The Night Book

• Fuck The Nobel Prize

  Posted: September 30, 2008, 3:59 pm by Levari

  
  Horace Engdahl: Man of The (European) People
  
  STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - The man who announces the Nobel Prize in literature says the United States is too "insular" and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing.
  
  In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Horace Engdahl said Tuesday that "Europe still is the center of the literary world."
  
  Engdahl is the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which selects the literature prize winner. He is expected to announce the winner in the coming weeks.
  
  Engdahl says the U.S. "is too isolated, too insular" and doesn't really "participate in the big dialogue of literature."
  
  Since Japanese poet Kenzaburo Oe won in 1994, the selections have had a distinct European flavor. The last American winner was Toni Morrison in 1993.
  
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  We don't "participate in the big dialogue of literature?"
  
  Umm, maybe that's because every ten years or so Europe has yet another genocide or ethnic cleansing catastrophe it must have a "big dialogue" about for the next fifty years in its art and literature because it's so guilty for letting it happen over and over and over again, asshole.
  
  What a steaming pile of horse shit, Mr. Nobel Prize. As my Zeyda would have said, "I vouldn't vaste my piss on your award!"

• The Most Bad Ass Car Race You've Never Seen...

  Posted: September 30, 2008, 4:25 am by Levari

  
  
  Claude LeLouche.
  
  A 1967 Porsche.
  
  Paris at dawn.
  
  260 m.p.h.
  
  No cuts.
  
  Totally authentic.
  
  I dream of this.
  
  Enjoy.

• Fast Eddie's Last Hustle

  Posted: September 27, 2008, 12:28 am by Levari

  
  
  They'll talk of his cool, his looks, but to me what made him so special was that underneath the veneer was the most soulfully passionate American film actor of all time. Paul Newman never hid behind his cool or looks, and when he broke he broke honestly, with all of himself, for all the world to experience, the way we all do. More than a movie star, he was an actor. He did his job and he did it well.
  
  This is the last scene from the film that made his career, "The Hustler," one of the best and most stylish coming of age movies ever made.
  
  Ladies and Gentleman, "Fast" Eddie Felson, one last time...
  
  
  "Fat Man, you shoot a great game of pool."
  "So do you, Fast Eddie."

• A Matador para Staubs

  Posted: September 24, 2008, 8:53 pm by Levari

• "It is true that the great tradition ...

  Posted: September 22, 2008, 12:40 am by Levari

  "It is true that the great tradition is lost, and the new one is not yet established. But what was the great tradition, if not the habitual idealization of a long past way of life...All centuries and all peoples have their own forms of beauty and tragedy, so, inevitably, we now have ours."

• "Poetry is not a turning loose of ...

  Posted: September 9, 2008, 1:50 am by Levari

  "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things."
  
  ~T.S. Eliot

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes