A surreal theater production of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, directed by Yukio Ninagawa, premiered at the Lincoln Center Festival in July. Ian Buruma writes for the NYRB about the marriage of tradition and modernity, and Western and Eastern references in the play. As he puts it, “even without traditional references, the production—perhaps more than Murakami’s novel—is still unmistakably Japanese: stylized, poetic, comical, violent, full of spectacular effects, and often exquisitely beautiful to look at. The setting jumps at lightning speed from a bus station, to a library, to a sleazy bar area. Various characters emerge and disappear, like memories or scenes from a dream, in an assortment of moving transparent boxes.”
Murakami on the Stage
Merry Pranksters
“No drugs on the bus!” Take a road trip with poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy and some other really fantastic poets.
“so this is the sound of you”
Why not kick off 2012 with former poet laureate W. S. Merwin’s poem, “To the New Year“?
Curiosities: Listmania
W.W. Norton puts together a project similar to our Year in Reading (and with some participants in common): Writers Recommend.Another clever batch of recommendations: Village Voice asks several notables to recommend their favorite “obscure” books.Three Percent reveals its 25-book longlist for the “Best Translated Book of 2008” (Bonus Link: The Prizewinners: International Edition)A conversation with South African poet and anti-apartheid activist Breyten BreytenbachTodd Zuniga’s (of Opium Magazine and Literary Death Match) “favorite writers we haven’t heard of yet.”Best book cover designs of the year. (via 3% and kottke)Maud reproduces the memo behind the huge reorganization at Random House (which itself is just one part of the belt tightening hitting the publishing industry in recent weeks.)
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“Tea without milk is so uncivilized.”
British Flight Lieutenant Alex Cassie, memorably portrayed by Donald Pleasence in one of my all-time favorite films, The Great Escape, passed away last week at the age of 95.
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Librarians on the Front Lines
“There are times it’s happening multiple times a day. Not too long ago, we had two in the same restroom at the same time. We call security, security calls paramedics. Of course they always find somebody lying there.” Samantha Sanders writes for Catapult about the epidemic of opioid overdoses in public libraries, and what some librarians are doing to respond. And ICYMI, here is Corinne Purtill in our own pages about British libraries under austerity cuts.
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Down the Rabbit Hole
Recommended Reading: In her new memoir, Joyce Carol Oates praises Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass as “the singular book that changed my life – that made me yearn to be a writer.”
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You Are Not the Reader
Whether it’s the new compound word “babymommas,” the Mortal Kombat reference, or the phrase “skeedaddle face smash,” I feel compelled to recommend to you this story in PANK, which takes the form of several letters addressed to Maury Povich.
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