...scrambling for the spoils

Here is a post from my Camera Lucida blog which I posted in 2008. Let's call it a decade ago.

Look how things have turned out these ten years later in 2017!

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And how universities are scrambling for the spoils

Statue of Eggerton Ryerson
Founder of Ryerson University

Ryerson University is touted as the "down-town" University of the city of Toronto. The Ryerson campus is expected to receive $210 million over 20 years to dramatically expand the campus. So far, $45 million have been promised by the provincial government. This 20-year project hopes to fund itself both through public and private monies.

A lot of this rationale for this expansion comes from increased student applications, which rose by 20% since last year, and which are expected to spiral up in the upcoming years. The school currently has about 20,000 full time students, and expects this to at least quadruple.

Since this a blog that deals with art, culture and society, I will focus on:
- Architects
- How the aesthetics of Toronto's landscape is changing for the worse
- Multiculturalism

Architects:

I don't have a great deal of respect for contemporary architects as I've outlined here, here, here, here and here.

No less than four architects are now part of the Ryerson campus expansion, with more surely to join the fray in the future. The lucrative deal between university and architects (funded by public funds and generous wealthy private donors - individual or corporate) is not to be take lightly.

Urban aesthetics:

One of my most poignant posts was when I noticed a beautiful three-storey building along Gerrard street across from the Ryerson campus proper, and decided to reproduce it in charcoal and pastel. To my dismay, about a year later, this building was being demolished to what I presumed would become a high rise building.

Well, I was right in that it would be a several-storied building. But, the ultimate irony is that it belongs to Ryerson, who built it as accommodation for its students.

Immigration:

Much of my reasoning to explain the drive for urban development and expansions comes from information provided by blogger Dispatches from the Hogtown Front, and his detailed analysis as to why Toronto's downtown skyscrapers are flourishing.

Succinctly, his point is: immigration. The city of Toronto receives about 1000,000 new immigrants, mostly from India, China and other Asian countries, a year.

And they have to live somewhere, and go to school somewhere.

The president of Ryerson, Sheldon Levy, also commented in an interview that it is immigration which will bring this unprecedented increase in student number.

Hence, Ryerson's ambitious plan to cater for this "growing number of students" by its spectacular development projects, all in all costing upwards of $200 million.

I will later on elaborate on the consequences of this urban development scheme fueled by high levels of immigrants from Asiatic countries, many of them also Muslims.

Addendum:

I should add that the most authentic, and deserving expansion comes from my alma mater department of Image Arts, where the Photography Gallery and Research Center is to house the famous Black Star Historical Black & White Photography Collection which was donated to the department. This has nothing to do with accommodating the latest governmental policy on population regulation, but on the hard work, wise connections and academic excellence which the department has fostered.

That is why universities should expand, and not as boxes to refuge students who have unexpectedly inundated their campuses.

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"Why Do They Hate Us?"

National Policy Institute director Richard Spencer speaks at the 2015 American Renaissance conference about political persecution he faced in Budapest, Hungary, and Whitefish, Montana. He traces anti-white attitudes to deep-seated feelings of guilt and shame. “Whites,” he says, “have a special capacity to become their own worst enemy, a unique ability to inflict guilt on themselves.”

[Transcript]

New Heaven, New War

New Heaven, New War
Robert Southwell, SJ
[Source]

Come to your heaven, you heavenly choirs,
Earth hath the heaven of your desires.
Remove your dwelling to your God;
A stall is now his best abode.
Sith men their homage do deny,
Come, angels, all their fault supply.

His chilling cold doth heat require;
Come, seraphims, in lieu of fire.
This little ark no cover hath;
Let cherubs’ wings his body swathe.
Come, Raphael, this babe must eat;
Provide our little Toby meat.

Let Gabriel be now his groom,
That first took up his earthly room.
Let Michael stand in his defense,
Whom love hath linked to feeble sense.
Let graces rock when he doth cry,
And angels sing his lullaby.

The same you saw in heavenly seat
Is he that now sucks Mary’s teat;
Agnize your king a mortal wight,
His borrowed weed lets not your sight.
Come, kiss the manger where he lies,
That is your bliss above the skies.

This little babe, so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;
All hell doth at his presence quake.
Though he himself for cold do shake,
For in this weak unarmèd wise
The gates of hell he will surprise.

