Art Essays

歴史的な観点から見ても、作家という職業は他のどんな職業よりも（ま、ジャズ・ミュージシャンやロックンローラーという強力なライバルもいますけど）、酒と密接な関係を保ってきました。なぜなのか？　酒はものを書く潤滑油だから。人間の情念や苦悩や心の闇と対峙していると、酒なしではやってられなくなるから。言葉を無から絞り出す作業そのものがきついから。編集者がやたらタダ酒を飲ますから。作家はバーやクラブで人気者だから。酒は物書きの美学だから。そもそも作家になるような人は酒なしではやってられないほど心に傷を負っているから……とまあ、いろいろな理由が挙げられてきたし、個人によってもまちまちだと思います。でも、とにかく、日本でも海外でも、酒好きの作家が多い、というのは事実です。(本文より)ロバート・ハリス　運命のダイスを転がせ！ はこちらから→http://yakan-hiko.com/robert.html

少年少女の身体が入れ替わる……と言えば山中恒（やまなか・ひさし）の小説で大林宣彦（おおばやし・のぶひこ）監督により映画化もされた『転校生』が思い出されるが、この場合は東京のド真ん中と、地方の奥深い山村とに遠く離れた、お互い誰なのかも認識していない２人が主人公。入れ替わる前に携帯電話でメッセージを残して痕跡を伝え合う。 だがやがて、２人は場所だけでなく、生きていた時間すらもズレていた事がわかる。少女の居る村が迎えたお祭りの夜は、この地が彗星の落下で壊滅する夜でもあった。死に向かって続く彼女の時間。 それを認識した時、少年はもう少女と入れ替わる事はなくなる。少女は死んでしまったのか？　ふたたび時空を越えて、彼女を救いだす事は出来ないのか？(本文より） 切通理作の「映画の友よ」はこちらから→https://yakan-hiko.com/risaku.html

最近、この映画をもう一度DVDで観る機会があったので、今日はこの作品について書こうと思います。 　コロンビアの文豪、ガブリエル・ガルシア・マルケスの文学をマジック・リアリズムと呼びますが、この映画はまさに、我々をマルケスの魔法の世界へと誘ってくれます。 　これは狂った男の愛の物語としても取れるし、ある男の狂った愛の物語としても取れます。どちらにせよ、これは南米でしか生まれないような、熱い愛の悲喜劇です。 　舞台は内戦とコレラが蔓延するコロンビアのカリブ海沿いの港町、カルタヘナ。時は1879年。裕福な商人の娘フェルミーナに一目惚れした若くて貧しい電報配達員フロレンティーノは、何通もの情熱的な恋文で彼女のハートを掴み、結婚の約束まで勝ち取ります。しかし、貧しいフロレンティーノを嫌った彼女の父親は二人を引き裂こうと、娘を遠く離れた親戚の家に隔離してしまいます。（本文より） ロバート・ハリス　運命のダイスを転がせ！ はこちらから→http://yakan-hiko.com/robert.html

We live in a world where smart fridges are more articulate than most politicians, where the leaders of two nuclear powers engage in a battle of elementary school wits, and where every fact can be dismissed as fake news. Sometimes it seems like the only humor left is tinged with bitterness and despair. Robert Isenberg doesn’t believe that’s true. He knows it’s possible to find humor - true humor - everywhere.

In Beg, Borrow, Steal Michael Greenberg regales us with his wry and vivid take on the life of a writer of little means trying to practice his craft or simply stay alive. He finds himself doctoring doomed movie scripts; selling cosmetics from an ironing board in front of a women's department store; writing about golf, a game he has never played; and botching his debut as a waiter in a posh restaurant.

Giovanni Pascoli, in omaggio alla sua Ravenna, si unisce a Dante, che là compì la sua grande opera, per comunicarci bagliori di quella “mirabile visione” che è apparsa a Dante ragazzo, e poi l’ha ritrovato maturo, costretto suo malgrado a seguire quella vita contemplativa che, da ragazzo, era stata una sua aspirazione, e che era poi stata trascurata per smarrirsi nella selva di una vita politica.

