Art in the city

Stanislaw Lem, R.I.P.

Stanislaw Lem, author of Solaris and other science fiction classics, has died.

Margaret Atwood, author, inventor

Margaret Atwood has invented a pen that allows her to sign books over a phone line.  Read the story here.

Henry Miller's Paris Review interview

It's been a long, long time since I last visited the Paris Review website.  It's probably been more than 5 years since the last time I clicked through.  So I was quite surprised to see that not only are they publishing Henry Miller's Paris Review interview, but they've released the entire collection of interviews, calling it the DNA of Literature.  Bookmark this site and download every interview that can fit on your hard drive.  Some of the best writing about writing, creativity, and art will be on those pages. 

Who's Ivan Bunin?

The Moscow Times has a great review of a new translation of Ivan Bunin's works.  Bunin was one of the all time great Russian authors and probably the most forgotten, at least in relation to the stature he held while he was still alive and kicking.  He recieved the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1933, back when that still meant something.  I doubt you could find a copy of his works in a book store outside a college town nowadays.  The review ends with a quote that sums up perfectly why he's still read and needs to be read:

"What do we know, what do we understand, what can we understand?" Bunin once told the writer Vladimir Zenzinov. "Only this: From the life of humankind, from the centuries of generations, only that which is noble, kind and splendid has remained on this earth. All that is wicked and base, stupid and sordid, does not, in the end, leave a trace. ... And what has remained, what is there now? The best pages of the best books; legends about honor, conscience, self-sacrifice and noble deeds; marvelous songs and status; great and sacred graves; Greek temples, Gothic cathedrals, their heavenly splendid colored glass, the thunderings and wails of their organs; the 'Dies Irae' and 'Death Will Be Set Right by Death.'"

Read it here.

Sue Monk Kidd

Sue Monk Kidd, the author of the Secret Life of Bees, will be speaking at the National Cathedral on April 13th.  She'll be talking about Black Madonnas, which figure in Bees, and, well, I think the website says it best:

“What we honor in God is what we honor in the culture,” says Kidd. “That impacts how little girls think of themselves, how grown-up women value themselves, and how the culture values things typically thought of as feminine, such as the heart.”

To Kidd, the Black Madonna is a powerful symbol of “outrage and boldness for those who are left out,” of “the nurturing heart of God” and, because she is descended from ancient earth mother goddesses, of the idea that our bodies and the earth “are sacred and holy.”