With tears he fights and wins the field;
His naked breast stands for a shield;
His battering shot are babish cries,
His arrows looks of weeping eyes,
His martial ensigns cold and need,
And feeble flesh his warrior’s steed.

His camp is pitchèd in a stall,
His bulwark but a broken wall,
The crib his trench, hay stalks his stakes,
Of shepherds he his muster makes;
And thus, as sure his foe to wound,
The angels’ trumps alarum sound.

My soul, with Christ join thou in fight;
Stick to the tents that he hath pight;
Within his crib is surest ward,
This little babe will be thy guard.
If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy,
Then flit not from this heavenly boy.

"Sometimes they climbed trees"

Woods in Northbourne Park School (called Betteshanger School when I attended)

Laura Wood of The Thinking Housewife quotes from Anthony Esolen’s Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child [ISI Books, 2010].

Here is one part that stood out in my regard:

Sometimes they climbed trees.

I never really climbed trees, but I did find one tree with a seat in its trunk that was low enough for me to climb into. I would sit there even in the cold of those English winters, put on my mittens and scarf, and read my books, which carried me to distant woods and forests, oceans and continents. I climbed metaphorical trees perched in my secure trunk.


Cathedral Forest
[Photo by: KPA]

Canadian Patterns

He shall have dominion also from sea unto sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.
- Psalm 72:8



Skater



Toronto Gables


Lake Huron


Trillium


Lake Ontario


Fir Trees: On the Road to Ottawa


Niagara Falls


Lake Ontario: Winter and Summer

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All works by KPA

January Birthday Carnation

Redouté, Pierre Joseph (1759-1840)
Dianthus cariophyllus (Carnation)
Oeillet panaché (Variegated carnation)
From P. J. Redouté's Choix des plus belles fleurs, et des plus beaux fruits
Date: circa 1827


Illustration Label

A Nation of Grinches: The real result of defining a society as “diverse”

A Nation of Grinches
Lawrence Auster
View From the Right
December 10 2006

A Hassidic rabbi “asked” the Seattle-Tacoma airport to place an eight-foot-high menorah next to the highest of the nine “holiday trees” in the airport’s international arrival hall, as reported in the Seattle Times. The airport felt that if they had a menorah, they would have to have symbols for every religion, and the “staff didn’t have time to play cultural anthropologists.” As the negotiations went on, the rabbi’s attorney, Harvey Grad, threatened to sue the airport. At that point the airport decided to take down the holiday trees—which had been a familiar, decades-old tradition at the airport—so as to avoid the issue altogether. This got a lot of people upset. The rabbi, Elazar Bogomilsky, says he is “appalled” at the airport’s response to his “simple” request. His attorney Grad complains: “They’ve darkened the hall instead of turning the lights up. There is a concern here that the Jewish community will be portrayed as the Grinch.” Isn’t that rich? These Jews make the trouble, they threaten to sue, they virtually force the airport to take down the trees, and now they’re whining that Jews are being unfairly blamed.

The trees are a non-denominational expression of our common culture, derived from Christianity, but not specifically Christian. Bogomilsky wanted a Jewish symbol. The airport was right that this would soon mean every religion under the sun would have to be represented. But Bogomilsky didn’t care about that. He wanted his religion represented in the airport.

I don’t blame Bogomilsky so much as I blame the majority culture which has given minorities the message that the fundamental meaning of America is diversity, and that minorities should expect as a right the public representation of their cultures and religions. The real result of defining a society as “diverse” is not that you end up with the “riches of diversity.” It’s that you end up in an empty space, with the once-cheerful lights turned out.

* * *
Rabbi Bogomilsky had even more chuztpah than I originally realized. According to the website of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the rabbi didn’t just want an eight-foot high menorah installed next to the highest of the nine holiday tree, he wanted a menorah lighting ceremony:

Holiday Tree Removal: The Port of Seattle is an organization that works with and respects cultures from around the world. The decision to remove the holiday trees was made to avoid litigation with a local religious organization which wanted to install a menorah and hold a lighting ceremony. The airport is not a traditional public forum and it would not be appropriate for such a ceremony, so we made the decision to remove the trees to allow the airport staff to focus on the busy travel season.

