The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Jeff Wrangler:
While I ate my lunch today, I read the article about the graphic artist Nick Drnaso because I had run out of other things to read. I found it quite a downer, except that I was charmed by the name of a company where Drnaso had worked to earn money: The Busy Beaver Button Company. :)
I guess I will move on to the article about the filmmaker Florian von Donnersmarck because I think Florian is a wonderful name, like a name you would expect for a character in a novel by Oscar Wilde.
Jeff Wrangler:
The Jan. 28 issue was waiting in my mailbox when I got home today, and I'm looking forward to reading it. It appears to have a lot of interesting articles, including one each by two of my favorite writers, Jill Lepore and Adam Gopnik. I keep telling myself I really should write Jill Lepore a fan letter.
serious crayons:
I am eager to read those two things, especially since Lepore's piece is about journalism. Other potentially good pieces, based on the table-of-contents bylines: a profile of Marlon James, a prizewinning author who lives in MInneapolis or Saint Paul, by Jia Tolentino, a young newish writer I like, and what appears to be a personal essay by Robert Caro about working on his massive, multi-volume biography of LBJ.
Jeff Wrangler:
I highly recommend Jill Lepore's article on the future and fate of journalism in the Jan. 28 issue.
Of course, I highly recommend anything Jill Lepore writes.
Adam Gopnik's article on translating sacred texts is very interesting, too. I do, however, question one of Gopnik's statements concerning the King James Version of the Bible. Gopnik writes, "The K.J.V. rose to meet a moment when growing literacy and Protestant feeling made the individual connection with the text matter: it was for men reading on their own or preachers seeking a passage to elucidate." I find the part of his statement that I boldfaced a bit problematic because it doesn't quite fit the history of the K.J.V.
When the K.J.V. was first published, in 1611, it was only in folio size, that is, a size for a Bible to be used in church. A folio was way too big and way too expensive for ordinary people to own for their own reading. When the K.J.V. was published, the Bible of choice for literate Protestant Englishmen was the English translation known as the "Geneva" Bible from the mid-sixteenth century. (It was produced by English exiles living in Geneva during the reign of Mary Tudor, hence "Geneva.") The Geneva Bible was the first to use verse numbers (easy to cross-reference). It was printed in Roman type (easier to read than Blackletter), and it also was issued in quarto and octavo editions (sizes convenient for individual reading). The K.J.V. didn't really take off and begin to displace the Geneva Bible for another 50 years after its first publication, when the clergy responsible for compiling the 1662 issue of the Book of Common Prayer used the K.J.V. for the epistles and gospels included in the Prayer Book, so that people started to hear the K.J.V. read in church every Sunday. (Previous editions of the Prayer Book had used the so-called Bishop's Bible, from the sixteenth century, which was inferior to the Geneva Bible.) So I find Gopnik's statement a little shaky in its history.
Front-Ranger:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on January 23, 2019, 01:37:25 pm ---In the Jan. 21 issue, there was an article on the filmmaker Donnersmark's biopic of the artist Gerhard Richter.
--- End quote ---
Tonight on NPR the film Never Look Away was reviewed. Apparently it is much more than a biopic but also another look at the Holocaust. The soundtrack sounds wonderful; there are works by Handel. I'd like to see this even though it is 3 hours long. It is nominated for two Oscars.
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