TNY weekend reader: the irreverent issue
(image: carolita johnson)
Am I the only one who noticed that this week’s TNY contains a cartoon with the word “bullshit,” another with a Hindu deity giving someone the finger, and my own rather insolent horse-whipping fantasy cartoon, making it a rather naughty issue, cartoon-wise? It warmed the cockles of my heart, naturally.
On the other hand, the reading is very urbane. We have Milan Kundera, in “Die Weltliteratur” (not online) waxing rather emotional—and justly so—about the state of literature in the world, or the world of literature in the State. I never knew Kafka was considered a Czech writer in France, but if he says so… In any case, the Germans seem to have wholeheartedly adopted him as their own.
The only thing I disagree strongly with Kundera about (that sounds very presumptuous somehow, so let me add, “humbly”) is that “to judge a novel one can do without a knowledge of its original language.” While I enjoyed Dostoyevski’s “Crime and Punishment” (in the now discredited Constance Barnett translation) as a suspense novel, I am quite sure I did not appreciate the author’s purportedly beautiful writing. I read Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” in English first (and second, and third) and despised it each time as a soap opera. Only when I finally read it in French did I appreciate Flaubert as an author. Don’t even get me started on Proust. If you’re not in love with the French language, you’re just a frimeur if you’re reading Proust in translation.
Kundera does say one thing that could be a response to David Denby (who laments the new age of digital transfers, or “betrayals” of certain movies in “Big Pictures“): “(...) only a person who delights in being modern is genuinely modern.” I’ll watch a movie on an iPod if that’s all I have—and maybe even like it, the way I’ve always loved polaroids for what they don’t capture. But maybe I’m just an old-fashioned whippersnapper.
NB: anyone notice my em dashes up there? To make an em dash on Mac, do this: option+shift+hyphen. Voila! No need for spaces between the em dashes and the enclosed word(s), according to Em, of Emdashes.
January 8th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
I have to say, I thought last week’s issue had particularly wonderful cartoons. Yours really made me laugh while I was waiting for the F train, and the friend I showed it to later that day quickly pronounced it one of his very favorites. I also loved the cab-driving deity, the subway PDA couple, and the pirate in the conference room, and I know there were a couple others too!
January 10th, 2007 at 6:38 am
I think every cartoonist’s dream is to be on a subway next to the person who bursts out laughing at his cartoon! How I would have loved to be there!
p The only higher honor is having one’s cartoon cut out and placed on the fridge!
January 12th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
I was looking for Kundera’s article online, and a Google search brought me to your site. But what caught my eye was your em dashes. There was a terrific little book, titled “The Mac is not a Typewriter” by Robin Williams (no, not THE Robin Williams), full of useful information about such things as em dashes, ellipses, etc. It is available online for 50 cents, which is sad – but a great bargain.
January 14th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
i found your site after reading the ‘flattering description’ of you in the nyt article, ‘doodles à la carte’. as a new jersey native (now floating in les banlieues of france), i appreciated the détournement of the ‘i (heart) ny’ image. i think only NJ people could, or would, effectively rock it on a t-shirt. maybe, new yorkers would have immunity. but put that on a native of iowa, and drop him in newark, and that person will have a hard time returning to des moines.
read through the kundera article. a rant, more than anything. can’t help but wonder how he feels about his native ‘small country’, and how the czechs feel about him. while czechs are mostly undecided about kafka’s status (in my mind, he is a ‘prague writer’), they are either resentful of kundera’s permanent exile, or simply ignorant of his renown. to this day, i am not sure if ‘unbearable lightness…’ is translated into czech; if so, most czechs don’t know it. contrast that with milos forman, who eventually resettled in new york: the czechs still love forman and show his films – czech and american – regularly at the cinemas. the difference: perhaps, it’s arrogance. i can’t remember another article published in new yorker with so many exclamation marks!
as for denby: one of the major points that he failed to address was the cost of going to the cinema. i was in new york recently and was surprised to pay over 10 USD to see a film (at sunshine landmark)...maybe, i’ve been riding the student discounts from a long-expired student ID, here in paris, for too long. the price – and this was explored by adorno – leads one to judge the film experience against the cost, rather than for its intrinsic value. when you decide to see a film at the cinema, you usually want to make sure that it’s worth seeing. gone are the days of just going in and seeing whatever…unless you happen to be a guy like david denby, rubbing shoulders with hollywood bigwigs.