Also, Rabbi Lapin of Toward Tradition is urging Jews (including the litigious rabbi who started the whole mess) to sign a petition urging the airport to reinstall the Christmas trees. But Lapin left out a key element for this to work. If the Bogomilsky does not join the petitioners, and does not commit to drop his lawsuit, why should the airport put back the trees, since he might just start up his suit again?
And here’s another angle on this. Who the heck ever heard of a Hassidic Jew caring about what is going on in America’s mainstream culture and secular spaces? Since when do Hasids care about competing with Christians over public symbols? Since when do Hasids care about Hanukah, which is not important as a religious holiday and is more a Jewish national holiday (and not a very important one at that, until in 20th century America it was built up to turn it into an equivalent of Christmas)? By the way, Rabbi Lapin refers to him as his friend.

Leonard K. writes:

I don’t share your indulgence to the rabbi, and below is the e-mail I sent him. I agree with your conclusion regarding the liberal majority culture, but that doesn’t make the rabbi’s behavior, with the threat of law suit, etc., less disgusting.

To: rabbi@chaiseattle.com
Dear Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky:

I would like to “thank you” (sarcastically) for getting Christmas trees removed from the Seattle airport. With your threat of law suit, you succeeded in destroying a historic American tradition, and in poisoning the relations between the Christians and the Jews. You add fuel and ammunition to the Jew haters’ arsenal, and you are a disgrace for the Jewish people.

Do not accuse me of anti-Semitism; unlike you, I love the Jewish people and am Jewish myself.

No regards,
Leonard K.

Sam B. writes:

I’d like to think that most rational Jews—of which I am one—deplore this nut job of a “rabbi.” He’s probably a Reform—i.e., liberal. He’s an embarrassment to the Jewish community. As if we need more anti-Semitic hostility. The anti-Semites will chortle with glee. That’s expected. What bothers is that many well-meaning Christians, and evangelicals, ordinarily Jews’ best friends, may be toppled from a very fragile fence—into hostility. Thus the “good works” this “rabbi” has rendered. He’s a (Jewish) mirror image of some of those imams.

LA writes:

Rabbi Daniel Lapin knows and likes Rabbi Bogomilsky, the Grinch Who Stole the Christmas Trees. Michael Medved (no link at the moment) also knows and likes Bogomilsky, and he strives mightily to show that the removal of the Christmas trees from the Seattle-Tacoma airport was not the rabbi’s fault, but that of the airport authorities, who decided to remove the trees in response to … uh, now what was that in response to again? Oh, yes, it was in response to—and there’s the little fact at the center of this saga which Medved takes many paragraphs to admit: the rabbi and his lawyer threatened a federal civil lawsuit over the Christmas trees. Medved calls this a “mistake.” He declines to identify it for what it is—the smoking gun that destroys any claim, on Bogomilsky’s part, on his lawyers’s part, and on Medved’s part, that Bogomilsky was acting on good will.

Happy New Year!

Christmas Wreath

Allan Gardens Conservatory, Toronto, 2011
[Photo By: KPA]

The Swarovski Crystal Wish Tree

The Swarovski Crystal Wish Tree at the Eaton Centre, Toronto
Beautiful but empty
[Photo By: KPA, 2011]

Once again...political correctness and multicultural censoring is on display in Toronto. The Eaton Centre website calls the tree the "Swarovski Crystal Wish Tree." Eaton's, along with Swarovski, will donate $100,000 to the Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada.

A Christmas tree becomes a "Wish Tree" and Santa's absence is bought with $100,000. I wonder when there finally will be no "Wish Tree" since it has too strong a resemblance to Christmas? Perhaps next year, we will just be left with the ungainly reindeer that are hanging over the banisters, with Santa still conspicuously absent. [Quote from Camera Lucida, 2011]

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Why “Secular Christmas” Cannot Save Us
By Jane Clark Scharl

As the rift in Western culture between secular traditions and sacred traditions grows wider, the scramble to explain ourselves, to sublimate our experiences and give them meaning, becomes increasingly frantic…

My husband and I couldn’t do family Christmas gifts this year, so instead we decided to write thoughtful notes to each family member reflecting on the year. But when we went out to get cards at 3:30 p.m. on December 24, we were dismayed to find that the Christmas materials had been relegated to a dwindling stock in the corner, and the main “holiday” aisle was dedicated to (you guessed it) Valentine’s Day. We could get pink M&Ms or heart-shaped Russell Stover’s boxes, but it was lean pickings for Christmas cards and the holiday hadn’t even officially begun.

