Huayi 2013 events.

Tickets for Huayi 2013 go on sale on SISTIC today. Three events that have caught my eye:

A production of the Antigone by the Li Liuyi Theatre Studio of China. [via SISTIC]

An(other) adaptation of an Eileen Chang novel, 《半生缘》/Eighteen Springs. [via SISTIC]

And an adaptation of 《红楼梦》 by Edward Lam. [via SISTIC]

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Radiohead at the Roseland.

Fans have put together a concert film of Radiohead’s performance at the Roseland Ballroom in NYC on 29 September 2011. [via YouTube] The soundboard data was provided by the band. The creators of the film encourage donations to the Haiti Earthquake fund and Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, while also dedicating the video to the memory of Scott Johnson.

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On John Parks.

I was taken aback. I hadn’t seen or expected this in my brother at all. But obviously it was better this way. The paintings would have been dull if they had been merely an extension of that part of him that was important to me when we were both trying to free ourselves from a suffocatingly religious family. Years later, after I’d gotten used to his being a professional painter and having shows at Allan Stone’s gallery in New York, the old disrespect and provocation did surface in his work, but in a way I could never have imagined. He called these his “havoc paintings.” Perhaps impatient that not everybody had appreciated the quiet irony of all his townscapes and gardens, he now broke up those tranquil settings in grotesque earthquakes of upheaval. They weren’t quite the same settings; it was still London, but rather than the humbly inhabited suburbs, the focus was now on the preposterous monuments of the Victorian era. It was as though everything that expressed British pride, presumption, and pomposity had fallen victim to some painterly poltergeist.

[via The New York Review of Books]

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Jimi’s 70th.

Happy birthday, Jimi. [via YouTube]

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More on Mo Yan.

The discontent lies in Mo Yan’s language. Open any page, and one is treated to a jumble of words that juxtaposes rural vernacular, clichéd socialist rhetoric, and literary affectation. It is broken, profane, appalling, and artificial; it is shockingly banal. The language of Mo Yan is repetitive, predictable, coarse, and mostly devoid of aesthetic value. The English translations of Mo Yan’s novels, especially by the excellent Howard Goldblatt, are in fact superior to the original in their aesthetic unity and sureness. The blurb for The Republic of Wine from Washington Post says: “Goldblatt’s translation renders Mo Yan’s shimmering poetry and brutal realism as work akin to that of Gorky and Solzhenitsyn.” But in fact, only the “brutal realism” is Mo Yan’s; the “shimmering poetry” comes from a brilliant translator’s work.

Anna Sun on recent Nobel laureate 莫言. [via The Kenyon Review]

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Best of…

November, almost December, and it is time for those gift guides and best-of lists again. I’ll avoid posting too many of these but here’s the Guardian’s books of the year list, featuring the likes of John Banville, Geoff Dyer, and Mary Beard. Have a gander: [via the Guardian]

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Rojak: Christmas is coming.

Rojak is a regular collection of assorted links as well as a bulletin summarising the week (or thereabouts) on this blog.

Assorted

It’s that time of the year again. Pitchfork has a Christmas gift guide. [via Pitchfork]

Here’s one at Consequence of Sound. [via Consequence of Sound]

One more from Paper Darts. [via Paper Darts]

Dalkey is having a holiday sale. [via Dalkey Archive Press]

So are the Sylph Editions people (for their Nobile Folios). [via Sylph Editions]

There’s a new Jimi Hendrix album coming, titled People, Hell and Angels. [via Consequence of Sound]

The National do Gus Kahn and Isham Jones’s “I’ll See You in my Dreams” for Boardwalk Empire. [via Consequence of Sound]

Here is a new Prince song, called “Rock and Roll Love Affair”. [via YouTube]

Bulletin

• William Turnbull has died.
• Mikhail Shishkin.
• Joy Division.
• Alfred Hitchcock.
• Alice Munro.
• Greenwich Degree Zero.

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Omnivore: Planetary.

Omnivore is a regular report on some of the things that I’ve been enjoying during the week (or thereabouts).

After finishing up with Walser’s The Walk, I decided to take on Sergio Chejfec’s The Planets, which so far seems like a fairly slender but dense book.

I’m listening to some Godspeed You! Black Emperor this week.

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Edition Additions: Walser attacks!

Yup.

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The White Shadow.

You can watch Hitchcock’s oldest surviving film, The White Shadow, over at the National Film Preservation Foundation. [via National Film Preservation Foundation]

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