Another kind of Brooklyn

1. why they should not be as the rest of the American citizens?

2. at least there are more chances to speak openly about the abuses and the perpetrators. but, again, it is not an excuse for the current situation.

The end of the cinema as we all know

Coppola's predictions.

The fate of the books

and the explanation of what Google's project on digitalization is all about, from the part of Sergey Brin's co-founder of the company.

Tel Aviv's art stage

The NYT's article is one year old, but it is still the same active and interesting stage. It's all about artists - good and bad - with ideas - good and bad. The rest is media buzzing.

In Bovary country

the reality of the world of words.

Citizen patrols in Italy

- the National Guard, under investigation for using symbols and dress code similar with those from the Mussolini regime.

Another "guard" movement, the Hungarian one, marched in the Roma areas in Budapest and elsewhere.

Year? End 2009.

Not only the Americans are dreaming

The short story of Ada Yonath, the winner of a Nobel prize in chemistry, together with another two American scientists. The first Israeli woman to win a Nobel prize, she was born 70 years ago, in a very poor family in Jerusalem.

Two literary descriptions of anti-semitism

Israeli-writer born in Czernowitz Aharon Appelfeld is offering a sample of the popular reaction against Jews in Ukraine. A short telling example, at the end of the second Chapter of the novel Caterina, a discussion about the "Jewish difference": "- Why are they (the Jews) like this? - You don't know they killed Jesus? - They did? - Yes". From time to time, there are episodes when, randomly, the Jews are aggressed with no reason on the street, and everything is taking place as part of non-sense diabolic program: they ought to, because it is like a rule of the place. Caterina is getting over the distance between her world and the Jewish world, by working for and with Jewish families. And, at the end of the book and of her journey, when "there are no Jews in the world", she discovers being a living memory of their world and is afraid to do not loose those few memories too. And she is telling her story. In Joseph Roth's Tarabas the violence and hate are reaching the maximum when a painting of Mary is discovered under layers of dye in the house of the Jew with the name Kristianpoller - haven't yet discovered the reason why the author called him with this name. Once discovered the painting, it becomes object of adoration, but in the same time the Jews are considered guilty for hiding the painting - holy now - because, in fact, it is assumed their aim is to hide and destroy everything Christian. And, the same Mary-go-round of permanent aggression is put into practice. Nobody keen to change this, nobody brave enough to oppose it.

Franz Biberkopf

Döblin's book is hard to include in a clear literary classification. It could be a report about the Berlin from that time, a memoir, a feature ready to be published in a newspaper, a script of a movie, but not an usual one: a kind of road movie, where the characters themselves are moving and changing and at the end, dramatically but predictably fall down. The language you read the book is very important: the best suited is the original German version, but even for a native speaker, an argo dictionary is necessary. The questions following you and obsesively appearing during the lecture of the book - at least in my case: it is possible to do it? why to do it and which are the ethical limits, if any?

The art of writing

and the understanding of the book, as a part of the social context and the result of a long term process: a new way to read the writing business, at the University of Iowa Center of the Book.

The reconversion of the space

The 19th century built Santa Fe Railroad Yard, almost abandoned since end of 80s, reinaugurated as a creative place for artists and creative minds, in 2008. A new hot-spot in New Mexico.

Another Face of Coco Chanel

the WWII collaborationism.