It’s a stark reminder that the traditions of secular Christmas are a dry well. Every child knows the sinking feeling of the day after Christmas, when the daily routine settles in again and everything goes back to normal. Our day-to-day existence often feels like standing on the edge of the unknown, and without a larger narrative—a myth—to tie ourselves to, that uncertainty can crush us. Traditions link our day-to-day lives to a myth. They are tangible activities that involve our bodies, not simply our minds, and remind us body and soul of what is important and true.

Ever since the secular and the sacred calendars fell into alignment at the dawn of Christendom, traditional holidays like Christmas have borne a double burden. They have to fulfill our sense of connection to the state and society as well as our spiritual longings. But today, as society drifts further and further from even acknowledging spiritual longings, secular Christmas can’t stave off the malaise of the mundane. In the whirlwind of the holidays and the letdown we feel afterwards, we have to make a conscious choice about which Christmas we’re going to celebrate: the secular one that seeks to sublimate reality, or the sacred one that promises to save it.

Rousseau Can’t Save Us

Sublimation was originally an alchemical term. It was the action of purifying a thing by vaporizing it, to eliminate all impurities, and then allowing it to cool. Despite alchemy’s promise that it could transform a compound into a different compound (most famously iron into gold), sublimation does not actually change the nature of the thing. It simply clarifies what already exists. Impurities can still adhere to the compound, and further working with the thing will simply reintroduce the flaws.

The eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau loved the idea of sublimation and applied it liberally to his theories of society and education. The original meaning of “refinement” narrowed to a more specific meaning of “exaltation,” by which Rousseau meant attributing universal meaning to a mundane experience to elevate and validate it. Rousseau believed that societies had to sublimate certain experiences in order to survive, because otherwise there was no meaningful explanation of day-to-day life.

Rousseau’s sublimation is the best we can hope for from secular traditions. Secular Christmas music, even the best, exemplifies this attempt to sublimate experienced feelings—of loneliness (“I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”), nostalgia (“White Christmas”), or love (“Let It Snow”)—beyond their context in ordinary life and elevate them to the level of the sublime. A sublime experience is a universal experience, one that has meaning outside of itself that both clarifies and validates it. This is the purest impulse of secular Christmas: to elevate our experiences to the level of the universal, and in so doing, to create a myth of Christmas to validate the feelings that punctuate our lives, even if just for one day.

We all hold an ideal of secular Christmas in our imaginations, even though for most of us it has never happened: cottages covered in snow, lanes fretted with sleigh tracks, children laughing, clear voices singing in a village square lit by lamps. Countless sugar cookies made by a smiling family while a perfect tree gleams in the corner and orphans smile at the feet of Santa Claus. It’s the Gospel according to Thomas Kinkade. But in this picture, the light illumines only itself, reflecting endlessly. It doesn’t illumine—or transform—the things of the world.

Cards, songs, gifts, family, masterful dinners, days off work—these are all beautiful parts of being human. But as a friend posted, poignantly, on Facebook, “[My son] is not interested in presents he has opened but in those he has yet to open”: The best these things can do is distract briefly from reality.

A tradition is only as good as the myth it connects us to. There is no single event in the American calendar as jammed with traditions as Christmas; it’s a complex blend of the religious and the secular, the community sphere and the commercial sphere, the ancient and the tinsel-shiny new. It’s one of the few times when Americans openly and unashamedly seek to infuse our cultural experience with shared transcendent meaning. The foment of “holiday spirit” that starts before Thanksgiving promises us that for one day we’ll be joyful, free from worry, with the peace that eludes us the rest of the year.

But before the day has even begun, the stores are full of the next thing, because deep down inside we know that at the end of Christmas Day, we’ll be right back where we started: tired and worried and afraid. The idyll offered by secular Christmas isn’t real, any more than Thomas Kinkade’s landscapes are real. And it cannot save us.

Another Tradition

But there is another tradition of Christmas, another anchor linking us to a myth. This is the one we see in Rembrandt’s unforgettable Nativity. Here the light doesn’t simply hover around the Christ or cling to the clustered figures; it bubbles up like water from a spring and illumines them, igniting in them a light that before had never burned. This painting is not a crystallization of a moment that is cleansed and contemplated, like the image of a lit cottage covered in snow; it is a record of a fundamental change in reality, one that transforms the way we think about all human experiences before and after.

