I met a traveller from an antique land

Posted on September 25, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Ozymandias, 2017 by Alasdair Gray (1934-2019)

 

Posted in Art, Books, Europe, Writing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Banned Book Wagon

Posted on September 24, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

For the second year in a row, the Banned Wagon–powered by Penguin Random House and in partnership with Unite Against Book Bans (UUAB), Little Free Library, and First Book–is visiting bookstores and libraries during Banned Books Week–and beyond–in areas in the South and Midwest where books have been banned and censored. This year the Banned Wagon is visiting new cities and more than doubling the number of stops to nine from four last year. The tour began on September 22 and runs until October 15.

During the tour, the Banned Wagon will feature a selection of 20 books that are currently being banned and challenged across the country and will distribute free copies (while supplies last) to event attendees in each city. Attendees will also receive resources from UABB about how to take action to protect the right to read in their communities.

For those not on the tour route, the Banned Wagon is expanding its reach through its Save Our Stories donation initiative. With each scan of the QR code featured on the outside of the wagon and within related materials, a book will be donated to a community in need through a partnership with First Book. Hundreds of bookstores and libraries across the country will also receive Save Our Stories fliers and resources from UABB via Banned Book Action Boxes. In addition, the Banned Wagon has again partnered with Little Free Library to drop banned books at more than 50 Little Free Libraries along the tour route. In these ways, the Banned Wagon will make an estimated 20,000 book donations to communities across the country.

Alyssa Taylor, director of brand marketing at PRH, said, “We’re excited to hit the road again with the Banned Wagon and team up with Unite Against Book Bans, Little Free Library, First Book and our bookstore and library partners to reach some of the communities most impacted by this critical issue and get more books into the hands of readers of all ages. Books help us understand ourselves and the world around us. We all deserve the opportunity to read, think, and learn freely.”

The Banned Wagon started at Beaverdale Books in Des Moines, Iowa. Then it stops at the Milwaukee Central Library; moves on to the Woodson Regional branch of the Chicago Public Library on Friday; and to 4 Kids Books & Toys, Zionsville, Ind., on Sunday. Next week, the Banned Wagon visits the Lakewood Public Library in Cleveland, Ohio, on Wednesday, and Fountain Bookstore, Richmond, Va., on Saturday, October 5. The following weeks, it will visit the Country Bookshop, Southern Pines, N.C., on Tuesday, October 8; the Lynx Books, in Gainesville, Fla., on Friday, October 11; and Black Pearl Books, Austin, Tex., on Tuesday, October 15.

via https://www.bookweb.org/news/abfe-launches-banned-books-week-2024-campaign-1630968

 

Posted in Books, Freedom of Speech, USA | Tagged | 2 Comments

Making of an Icon

Posted on September 23, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Kafka: Making of an Icon is an exhibition marking the 100th anniversary of Franz Kafka’s death and celebrating not only Kafka’s achievements and creativity, but also his continuing inspiration for new literary, theatrical and artistic creations around the world.

After the exhibition’s run at the Weston Library, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford, from May 30 until October 27, it will move to the Morgan Library in New York running November 22 through April 13, 2025.

Kafka: Making of an Icon will feature materials from the archives of the Bodleian Libraries alongside international loans. The Bodleian Libraries hold the majority of Franz Kafka’s papers, notably the original manuscripts of The Metamorphosis, two of his unfinished novels, Das Schloss (The Castle) and Der Verschollene (America), as well as personal correspondence.

The exhibition shows how his experiences nourished his imagination, taking visitors on a journey through Kafka’s life and influences, from his relationship with his family and friends, to the places where he lived and worked, through to his last years of illness and his death on June 3, 1924, at only 40.

Items on show include literary notebooks, drawings, diaries, letters, postcards, glossaries, architectural models, videographic materials and photographs. Among them is a postcard to his brother-in-law in which Kafka jokes about his exceptional skiing skills, despite being severely ill at the time. His Hebrew notebook and his letter (in Hebrew) to his teacher demonstrate his dedication to learning the language that connected him to his family roots, but there are also snippets of Czech, French and Italian, a reminder of Kafka’s keen multilingualism and interest in languages beyond German and Hebrew.

