I don’t ‘do’ sentimental. I do meaningful. That is my wish for 2014.
News — Old news, Bad news, No news – none matters.
Abandon TV. Revolt the media. Revolve the stars.
We have no use for them.
On the last days of today, I walked through the valley of my grandfather, who luckily, continued to walk.
Resolution: no more shit.
Resolution: bring history, real history back to the young, that they might know, again, where they stand.
-MLB 31 Dec 13, Normandy, France
some things need no introduction.
JOHN CALDER
Without hyperbole, the most important publisher in Britain (and one of the most in the world). John Calder founded Calder Publications in 1949 aged 26. He was Samuel Beckett’s publisher; the first man to make the work of William Buroughs available in the UK; he ran (with Sonya Orwell and Jim Haynes) the infamous Edinburgh Conference on the Novel in 1962; stood in a landmark censorship trial after publishing Hubert Selby Jr.’s ‘Last Exit to Brooklyn‘; was chased from the US under McCarthyism; ran the Calder Bookshop in London, hosting weekly events for several decades with the best of the literary avant-garde; has published 17 Nobel Prize winners… He has also written the autobiography ‘Pursuit‘ and several books of criticism and poetry — including this from his latest ‘Being – Seeing – Feeling – Healing – Meaning’ available from Alma Books
Farewell Natalia Gorbanevskaya, someone I came to know at the Prague Writers’ Festival. One of 8 to stare down Soviet tanks in Red Square, upon the invasion of the Czech Republic. She paid with forced psychiatric incarceration and injections.
Her work, poems and features here at PWF.
[excerpt from] ‘Spring Edits, Velvet Living: Atwood, Kral and Gorbanevskya’ ONE Magazine, Scotland
That evening, Natalia Gorbanevskaya had been given the Spiros Vergos Prize for Freedom of Expression. Gorbanevskaya’s story made me sit up, and take note: on 25 August 1968, she and seven fellow Moscovites went to Red Square to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Gorbanevskaya and compatriots sat peacefully in Lobnoye Mesto with a Czech flag and signs which read “We Lost Our Best Friends”, “Hands Off the CSSR” and “For Your Freedom and Ours”. In turn they were accosted [Read more…]
“Full of great memories, names, observations. It brought it all back. Don’t change a word…” –MICHAEL MUSTO, The Village Voice
“A lithely written, honest and perceptive account of a unique time.” –IAIN BANKS