Wifredo Lam is by far the most celebrated, and most people would say the greatest, artist produced by the Caribbean region in modern times. His relationship with where he came from is, however, extraordinarily complex - much more complex than most of his admirers suppose, largely because they usually have no direct experience of the region and little knowledge of its social history.

Der Autor Wilhelm von Kügelgen (1772-1820) beschreibt detailliert seine Kindheit und Jugend am Anfang des 18. Jahrhunderts. Er berichtet über die Kriege zwischen Napoleon und den Russen, über Hunger, seine Schulzeit und die Reisen und Freunde der Künstlerfamilie. Regie: Stefanie Hoster.

Un'ereditiera californiana viene rapita dall'Esercito di liberazione simbionese, diventa l'amante di uno dei terroristi e terrorista lei stessa, poi sposa la sua guardia del corpo e va a vivere con figli e cani in una casa finto-spagnola iper-blindata. Una banchiera d'affari di Manhattan mentre fa jogging a Central Park viene aggredita da sei adolescenti neri e ispanici, stuprata, torturata con dei rami e ridotta in fin di vita.

This striking new collection exemplifies the way in which Mendelsohn - a classicist by training - uses the classics as a lens to think about urgent contemporary debates. There is much to surprise here. Mendelsohn invokes the automatons featured in Homer’s epics to help explain the AI films Ex Machina and Her and perceives how Ted Hughes sought redemption by translating a play of Euripides (the ‘bad boy of Athens’) about a wayward husband whose wife returns from the dead.

Mittels ihrer Religion richten Menschen ihr Leben an Konzepten eines "sinngebenden Ganzen" aus. Diese in sehr langen Traditionen entstandenen Welterklärungen und Anleitungen zur Lebensbewältigung werden in der westlichen Welt aufgrund christlicher und humanistischer Traditionen häufig mit der Kurzformel "Glaube" zusammengefasst...

Qui aurait pensé faire appel aux grands noms de la philosophie occidentale pour analyser les oeuvres artistiques du hip-hop, décortiquer les textes de chansons, les graffitis au mur, le travail des DJ et l'art des danseurs urbains? Le professeur de philosophie et spécialiste du rap Jérémie McEwen, bien sûr. Dans ce livre, il bâtit des ponts entre la philosophie occidentale traditionnelle et le hip-hop américain afin de mieux comprendre les racines de ce mouvement culturel mondial.

When Tim O’Brien became an older father, he resolved to give his young sons what he wished his own father had given to him - a few scraps of paper signed ‘Love, Dad’. Maybe a word of advice. Maybe a sentence or two about some long-ago Christmas Eve. Maybe some scattered glimpses of their rapidly ageing father, a man they might never really know. For the next 15 years, the author talked to his sons on paper, as if they were adults, imagining what they might want to hear from a father who was no longer among the living.

Award-winning author Colm Tóibín turns his incisive gaze to three of the world's greatest writers, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, and James Joyce, and their earliest influences: their fathers. In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know, Colm Tóibín illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways they surface in their work.

Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Manhood for Amateurs and Moonglow, returns with a collection of heartfelt, humorous and insightful essays on the meaning of fatherhood. You are born into a family, and those are your people, and they know you and they love you, and if you are lucky they even, on occasion, manage to understand you. And that ought to be enough. But it is never enough.

Paradoxe entre l’abondance pour le consommateur et ses choix de plus en plus restreints ; mépris  de la propriété intellectuelle, donc incapacité  d’assurer un revenu décent aux créateurs ; modèle  d’affaires ne servant que les monopoles (70 % à  85 % des revenus publicitaires engrangés par  Google, YouTube, Facebook, Netflix… ) ; "indifférence" politico­juridique, car les gouvernements  ne semblent pas vouloir remédier à cette situation.

An essay from Things I've Learned From the Women Who've Dumped Me.

An essay from Things I've Learned From the Women Who've Dumped Me.

An essay from Things I've Learned From the Women Who've Dumped Me.

An essay from Things I've Learned From the Women Who've Dumped Me.