Dragan Todorovic : Reactor : blog
random thoughts that refused to remain private
According to quantum theory
(and we have nothing else
—except a few gods and
hordes of philosophers so fond
of media)
we’ll be scavenging black holes
in distant galaxies
looking for scraps of the beauty
that was so easily promised
and so laconically denied
in this
and several other lives.
I’ve visited the London Book Fair on its closing day, yesterday. It was very different from what I’ve expected (BTW, I don’t know what have I expected), and it was exhausting. It reminded me of those speed-dating sessions. Two representatives sit face to face and have 10 minutes to sell/buy a book. Ten minutes to start a career, or stop it, to make a literary star, or break it.
Publishing industry just has to change.
Doing research for my new book, I’ve discovered earlier today this site. I’m probably late – you might have known about this – but I think it’s terrific. Mr Ariel Malka is a free lance programmer, interested in “software experiments exploring the relation between text, space and time”. Some of his experiments have found way into public sphere through other means (his “The Book of Sand” has become the ubiquitous “Sand Game” – although I find it more interesting in this reincarnation here), and I presume there will be much talk about his work when the iPhone experiments hit the road. For now, please take a look at least at his Babel Tower, and you can also check out the other stuff.
The Dying Fall by JG Ballard | Books | The Guardian .
The above link contains a story. The Guardian had wrongly advertised it as JG Ballard’s last short story, which it isn’t (it was published in 1996) – and they have corrected their mistake in the meantime – but the background of this short piece really doesn’t matter. It’s clean, clear and sharp.
via Decca Aitkenhead meets author Kazuo Ishiguro | Books | The Guardian .
Ishiguro has this take on interviews:
“I’m told that in war situations when people are interrogated, you’re supposed to build up two or three layers of story about who you are and what you’re doing, so that if you’re caught by the enemy, they torture you and after 10 days you finally break, then you’re trained to come up with your second layer; and then they torture you even further until you break down into the next one. When you’re just a shrieking skull, you’re shrieking the third prepared story. That’s apparently how you’re trained to do it.
“But I’m not suggesting, by the way,” he laughs, “that I have a second or third layer. I’m just always reminded of this because of the layers; interviewers read past interviews, so when you come out with the same stuff as before they treat it like your first cover story, and they want the next layer. And after about the 90-minute mark you start to say OK, yes, it was all based on my childhood trauma!”
Is that the same process we tend to use in everyday situations? As in self-defence, as in “Oh, you’re getting too close to my inner sanctum, here, take this bone fast and chew on it and please do not go further!”