 

Posted in Art, Books, Europe, History, Libraries, Museums, Writing | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Magic Lantern

Posted on September 22, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

These days Prague is another victim of European over-tourism, but 30 years ago it still was a place of history and mystery. I recently saw the marvelous 1993 documentary below that has had me waxing nostalgic for the Prague that I first visited around the time the documentary was filmed.  Prague Magic Lantern was  written and presented by playwright Michael Frayn. Produced for BBC television, it is a personal view of the city’s political and cultural history which takes in the usual names and subjects: Rabbi Loew and his Golem, Emperor Rudolf II, Rudolf’s alchemists, artists and scholars, photographer Josef Sudek,  Franz Kafka, puppets, and pivo.

 

Posted in Architecture, Art, Books, Europe, Film, History, Libraries, Museums, Theater, Tourism | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Crying on airplanes

Posted on September 21, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Hanif Abdurraqib’s contribution to Sad Happens, an anthology exploring sadness & tears, edited by Brandon Stosuy

Posted in Books, Public Transport | Tagged | Leave a comment

Autumn is a second spring…

Posted on September 20, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.– ALBERT CAMUS

 

Whether one calls it Autumn or Fall, the Autumn Equinox is nearly here. Americans can’t agree on much, but most love the seasonal changing of the leaves. Every year when the end of September approaches the 2024 Smoky Mountain Fall Foliage Map launches to show the most northern counties of the United States that will already have begun to notice the colors of the leaves changing.

Every year the website Smoky Mountain releases an interactive Fall Foliage Map, which plots the annual progress of when and where leaves change their colors across the United States. According to the map some northern states will already have begun to notice a change in the colors of leaves.

The Fall Foliage Map uses historical weather records from all 48 continental states to predict the arrival of Fall at the county level across the contiguous United States. The map includes a date control which allows you to view the leaf color you can expect for any date from the beginning of September through to the end of November.

Posted in Maps, Tourism, USA | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Lit Box

Posted on September 19, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

To celebrate 25 years of publishing and its 74th issue, the San Francisco-based magazine McSweeney’s is offering a lunchbox packed with literary treats. Instead of a PB&J sandwich and an apple, the retro-inspired box includes sets of author cards, pencils that change meaning when sharpened, and artwork from the famed cartoonist and author of Maus, Art Spiegelman.

The artwork on the box references 20th century children’s books and illustrations rather than TV shows or superheroes. Inside of the lunchbox there’s a treasure trove ephemera, including three sets of baseball card-style author trading cards.

There are also three pencils, each featuring writing from Lydia Davis, Catherine Lacey and David Horvitz. As the pencil is sharpened and words disappear the meanings change. The lunchbox also has an anthology of writing 25 years of McSweeney’s Quarterly. 

 

Posted in Art, Books, USA, Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Railway Parable

Posted on September 18, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Erich Kästner, Das Eisenbahngleichnis, 1931

 

Posted in Europe, Public Transport, Writing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

When Ray Bradbury channeled Herman Melvile

Posted on September 18, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

I was today years old when I learned that the iconic American Sci-Fi writer Ray Bradbury was also a Hollywood screenwriter. The Los Angeles Review of Books recently published a fascinating story on the fraught collaboration between Bradbury and the great director John Huston.

Some in Hollywood were taken aback by Huston’s screenwriting choice to bring Melville to the big screen. After all, to adapt a profoundly complex literary novel, he had given the nod to a man known for writing science fiction. Perhaps no one was more surprised by Huston’s choice than Bradbury himself. Huston had read the most recent book Bradbury had sent him, The Golden Apples of the Sun, and the lead story was all it took.

“The Fog Horn” is a tale about two lighthouse keepers who, late one November night, are paid a visit by a beast that has surfaced from the depths after hearing the lonely call of the lighthouse’s foghorn. Bradbury’s love of dinosaurs had led him to write the story, and it was this love that led Huston to believe he was the right man to adapt Moby-Dick. In reading “The Fog Horn,” Huston stated in his 1980 autobiography An Open Book, he “saw something of Melville’s elusive quality.”

Sam Weller’s piece on how Ray Bradbury came to write the screenplay for John Huston’s adaptation of Moby-Dick is an intriguing read.

Sam Weller is a two-time Bram Stoker Award–winning and best-selling biographer of Ray Bradbury. He worked with Bradbury for 12 years on The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury (HarperPerennial, 2006) and Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews (Hat & Beard Press, 2017).

Posted in Books, Film, History, movies, USA, Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

World Without Meaning

Posted on September 17, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

via https://existentialcomics.com/comic/435

 

Posted in Art | Tagged , | 1 Comment