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ReadySteadyBlog
La Feuille: "un site de critique indépendant et plutôt de qualité"
Blog entries for 'July 2009'
Tuesday 28 July 2009
BookDepository.com
Finally, after lots and lots of work -- much of which accounts for the relative silence around here of late -- we've launched BookDepository.com, the American sister website to BookDepository.co.uk.
It has been a tough and very busy year already, so I'm going to put ReadySteadyBook on ice for the next few weeks. I need a break and, in addition, I'll soon be moving house: very exciting for me, I'm heading to Big London. When I get there, and get settled, then I need to focus on making ReadySteadyBook a lot more vibrant than it has been over the last few months.
Have a great summer!
Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: personal, the book depository
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Thursday 16 July 2009
Friends of the lento
From Nietzsche's preface to The Dawn (published 1881; this translation by J.M. Kennedy):
... we are friends of the lento, I and my book. I have not been a philologist in vain -- perhaps I am one yet: a teacher of slow reading. I even come to write slowly. At present it is not only my habit, but even my taste -- a perverted taste, maybe -- to write nothing but what will drive to despair every one who is "in a hurry." For philology is that venerable art which exacts from its followers one thing above all -- to step to one side, to leave themselves spare moments, to grow silent, to become slow -- the leisurely art of the goldsmith applied to language: an art which must carry out slow, fine work, and attains nothing if not lento. For this very reason philology is now more desirable than ever before; for this very reason it is the highest attraction and incitement in an age of "work": that is to say, of haste, of unseemly and immoderate hurry-skurry, which is intent upon "getting things done "at once, even every book, whether old or new. Philology itself, perhaps, will not "get things done" so hurriedly: it teaches how to read well: i.e. slowly, profoundly, attentively, prudently, with inner thoughts, with the mental doors ajar, with delicate fingers and eyes... my patient friends, this book appeals only to perfect readers and philologists: learn to read me well!
Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: philosophy
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Monday 13 July 2009
Nietzsche Source
From The Mole:
Nietzsche Source is a web site devoted to the publication of scholarly content on the work and life of Friedrich Nietzsche. The contents of the site and its internet addresses are stable and can be freely consulted and used for scholarly purposes. Two editions are currently being published in Nietzsche Source: the digital version of the standard critical edition and the facsimile edition of the entire Nietzsche estate.
The genetic editions of two of Nietzsche’s works The Wanderer and his Shadow and Dawn, including the reproduction of all related manuscripts, are in preparation. The website is managed by the Nietzsche Source Organization (formerly, the Association HyperNietzsche), a non-profit organisation hosted at the École normale supérieure in Paris. Its main purpose is to continue work on the edition, commentary and interpretation of Nietzsche's work.
Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: philosophy
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Monday 13 July 2009
Homages to Georges Perec
Via wood s lot: Homage To Georges Perec: An Entertainment in Six Univocalisms (several unpublished oulipian texts by Perec's English translator Ian Monk).
Worth noting, too, that the latest edition of The Review of Contemporary Fiction is dedicated to Georges Perec.
Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: authors
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Tuesday 07 July 2009
Heidegger and anxiety
The latest Guardian blog article by Simon Critchley on Heidegger concerns itself with anxiety. Rhys has all the links to this and the other previous articles in the series. Of course, anxiety can't be understood if you don't understand the centrality of mood to Heidegger's thought, something Simon tackled nicely in the preceding article:
Furthermore, I am always found in a mood, a Stimmung. This is mood is the strong Aristotelian sense of pathos, a passion of the soul or an affect, something befalls us and in which we find ourselves. The passions are not, for Heidegger, psychological colouring for an essentially rational agent. They are rather the fundamental ways in which we are attuned to the world. Indeed, musicologically, Stimmung is linked to tuning and pitch: one is attuned to the world firstly and mostly through moods. One of the compelling aspects of Heidegger's work is his attempt to provide a phenomenology of moods, of the affects that make up our everyday life in the world. (More...)
Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: philosophy
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Tuesday 07 July 2009
More sad songs
Just as a very quick follow-up to my Sad Music post from last week (and thanks to everyone who commented on that -- and, please, keep those comments coming), I note that there is a Virgin ad on the telly at the moment featuring the beautiful Mazzy Star (David Roback and vocalist Hope Sandoval) track Into Dust from 1993's So Tonight That I Might See. Now, that song is a real beauty...
Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: music
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Monday 06 July 2009
The Hospital Club 100 (again)
I'm in the annual Hospital Club 100 list again ("The Hospital Club 100, compiled in association with The Independent, ranks the most influential creative and media people. Here are this year’s ‘Established’ and ‘Emerging’ winners in each of the ten categories "). If I'm reading this correctly, I'm the "Emerging" winner in the Books and Literary category. The Book Depository gets a namecheck as RSB's sister site (!) but -- regardless of how slightly squiffy their biography of me is -- it is always nice to be in.
Thanks to all those who voted for me!
Perhaps Britain’s most influential literary blogger, Thwaite has dedicated his site to reviewing the best in literature, poetry, philosophy and history, and offers a forum for sparky discussions on the merits of new publications. Thwaite also runs the sistersite, Book Depository, and has spoken at the London International Book Fair and been a panellist at the Oxford Literary Festival.
Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: personal
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Wednesday 01 July 2009
Sad music
Indulging in listening to sad music is one of life's finer pleasures, I think. From Strauss's Four Last Songs, Schubert's Winterreise, Valentin Silvestrov's Silent Songs (the song based on Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci, sung in Russian, is -- almost literally -- to die for) through to David Sylvian's Let The Happiness In, the better (i.e. most melancholic) moments of This Mortal Coil, The For Carnation or Dakota Suite or parts of Jacaszek's Treny album, miserable music is a vital part of my armoury against the world. I'm always on the look out for me -- and this thread on violinist.com has pointed me to some new sad sounds to indulge in... but if y'all have any favourites please let me know.
Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: music, personal
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Serendipoetry
Reluctance
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
-- Robert Frost
-- View archive
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