Jose Saramago: A Life of Resistance
April 24, 2013 § 2 Comments
Jose Saramago, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is here interviewed by the BBC in a Profile episode titled Jose Saramago: A Life of Resistance.
“His novels are an instrument of our liberty. A liberty that includes the right to resist conformity, to resist being sold a life at the price of our humanity; put it another way, to resist barbarism. Always remembering that the point of resistance isn’t to win, but to outlast the opposition.”
Binyavanga Wainaina: Rewriting Africa
April 17, 2013 § Leave a Comment
Among other things, Binyavanga Wainaina is author of ‘How to write about Africa‘, a biting satire on Western writings on Africa. (See video below the fold.)
It is time to change our image of Africa. Critics say that for too long now, aid organisations, foreign diplomats, politicians and journalists have been stuck looking at this vast continent as a convenient photo-opportunity to illustrate victimhood and desperation. And few men are more forceful in advocating a change in how we perceive Africa than Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina. Talk to Al Jazeera sat down with one of the continent’s most influential young authors to explore why the world is still not understanding Africa, and how to break the lens of media distortion.
Salman Rushdie on Midnight’s Children
March 12, 2013 § Leave a Comment
In the following interview, recorded in 1983, Salman Rushdie speaks about his book Midnight’s Children, winner of the Booker Prize in 1981 and the Best of Booker award in 2008.
Upheaval in Souls, Bodies, Imaginations
February 11, 2013 § Leave a Comment
Christopher Lydon of the wonderful Radio Open Source interview joins the great Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury for a stimulating discussion on art, politics and literature.
CAIRO — Elias Khoury is the sort of novelist we rely on to tell us what is going on. Himself of Lebanese and Christian antecedents, he wrote Gate of the Sun (1998), a stylized and much-admired fictional account of the Palestinian naqbah or “catastrophe” from 1948 to the infamous Sabra and Shatillah massacres in Lebanon in 1982. Writing, he remarks, is his means of discovering his ignorance and overcoming it.
Clive Bell Is a Fathead
December 16, 2012 § Leave a Comment
by George Bernard Shaw, The New Republic, 21 February 1922
[In his article, The Creed of an Aesthete (in our issue of January 25th), Mr. Clive Bell said: “Mr. Bernard Shaw ... is not an artist, much less an aesthete ... he is a didactic.” He referred to Mr. Shaw’s rejection of the Darwinian theory because, by depriving Beauty, Intelligence, Honor of their divine origin and purpose, this theory deprives them of their value. To Mr. Bell’s mind, Mr. Shaw feels that “if Life be a mere purposeless accident, the finest things in it must appear to everyone worthless.” The sooner Mr. Shaw knows that this is not so, the better, says Mr. Bell, and proceeds to explain his own creed: “always life will be worth living by those who find in it things which make them feel to the limit of their capacity.” “The advantage of being an aesthete,” he declares, “is that one is able to appreciate the significance of all that comes to one through the senses: one feels things as ends instead of worrying about them as means. ... Whatever is precious and beautiful in life is precious and beautiful irrespective of beginning and end.”]
As will be seen in the above article, my friend Clive Bell is a fathead and a voluptuary. This a very comfortable sort of person to be, and very friendly and easy and pleasant to talk to. Bell is a brainy man out of training. So much the better for his friends; for men in training are irritable, dangerous, and apt to hit harder than they know. No fear of that from Clive. The layer of fat on his brain makes him incapable of following up his own meaning; but it makes him good company.
Gore Vidal on the South Bank Show
December 3, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Gore Vidal on the South Bank Show in 2008, with extracts from Point to Point Navigation.
Kurt Vonnegut on Bookworm
September 16, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Kurt talks to Michael Silverblatt about “Bagombo Snuff Box” and his life’s work. Broadcast Nov 11 1999. KCRW own the audio. (via Doug Tarnopol)
Gore Vidal’s Gore Vidal – BBC Omnibus 1995
September 10, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Gore Vidal’s Gore Vidal is a BBC Omnibus documentary first screened in 1995. The two part film biography covers Vidal’s life by visiting scenes from his past.
Episode One
Gore Vidal, RIP
August 1, 2012 § 2 Comments
The great Gore Vidal is no more. One of the greatest prose-stylists of the last 100 years, he had a rapier-like wit, and remained a non-conformist to the end. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate his life than to leave you in Gore’s own company. Here is an archive of Gore Vidal’s writings and media appearances, some of them rare, that PULSE has published over the years. Also, don’t miss this blistering 1986 response to the Norman Podhoretz in which Vidal is identifying predilections, particularly the neoconservatives passionate attachment to Israel, that 17 years later would lead the US to disaster in Iraq.
Norman Mailer: The Naked and the Dead
July 16, 2012 § Leave a Comment
The following is a documentary on Norman Mailer’s classic, The Naked and the Dead.
