Books, Design and Culture
Embracing…messiness and understanding its contribution to the creative process is something that writers and creative types, artists, whatever have got to cultivate, have to learn to be comfortable with. Because it goes against a lot of our kind of instincts and training as kind of educated people.
Writer Malcolm Gladwell at The Big Think:
Charlie Rose recently talked Patti Smith about her award-winning book Just Kids and her relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe.
In this excerpt from the interview Smith sings her song My Blakean Year:
You can watch the full interview here.
(via Bookslut)
Sadly the end of the poem Hughes reads,View of a Pig, is cut off, but otherwise this is still rather wonderful:
The last line of the poem is:
Scald it and scour it like a doorstep.
(via Russell Davies)
I began, of course, as a poet, but the power of rock ‘n’ roll — rock ‘n’ roll was really the canopy of our cultural voice, and especially in the ’60s, late ’60s and early ’70s, that — and our rock stars, the people who were building that voice, whether it was John Lennon or Neil Young or Bob Dylan, or whoever it was, they were infusing politics and — and political ideology, social justice, sexual energy, poetics, all within the canopy of rock ‘n’ roll, and striving to make this a universal language. It was a real mission. And I — I wanted to add to that. Writing poetry is beautiful, but, when I was young, I wanted to be part of this important cultural voice.
Patti Smith talks about her memoir Just Kids on PBS NewsHour:
(via The BDR)
Paul Morley interviews fellow music critic Alex Ross, author of The Rest is Noise and Listen to This, for The Guardian:
Morley’s post about critics, and meeting Alex Ross, is also worth reading:
I’ve always liked a critic who doesn’t think like anyone else. Someone who takes me so much by surprise with their opinions, approach and rigour that they themselves become a kind of artist. I like a critic who demonstrates that they deserve to evaluate and document the work and art of others by writing in such a way that the work makes more sense, sometimes only makes sense, because of what they write and why they write it. I loved critics, whether it was Kenneth Tynan, Susan Sontag, Tom Wolfe, Richard Meltzer, John Updike, Roland Barthes, Pauline Kael, Angela Carter or Lester Bangs, for the way they made it clear, with such evangelical poise, precision and purpose, that without the great critic, the world, and the worlds of those that made up the world, was never properly finished off.
Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story, interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel for CBC Radio’s Writers & Company:
Writers & Co Interview with Gary Shteyngart Mp3
The J-Franz, author of Freedom, talks to Eleanor Wachtel for CBC Radio’s Writers & Company:
Writers & Co Jonathan Franzen Mp3
Tom McCarthy, author of C, interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel for CBC Radio’s Writers & Company:
Writers & Co Interview with Tom McCarthy Mp3
Tom McCarthy, author of Remainder and C, interviewed on KCRW’s Bookworm:
Eleanor Wachtel’s two part interview with John le Carré about his new book Our Kind of Traitor for CBC Radio’s Writers & Company:
Part One:
Writers and Co. John Le Carre Interview
Part Two:
Writers and Co. John Le Carre Interview (Part Two)
Eleanor Wachtel writes about meeting John Le Carre here.
After mentioning Philip K. Dick earlier this week, it only seems appropriate to post A Day In The Afterlife, a 1994 BBC documentary about the author:
(via Largehearted Boy | Open Culture)
John Le Carré talks to Jon Snow of Channel 4 News about his new book, Our Kind of Traitor, in what the author says is his final British television interview:
Snow blogged about the experience of interviewing Le Carré here.
(via PD Smith)