Book Accidents

I wonder how many Columbia University library books accidentally end up on the subway tracks of the 116th stop on the 1 line.

Literary life...

I recently came across a brief autobiographical essay by Elif Batuman, a lecturer in literature at Stanford University:

Confessions of an Accidental Literary Scholar

I admire her ability to stay true to what felt right to her, as a developing writer and scholar of literature, and not to take for granted the steps one is "supposed" to take to become a writer (e.g., get an MFA, go to writers colonies, etc)...of course, I am sure part of my fondness for this essay also stems from my shared love of Russian literature (which I recently started studying) and my own budding career in higher education (well, "budding career" might be a bit excessive, but I sure do love spending time in the libraries of the campus where I work).

William Kentridge

Went to a lecture given by the South African artist William Kentridge at Cooper Union's Great Hall last night, took some notes. Here are a few Kentridge gems:

-Kentridge's own term for his rudimentary stop-motion animation technique is "Stone Age Filmmaking."

-Kentridge is attempting to make work that reminds us "what it is we do when we see."

-"An artist talking about philosophy is like a drunk going on and on about a theory."

-The concept of mistranslation: things that get lost lost as images are transferred and shared...it's about the gaps, the things that go wrong...our memory.

-Goal: to make an image that is elusive of rational explanation.

-"Like connoisseurship, both forensics and psychoanalysis rely on the details as the key to solve problems."

-"Masks actually do not work as expected: instead of focusing on the mask, we focus on the movements of the body around the mask."

-"Holding onto possibilities even if they can't or won't seem to be is what gives us hope in the world."

-"It's not fair for artists to blame bad work on theory that came first."