In his viva voce examination for " Divvers" at Oxford, Oscar Wilde was required to translate from the Greek Version of the New Testament, which was one of the set books. The passage chosen was from the story of the Passion. Wilde began to translate, easily and accurately. The examiners were satsfied, and told him that this was enough. Wilde ignored them and continued to translate. After another attempt the examiners at last succeeded in stoping him, and told him that they were satisfied with his translation. "Oh, do let me go on," said Wilde, "I want to see how it ends."
Hentet fra The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes.
I went to Key West in Florida this year to enter the annual Ernest Hemingway look-like contest. The competition took place at Sloppy Joe's, the writer's favorite bar when he lived in Cayo Hueso, at the Southern tip of Florida. It goes without saying that entering this contest - full of sturdy, middleaged men with full gray beards, all identical right down to the stupidest detail - is a unique experience.
Never Any End to Paris by Enrique Vila-Matas
Det viktigste er jo innholdet - format og innpakning bør være underordnet - derfor har jeg plassert bøkene i de hyllene jeg synes de hører hjemme i - og ingen kan se om det er en førsteutgave av Ibsen eller en gratisutgave fra Kindle - og det spiller heller ingen rolle. :)
Jeg har også skrevet om problemet for lang, lang tid tilbake - jeg kan heller ikke huske noe svar fra adm. på vårt felles irritasjonsmoment.
Stoner er en av de mest minneverdige bøkene jeg leste i fjor. Jeg trodde jeg var alene om å ha den registrert her inne, men nå ser jeg at hele ni bokelskere har en papirutgave utenom min kindleutgave. Tenk så greit og oversiktlig det ville ha vært om "bokelskerne" på lik linje med andre boksider kunne vise flere utgaver av samme bok samtidig. (tilbakevendende irritasjonsmoment)
Aibileen fra The Help av Kathryn Stockett.
Hva heter afrikaneren som reiste til Grønland - og som skrev en bok i ettertid?
Dobbeltgjengeren (en yngre utgave av ham selv).
I hvilken roman finner vi en ung mann med blå frakk og gul vest?
Du, ja deg har eg jo gjort handel med før i dag,
seier han
Så rett, så rett, seier Åsgaut
Og kanskje herren vil handla meir, seier Juvelaren
Nei ikkje eg, men kanskje venen min, seier Åsgut
og Olav står og ser seg ikring, og så uendes mykje
sølv og gull her var, ringar og smykke og lysestakar og
skåler og tallerkar og sølv og gull kvar ein ser, nei
at slik skulle finnast til, og så mykje, kvar augo ser,
sølv og gull
Olavs draumar av Jon Fosse
"Imagine," he says to his mother, "that an Irish politician or bishop commits a terrible act. Finé. You'd want to know exactly how things had happened. Isn't that right"?
"I think so."
"Well for the Irish, this is secondary. What they care about is how the politician or the bishop is going to explain himself. If they're able to justify themselves with grace, that is, with a gripping, human story, they'll get out of their predicament without much trouble."
Harriet Burden
Notebook C (memoir fragment)
I started making them about a year after Felix died - totems, fetishes, signs, creatures like him and not so like him, odd bodies of all kinds that frightened the children, even though they were grown up and didn't live with me anymore.
The Blazing World: A Novel by Siri Hustvedt
At a press conferance, Claire Keegan replied almost angrily to a journalist who wanted to know what topics she wrote about in her novels: "I'm Irish. I write about dysfunctional families, miserable, loveless lives, illness, old age, winter, the grey weather, boredom, and rain."
And at her side, Colum McCann concluded his colleague's contribution, speaking in an exguisite plural, a la John Ford: "We don't usually talk publicly about ourselves, we prefer to read."
"Do you dream a lot?" Judith asked.
"We hardly dream at all any more," said John Ford. "And when we dream, we forget it. We talk about everything, so there's nothing left to to dream about."
"The search for lightness as a reaction to the weight of living."
Interessant prosjekt og interessante tekster i ny, norsk drakt.
Once again I see you - Lisbon, the Tagus, and all -
Useless passerby of you and me,
Stranger in this place as in every other,
Accidental in life as in the soul,
Phantom wandering the halls of memory,
To the squealing of rats and the squeaking of boards,
In the doomed castle where life must be lived.........
Fernando Pessoa, from "Lisbon Revisited"
En byvandring i Lisboa - med litterær ballast i sekken - unnes alle bokelskere. :))
Those shapes I see by the sea, said Pacheco, shapes that immediately give rise to metaphorical associations, are they instruments of inspiration or of false literary quotes?
Sensing that it won't be long before her dear autistic husband goes and sits in front of the computer, she tells him that people who regularly use Google gradually lose the ability to read literary works with any kind of depth, which serves to demonstrate how digital knowledge can be linked to the recent stupidity in the world.
He has a remarkable tendency to read his life as a literary text, interpreting it with the distortions befitting the complusive reader he's been for so many years.
He belongs to an increasingly rare breed of sophisticated, literary publishers. And every day, since the beginning of this century, he has watched in despair the spectacle of the noble branch of his trade - publishers who still read and who have always been drawn to literature - gradually, surreptitiously dying out.
Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas