares to have a political perspective; who pursues the political targets set out by Europe; who, in the almost desperate circumstances of the elections, showed personal courage, and, until now as president, has done what he said he would. I have learned to appreciate these personal qualities despite my Marxist convictions” (3,300 words)
Chisel Of The Gods
James Hamilton | Literary Review | 1st June 2018
Auguste Rodin “haunted” the British Museum on frequent visits to London, developing an “obsession” with the Parthenon sculptures, which inspired his masterpiece, The Gates Of Hell. “He had a constant urge to touch the sculptures, to internalise the shape of an object by feeling it. The fragmentation enthralled him and showed him how the broken and partial human form could evoke humanity with a kind of transfixing emotion that the whole and wholesome body was unable to match” (1,200 words)
Promises
Whitney Lee | Rumpus | 22nd May 2018
An obstetrician recounts an emergency delivery on Mother’s Day. “Lisa was abrupting. Inside her body the arteries that connected her uterus and her placenta to her baby were shearing apart. Blood surged from maternal and fetal vessels and spilled into her uterus, which clamped down in protest. This contraction was the source of Lisa’s pain. Half a liter of blood flowed through her uterine vessels per minute. The bleeding was torrential. She and Jonah were hemorrhaging to death” (2,950 words)
Looking At Renoirs, Moving And Still
Carrie Rickey | Hyperallergic | 1st June 2018
Jean Renoir married his father’s last model and cast her in five of his films. “Has there been a more disturbing convergence in the whole history of art?” An exhibition at the Barnes Foundation juxtaposes the works of father and son. “Pierre-Auguste is the great-branched apple tree and Jean an orange tree planted close to it. There are many convergences and many more divergences. Their roots and trunks are entwined, but one bears sweet fruit while the other’s is tart” (1,900 words)
Video of the day Entre Ciel Et Terre
What to expect:
Views of the sea, the mountains, and, especially, the stars, at La Palma in the Canary Islands (4’26”)
Thought for the day
I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them
Pablo Picasso
Podcast Hercules | The Memory Palace
What history records about the life of Hercules, a valued slave in Virginia. And about Hercules’s owner, George Washington
(10m 41s)