Arts & Humanities

Four myths about Zen Buddhism’s “Mu Koan”

By Steven Heine
The Mu Koan (or Wu Gongan in Chinese pronunciation), in which master Joshu says “Mu” (literally “No,” but implying Nothingness) to an anonymous monk’s question of whether a dog has the Buddha-nature, is surely the single most famous expression in Zen Buddhist literature and practice. By virtue of its simplicity and indirection, this expression becomes emblematic of East Asian spirituality and culture more generally. Entire books have been published on the topic on both sides of the Pacific.

Derrida and Europe beyond Eurocentrism and Anti-Eurocentrism

By Simon Glendinning
Two months before his death in October 2004, Jacques Derrida gave an interview to the French newspaper Le Monde which turned out to be his last. Although he refused to treat it as an occasion in which to give what he called “a health bulletin,” he acknowledged that he was seriously ill, and the discussion is overshadowed by that fact: there is a strong sense of someone taking stock, someone taking the chance to give a final word.

Miles Davis’s second classic quintet

By Keith Waters
The Miles Davis Quintet of the mid-1960s — Davis’s “second classic quintet” — was groundbreaking and influential. Their approach to live performance allowed attractive new possibilities for group interaction, the use of harmonic and metric superimposition, and developing pathways for extended improvisation. Their studio recordings offered a host of fresh jazz compositions, innovative in their harmonic progressions, formal designs, and melodic structures.

Dear Alice… Can You Forgive Her?

Alice Vavasor is torn between a risky marriage with her ambitious cousin George and the safer prospect of a union with the formidably correct John Grey. Her indecision is reflected in the dilemmas of her friend Lady Glencora, confined in the proprieties of her life with Plantagenet Palliser but tempted to escape with her penniless lover Burgo Fitzgerald, and of her aunt, the irreverent widow Mrs Greenow, who must choose between a solid farmer and an untrustworthy soldier as her next husband. Each woman finds her choice bound up with the cold realities of money, and the tension between public expectation and private inclination in Anthony Trollope’s classic Can You Forgive Her?. Here is a letter from George to Alice.

Writing Disasters

By David Roberts
Natural disaster is an exciting but tricky subject. Risk to survival; extreme deprivation; families sundered and reunited; panoramic set pieces of waves crashing, meteors hurtling, or skyscrapers toppling – all the ingredients are there for a gripping narrative. But think of the technical and ethical challenges. How does a writer choose one focal point among so many? Who survives? If the subject is a real disaster, how does a novelist or screenwriter honour the memory of those who endured, and those who perished? And what about the nagging doubt that it is all an exercise in profiting from misery?

La Diada de Sant Jordi and celebrating books on April 23rd

By Alice Northover
April 23rd has a touch of madness for those in book publishing. It is cause for not just one celebration, but several. It is World Book Night, an annual exchange to spread the love of reading; World Book and Copyright Day as organized by UNESCO to promote both reading and the preservation of authors’ intellectual property (take note plagiarists and book thieves!); the Death day of both the Bard himself, William Shakespeare, and el manco de Lepanto, Miguel de Cervantes, in 1616; the probable Birthday of William Shakespeare in 1564 (his baptism was the 26th of April and baptisms were traditionally held three days after birth); International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, which celebrates the work of science fiction and fantasy authors and encourages the free availability of their great work online (by their own choice, not against their wishes); and finally La Diada de Sant Jordi.

Into Maple White Land of the Lost World

Happy International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day! Let’s celebrate the great science fiction and fantasy writers with an excerpt from one of the earliest fantasy novels — and an Oxford World Classic — The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. Professor Challenger’s claims of dinosaurs living in twentieth-century South America may seem outlandish, but even skeptics become believers in The Lost World…

Do you know Shakespeare’s American career?

By Alden T. Vaughan and Viriginia Mason Vaughan

Although England had colonies in Virginia and Bermuda before William Shakespeare died in 1616, he never came to America. But no Englishman ever had such a triumphant posthumous migration to America as did Shakespeare: in books (by him and about him), in performances of his dramas on virtually every stage from coast to coast, in school and college curricula from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first, in Broadway musicals, in “blackface” minstrel shows, in summer festivals, in stuffed dolls, trinkets, key rings, and tea cups. Shakespeare in America is multifaceted and ubiquitous.

Girls and the Jump to Judge

By Jason Mittell
I’d decided not to write about the pilot of Girls, the new HBO show that has either been hailed as the channel’s great comedy hope, or a crime against humanity (or maybe some middleground somewhere too). But after reading a lot of the criticism and commentary, and getting into at least four lengthy conversations on Twitter about it, I figured I’d assemble some thoughts to join in the fray beyond 140 characters.

100 years ago today: the death of Bram Stoker

By Roger Luckhurst
Bram Stoker was always a man in the shadows, the back-room boy who for thirty-years had organised the life and finances of the greatest actor of his age, Sir Henry Irving. Stoker’s death one hundred years ago today, on the 20th April 1912, conformed to type: it was utterly eclipsed by a much larger catastrophe. He died quietly at home only five days after the R. M. S. Titanic hit an iceberg and sank with the loss of 1500 lives.

Images from American Bandstand

As we look back at the life and work of Dick Clark, we put together a slideshow of images from American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Empire by John Jackson. We’ll miss you Dick Clark!

Remembering Dick Clark

We were saddened to hear that Dick Clark died yesterday at the age of 82. A television presenter and American icon, Dick Clark is fondly remembered for his years hosting American Bandstand and the New Years Eve Ball Drop in Times Square. We’ve excerpted the preface of American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Empire by John Jackson to showcase some of the impact he had on American music.

Because we women can keep nothing hidden… The Wife of Bath’s Tale

In Chaucer’s most ambitious poem, The Canterbury Tales (c. 1387), a group of pilgrims assembles in an inn just outside London and agree to entertain each other on the way to Canterbury by telling stories. The pilgrims come from all ranks of society, from the crusading Knight and burly Miller to the worldly Monk and lusty Wife of Bath. Their tales are as various as the tellers, including romance, bawdy comedy, beast fable, learned debate, parable, and Eastern adventure. The Wife of Bath is a favourite amongst many for her insight into the role of women in the Late Middle Ages, and her suggestions of sexual promiscuity. Here is an extract.

Words are wind

By Adam Pulford
Somehow A Song of Ice and Fire, the colossal fantasy series by George R. R. Martin, had escaped my notice until the critically acclaimed TV series hit our screens last year, prompting me to buy the first book in the series. Little did I know that a few weeks later I would spend Christmas continually ushering away family members clutching Monopoly and Cluedo boxes so that I could devour all five volumes in unhealthily close succession. The five books have now been translated into more than 20 languages and have sold over 15 million copies worldwide. As Game of Thrones returns to our screens for a second season, there’s no better time to explore the interesting language used by its creator.

Game of Kings, Game of Thrones

By Sean O’Hanlan
The Lewis Chessmen, arguably the most famous chess pieces in the world, are currently wrapping up a transatlantic tour. A group of 30 charming walrus ivory miniatures have spent the winter on view at New York’s Cloisters museum; on April 22, they will make their way back home to London’s British Museum.

Leonardo da Vinci is born

This Day in World History
Painter, sketch artist, sculptor, architect, civil and military engineer, cartographer, anatomist, physical scientist, botanist, geologist, mathematician, and more — Leonardo da Vinci defined the phrase “Renaissance man.” Born on April 15, 1452, and dying at 67, he produced a body of work that remains unrivaled. Giorgio Vasari, biographer of the great Italian artists of the Renaissance, aptly called Leonardo “truly marvelous and celestial.”