When I was young there were no Valentine’s decorations in the stores before Christmas. But as the rift in Western culture between secular traditions and sacred traditions grows wider, the scramble to explain ourselves, to sublimate our experiences and give them meaning, becomes increasingly frantic. The sacred traditions stand out more starkly: a midnight Mass in candlelight, voices singing “Joy to the World!” around tears of that same joy, silent prayer under the stars. We need the wisdom of Mary more than ever as she, in the midst of a whirlwind of miracles, “treasured up all these things in her heart,” because, no matter what the stores may say, Christmas is not over. It is the restoration of all things, and it has just begun.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

[Photo By: KPA
The Allan Gardens Toronto, Christmas decorations]

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Below is a post from my Camera Lucida blog from December 2005!

One of my favorite carols (too many to choose from). -------------------------------------------------------- The Twelve Days of Christmas On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me A Partridge in a Pear Tree On the second day of Christmas my true love sent to me Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the fourth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the sixth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Six Geese a Laying Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me Seven Swans a Swimming Six Geese a Laying Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the eighth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Eight Maids a Milking Seven Swans a Swimming Six Geese a Laying Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the ninth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Nine Ladies Dancing Eight Maids a Milking Seven Swans a Swimming Six Geese a Laying Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the tenth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Ten Lords a Leaping Nine Ladies Dancing Eight Maids a Milking Seven Swans a Swimming Six Geese a Laying Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me Eleven Pipers Piping Ten Lords a Leaping Nine Ladies Dancing Eight Maids a Milking Seven Swans a Swimming Six Geese a Laying Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me 12 Drummers Drumming Eleven Pipers Piping Ten Lords a Leaping Nine Ladies Dancing Eight Maids a Milking Seven Swans a Swimming Six Geese a Laying Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

[Photo By: KPA
The Allan Gardens Toronto, Christmas decorations]

Ishiguro photographed in an English countryside.
[Photo credit: Andrew Testa]

Here is a tweeter who writes:

[R]umour has it that @SalmanRushdie was hiding post fatwa in this house in Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire.

and a tweet reply:

@wodekszemberg @SalmanRushdie is there supposed to be any significance in this being next to a graveyard?

Ishiguro has a daughter Naomi with his English wife. Here is photo of her with a school friend from 2008.

As luck would have it, the mansion in front of which Ishiguro is posing is in Camden. So we can conclude that Ishiguro lived in Camden, and is now a Londoner according to his Wikipedia entry.

That is a strange coincidence that he lived n the same region in England as where Rushdie was rumored to have stayed during his fatwa. Or maybe not. Possibly, Ishiguro arranged Rushdie's secret accommodations.
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Here is more on the location of the photograph in the beautiful Cotswalds made to look like some abandoned barren land:

Kazuo Ishiguro, a novelist, in Chipping Campden, England, Jan. 26, 2015. Ishiguro’s new novel, “The Buried Giant,” is the riskiest and most ambitious venture of his celebrated career, a return to his hallmark themes of memory and loss, set in a ogre- and pixie-populated ancient England. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Ishiguro said. “Will readers follow me into this?” (Andrew Testa/The New York Times) - XNYT109

Below, I have posted and artcle I wrote at Camera Lucida in 2005 (!) where I clearly understood the perils of "diversity:" Diversity in Writers

Update (December 22, 2016) on Zadie Smith and Kazuo Ishiguro:
Smith continues with her theme of race/multi-race/mixed-race/ and some sociopolitical commentary about racial divides and biases often subtly elevating the "black" side of her own mixed-race "heritage." Here latest book is Swingtime which I have reviewed and will post soon.

Ishiguro abandoned the silent Butler narrator of a very real British household a while ago and started to write science fiction, not C.S. Lewis' Christian-based allegories, nor Tolkien's adventure sagas (also religious allegories) but dystopia fantasies of the world, or lives, falling apart. Although should add that The Butler had this creepy ghost-like aura. Ishiguro's latests, The Buried Giant:

Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel in a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge and war. [Source]

As wrote (full post below):

[If] you don’t have your full emotions invested in a place, how can you write positive things about it? Like Rushdie, Smith and Ishiguro, who seem to deny a possibility for a future in their books, and press on with their circular exaggerations trying to find meanings for themselves.

