Newsletter 1037
Best of the Moment
I Have Cancer, But Don’t Call Me Brave
Luke Allnutt | One Eyed Dog | 19th June 2013
Cancer lends itself to military metaphors. Sufferers "fight" or battle" the disease, though in practice this usually means accepting a prescribed course of treatment. "Whenever I hear those martial verbs, or hear people being described as brave, I feel a little sorry for people with heart disease or Alzheimer’s, who, rather than warriors, tend to be portrayed as passive, voiceless victims, who never get to 'fight' their illnesses but only ever 'succumb'"
Igor Stravinsky And The Rite of Spring
Robert Craft | Times Literary Supplement | 19th June 2013
Centenary tribute from a friend of the composer. Long, discursive, not always easy going, but full of interesting detail. Original inspiration came from the work of Lithuanian painter Mikalojus Ciurlionis. "It is scarcely believable that The Rite of Spring, and before it The Firebird and Petrushka, were written by a composer still in his twenties, slightly more a decade after the death of Johannes Brahms"
Postscript: James Gandolfini 1961-2013
David Remnick | New Yorker | 19th June 2013
"He played within a certain range. Like Jackie Gleason, he’ll be remembered for a particular role, and a particular kind of role, but there is no underestimating his devotion to the part of a lifetime that was given to him. In the dozens of hours he had on the screen, he made Tony Soprano — lovable, repulsive, cunning, ignorant, brutal — more ruthlessly alive than any character we’ve ever encountered in television"
Law Of The Father
Çağlar Keyder | London Review Of Books | 19th June 2013
So who "won" the confrontation in Turkey sparked by Gezi Park? Short answer: the protesters, at least on the longer view. "Erdoğan’s project to be anointed an omnipotent president through a change in the constitution is now no more than a dream. The newcomers to the political arena may not yet be in a position to draft a new set of rules, but they have shifted the keystone that supports Turkey’s patriarchal firmament"
What You Missed At Edward Snowden’s AMA
Jon Wilkins | Lost In Transcription | 18th June 2013
A crisp and forceful conversation with the NSA leaker, whatever you think of his motives and actions. "Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school"
Video of the day: Instagramimation
Thought for the day:
"Only someone miraculously innocent of history could believe that competition among ideas could result in the triumph of truth"— John Gray