From Virginia Quarterly Review, "I'm Nobody": David Baker on Lyric Poetry and the Problem of People; an essay on Life Among Others; and Laugh, Cry, Believe: An essay on Spielbergization and Its Discontents. From NYRB, Fascinating Narcissism: Ian Buruma reviews Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl by Steven Bach and Leni Riefenstahl: A Life by Jürgen Trimborn. From Logos, a review of Murambi, the Book of Bones; and a review of The Second Horseman by Kyle Mills.
"This really is the end (of my manuscript)": Sam Jordison has spent months working to reach this point, but finishing his book is a strangely ambivalent experience. Better great than never: Haven’t completed your novel, symphony or mathematical theorem? Don’t worry. There are plenty of examples of innovation and genius flourishing in later life. In Search of Graham Greene’s Capri: This sparkling island in the Bay of Naples may be known as a summer playground for the rich and famous, but it was also a place where the author of The End of the Affair found the solitude to write.
How raw fish spawned a dining revolution: A review of The Zen of Fish and The Sushi Economy. Arabesque: How are the exotic recipies of the Middle East evocative of the region's culture and history. A review of Obsolete Objects in the Literary Imagination: Ruins, Relics, Rarities, Rubbish, Uninhabited Places, and Hidden Treasures by Francesco Orlando. What is neoclassicism, and why was it so popular among English aristocrats? These are the questions tackled by Viccy Coltman's Fabricating the Antique: Neoclassicism in Britain, 1760-1800.
None is less: Modernist Masterpieces are leveled to make way for Mammoth McMansions. History reduced to rubble: Lindsey Hilsum charts the Chinese government's ambiguous relationship with ancient buildings. La Scuola Napoletana sings again: Conductor Riccardo Muti describes rummaging about in Naples' music archive, where he discovered hundreds of slumbering operatic masterworks.
From The Toronto Star, the forgotten "original Internet": A century ago, two men launched a project to give the public ready access to the sum of the world's knowledge from their homes. Sound familiar?; a review of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture; and attention, tech laggards. You're not alone. No one ever stops feeding that machine, they just find better food troughs: A review of Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here by David Verklin. A Future for Newspapers: The "pipes" have more to fear from the coming media shakeout than the content providers do. The Biggest Niche: There has been an explosion of political niche media, but the biggest outlets are best equipped to make sense of the news. William Powers on what a dancing horse tell us about the way digital technology is changing political news.
Newly nasty: Defences against cyberwarfare are still rudimentary. That's scary. Sex.com and a web of intrigue: Two men’s battle over a domain name shows how far the net has come. A review of Sex.com by Kieren McCarthy. And Second Life – the online virtual world that is officially classed as a game but has evolved into big business, spawning real-life millionaires who have made a killing in virtual real estate – is at tipping point
