It’s remarkable how many ‘Classic’ art works, if not the majority, received a very shaky reception at their initial publication. It makes you ask the question; how could a self-respecting, intelligent professional reviewer have failed to see Moby Dick/Pride and Prejudice/Lolita for what they so ‘obviously’ are? How is it that William Blake never exhibited, and Van Gogh never sold a painting? Continue reading
Time Magazine ranked the ten greatest novels of all time thus:
I finished reading My Sister’s Keeper this evening, and am now lounging about my apartment in Surfer’s Paradise, feeling a little hollow. This is because it was a VERY GOOD BOOK. It is not the sort of thing I would pick up of my own accord necessarily, but reading habits are often informed by the people we know. A lot of the time, if one of my friends enjoys something, that is enough to make me curious about it. If I like a person, then that book will no doubt have resonances of that person in it. Continue reading
The Lost Art of Reading
This entry takes its title from Rodney Hall’s keynote address at the 2010 Byron Bay Writer’s Festival. I had hoped to begin with a link to the lecture which I believe the ABC filmed and will eventually upload onto youtube. While googling, I found this interview, which is a really interesting introduction to the man.
http://blog.booktopia.com.au/2010/04/27/feature-rodney-hall-author-of-popeye-never-told-you-answers-ten-terrifying-questions/ Continue reading
“Cowardice… is something a man does. What passes through his mind is his own affair.”
-Lord Moran
Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel, The Last Temptation, remains wildly controversial. Black-listed by the Vatican shortly after publication in 1960, Kazantzakis took a number of significant liberties with the ‘official’ story of Christ, as told in the gospels. Judas is a very close friend; the only disciple with the strength of character to betray a Jesus who instructs him to do it. Agonising death on the cross has been revealed to Christ through a premonition as the will of God.
While we all know the story of the crucifixion, the raw facts have been obscured by accretions of sentimentality and tradition. The fundamental fact is that Christ was tortured to death. Continue reading
dis·ci·pline // (d s -pl n)
n.
1. Training expected to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior, especially training that produces moral or mental improvement.
2. Controlled behavior resulting from disciplinary training; self-control.
3.
a. Control obtained by enforcing compliance or order.
b. A systematic method to obtain obedience: a military discipline.
c. A state of order based on submission to rules and authority: a teacher who demanded discipline in the classroom.
4. Punishment intended to correct or train.
5. A set of rules or methods, as those regulating the practice of a church or monastic order.
6. A branch of knowledge or teaching.
tr.v. dis·ci·plined, dis·ci·plin·ing, dis·ci·plines
1. To train by instruction and practice, especially to teach self-control to.
2. To teach to obey rules or accept authority. See Synonyms at teach.
3. To punish in order to gain control or enforce obedience. See Synonyms at punish.
4. To impose order on: needed to discipline their study habits.
Definition taken from the free online dictionary
(Please ignore the aspects relating to compliance or submitting to authority, because I certainly don’t advocate or believe in that).
I am endlessly fascinated with the development of skill as the means for undertaking the profound existential journey. Regardless of what it is, almost; whether it’s building a wall as in Solzhenitsyn’s ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’, reaping a harvest as in Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’ or even a seagull obsessed with flying, as in Richard Bach’s ‘Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.’ Continue reading
Theme Park at its Darkest 