Non-allegorical, dystopian science fiction fits that creative void.
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Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Diversity in Writers
Will the Real Jeeves Please Stand?

England has witnessed several years of non-English authors who keep winning literary prizes, or just literary acclaim. Zadie Smith was recently in the headlines, Salman Rushdie has managed to outlive his fatwa, and another less famous but prolific writer, Kazuo Ishiguro, has written yet another book from those fair British Isles.

I’ve read books by all three, even tried more than one of each. And all leave me less than enthralled, slightly confused, and struck by a lack of authenticity. I find their characters to be caricatures. Both Rushdie and Smith go for hyperbole, while Ishiguro goes for exactly the opposite.

I’m beginning to wonder if non-British writers, however much they were born on the Island, can really capture the spirit of the land.

“Remains of the Day” by Ishiguro has a gloomy, undecipherable, remorseful butler try to recapture something of what he’s lost during all those years of selfless service. Actually, I recant my observation about Ishiguro’s understatement. What could be more of a hyperbole than this?

Then there is P.G. Wodehouse, with the inimitable Jeeves. His adroit butler who really always does save the day, after a lot of scampers and near-disasters along the way. And he does get to have his day at the sea-side also, and quite frequently.

I think Wodehouse captured his character with affection as a butler who certainly is not going to be bossed around by any Lord! No remains for him to collect.

Sometimes I wonder; if you don’t have your full emotions invested in a place, how can you write positive things about it? Like Rushdie, Smith and Ishiguro, who seem to deny a possibility for a future in their books, and press on with their circular exaggerations trying to find meanings for themselves.

Ishiguro’s 2001 book “When we were orphans” is about an Englishman who mysteriously lost his parents as a young boy in Shanghai. He returns as a professional detective to solve that ultimate mystery. It reminds me of these writers, trying to find clues about their past by digging into words.

Ishiguro’s latest book forfeited the unapproachable Far East, and his ancestral home, for something even more alien. It seems like he’s completely given up on ‘his’ England. “Never let me go” is about a Utopia (or a dystopia) on cloning. No more real people, real places or real stories for Ishiguro in the advent of the 21st century.

Why doesn’t this progression of his thoughts and stories not surprise me?

Quote from an interview with Ishiguro on "When we were Orphans":

There's a certain kind of branded, packaged atmosphere of Shanghai: this exotic, mysterious, decadent place. The same in Remains of the Day. It was a case of manipulating certain stereotypical images of a certain kind of classical England. Butlers and tea and scones: it's not really about describing a world that you know well and firsthand. It's about describing stereotypes that exist in people's heads all around the world and manipulating them engagingly.

I am so glad the someone agrees with me!!!

Kevin Michael Grace writes about Zadie Smith:

Too funny. There are many fine woman novelists, but #ZadieSmith is not one of them. She's laughably bad.

I scoured the Internet to find a "critique" on Smith's latest book. It didn't have to be harsh, just a standard analysis.

Nothing. Not even by James Wood who coined the category "hysterical realism"  after her book White Teeth in 20 - (which later became a grimy BBC series which gave up watching ) although Wood capitulated with Smith's 2012 NW http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/books-of-the-year

Here is what Wikipeda managed to say in one concise paragraph (which is as accurate as I can remember)

White Teeth consists of four self-contained short-stories, focusing on a major male character as he encounters a turning point in his life, with background cameos from other characters.[1] The series spans 20 years of three cultures, chronicling the interlinked stories of three families over three generations in a multicultural area of north-west London[2] from 1974 to 1992.[3]

And of course the focus of the film's derision (and I assume the novel's also) is a white male described as:


The four-hour saga also features leaps back to the Second World War, where Samad and Archie served together, and even further back to the 1857 Indian Mutiny.[4]

So much for modern - modernist - literary critiques. They settle, or perhaps they just have no principles.

It isn't much of a surprise that Wood has kept quiet on Swingtime because his initial horror has been justified.

After ept Swngtme around for about one wee readng parts of t gong through pages

rarely do ths and eep even "bad" boos that 've bought.


http://cameralucid.blogspot.ca/2005/10/zadie-smiths-on-beauty.html














http://societyforreclaimingwesternbeauty.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-desecration-of-rembrandt-gentle-men.html