Tony Judt in 'New York Magazine'

The latest issue of New York Magazine has a profile of Tony Judt, also available online. Judt, the author, most recently, of the brilliant Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehring's disease, in 2008 and has since lost the use of his body. Though the disease inexplicably stopped short of destroying his ability to speak (he does so with the aid of a microphone) and eat, he's essentially left with only his mental faculties intact. But what a mind. Judt is an aggressive, provocative, and stimulating thinker. He's also widely criticized, not least for his views on Israel. He's made enemies of friends, but I greatly admire his fearlessness and his belief in the intellectual's responsibility to stand apart and, often, alone.

“I think intellectuals have a primary duty to dissent not from the conventional wisdom of the age (though that too) but, and above all, from the consensus of their own community. . . . So liberals should look especially hard at the uninterrogated assumptions of liberalism. Otherwise we are just hacks for a party line. If I have an Archimedean ethical standpoint, it really just consists of telling the truth as I see it even if I don’t much care for the implications, or if it offends my friends and my political allies.”

The magazine has judiciously let stand lengthy, unbroken passages of Judt speaking, and it makes for great reading:

One thing I always felt very strongly empathetic about in my reading of [the Italian chemist and Holocaust diarist] Primo Levi was his absolutely clearheaded sense that none of what had happened to him in the camps had any meaning. You might draw lessons from it in terms of experience, you certainly might draw political lessons. But at the existential level of one man’s life, it had no meaning. This has no meaning. What I do with it is up to me.

Ikea does manga

Ikea has introduced a new line of fabrics inspired by Japanese manga and ukiyo-e (and even a little oragami). Called the "Charlotta" line, it's designed by Swedish mangaka Åsa Ekström (interview here). The US site has five patterns on the theme "Japan Meets Scandinavia." I like them all, though the one at right is my favorite. Nothing beats manga's angsty, absurd melodrama. (Plus: Gojira v. Stockholm.)

Also great for tea cozies!

Why the lapse?

Where have I been, lo these many days? Really I have no idea. But I have been reading some good books. I'm still working my way through Patti's Smith's memoir of Robert Mapplethorpe. (I'm actually reading it to my son at his bedtime. Smith writes with such dreamy language, that it's strangely appropriate.) As though the story of Smith and Mapplethorpe together during their early years isn't incredible enough, they move into the Chelsea Hotel and run into everyone, notably developing relationships with Harry Smith, Allen Ginsburg (Smith's first encounter with him has been one of the book's highlights), and William Burroughs.

Next up: Dubravka Ugresic's installment in Canongate's myth series. (Review forthcoming.) She's not for everyone, but I find her writing very clever. I particularly like her because she writes with a biting, agitated style that is missing from American and British literature. She's often angry or critical (as she is in this new book), and she lets it show, but it never detracts from her narrative. Rather, it feeds the story's success. Her style is indicative of a form of personal, introspective writing, more often found in Eastern European fiction, that is also politically engaged. I think, for instance, of Vedrana Rudan's Night, a novel that consists solely of one woman's rant about personal and political travails. Even with limited narrative expanses, books such as these manage to appeal to a wider frame of reference, a wider context, and their heroines—never passive—write their own stories. It's more daring than much of what is published in the US.

And: I'm also enjoying Elif Batuman's essays in The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. She's a gifted storyteller, with a great comic timing.

wutzatrker

What? On the new Rope and Pulley release? Why, yes, that is me gliding down the stairs of the Hermitage, imitating the climactic final scene of Andrei Sokurov's Russian Ark. Thank you for asking.

Buy it/Watch it

The Guild's third season is available for purchase in iTunes and will be selling on Amazon next weekend. If you're not watching this web show, you should be. It's Felicia Day! Remember?

Cute one on the far right? She helped save the world once, so at least you could watch her show. Plus, she later starred with this guy, so she's clearly doing something right.

Axe Cop

Axe Cop! A webcomic (now in its sixth awesome episode) drawn by Ethan Nicolle and his five-year-old brother. AXE COP!

Sarah Doyle

Animated watercolors, titled Dancehall Danceoff, by artist Sarah Doyle. (Great, minus the soundtrack.)

Dancehall Danceoff from Sarah Doyle on Vimeo.