Author: Yoram Kaniuk File Type: epub Susan Sontag writes Of the novelists I have discovered in translation . . . the three for whom I have the greatest admiration are Gabriel Garci?a Ma?rquez, Peter Handke, and Yoram Kaniuk.A whirlwind of art, music, and lust, Life on Sandpaper is Yoram Kaniuks overwhelming autobiographical novel detailing his years as a young painter in the New York of the 50s. Wounded and alienated, a war veteran at the age of nineteen, Kaniuk arrives in Greenwich Village at its peak period of artistic creativity, and finds his way among such giants as Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Willem de Kooning, and Frank Sinatra. In terse prose, inspired by the associative and breathless drive of bebop, Kaniuks memories race between the ecstatic devotion of his beloved Harlem jazz clubs, through the ideological spats of the dying Yiddish world of the Lower East Side, to the volcanic gush of passion, pain, art, dance, alcohol, and drugs that was Greenwich Village. Kaniuks stories roll and tumble here with hypnotic urgency, as if this were his last opportunity to remember, and tell, before all is obliterated.

Author: Ulianov Montano File Type: pdf This book develops a naturalistic aesthetic theory that accounts for aesthetic phenomena in mathematics in the same terms as it accounts for more traditional aesthetic phenomena. Building upon a view advanced by James McAllister, the assertion is that beauty in science does not confine itself to anecdotes or personal idiosyncrasies, but rather that it had played a role in shaping the development of science. Mathematicians often evaluate certain pieces of mathematics using words like beautiful, elegant, or even ugly. Such evaluations are prevalent, however, rigorous investigation of them, of mathematical beauty, is much less common. The volume integrates the basic elements of aesthetics, as it has been developed over the last 200 years, with recent findings in neuropsychology as well as a good knowledge of mathematics.The volume begins with a discussion of the reasons to interpret mathematical beauty in a literal or non-literal fashion, which also serves to survey historical and contemporary approaches to mathematical beauty. The author concludes that literal approaches are much more coherent and fruitful, however, much is yet to be done. In this respect two chapters are devoted to the revision and improvement of McAllisters theory of the role of beauty in science. These antecedents are used as a foundation to formulate a naturalistic aesthetic theory. The central idea of the theory is that aesthetic phenomena should be seen as constituting a complex dynamical system which the author calls the aesthetic as process theory.The theory comprises explications of three central topics aesthetic experience (in mathematics), aesthetic value and aesthetic judgment. The theory is applied in the final part of the volume and is used to account for the three most salient and often used aesthetic terms often used in mathematics beautiful, elegant and ugly. This application of the theory serves to illustrate the theory in action, but also to further discuss and develop some details and to showcase the theorys explanatory capabilities.

Author: James Curtis File Type: epub The best goddamned actor Ive ever seen!George M. CohanHis full name was Spencer Bonaventure Tracy. He was called The Gray Fox by Frank Sinatra other actors called him the The Pope.Spencer Tracys image on-screen was that of a self-reliant man whose sense of rectitude toward others was matched by his sense of humor toward himself. Whether he was Father Flanagan of Boys Town, Clarence Darrow of Inherit the Wind, or the crippled war veteran in Bad Day at Black Rock, Tracy was forever seen as a pillar of strength.In his several comedy roles opposite Katharine Hepburn (Woman of the Year and Adams Rib among them) or in Father of the Bride with Elizabeth Taylor, Tracy was the sort of regular American guy one could depend on.Now James Curtis, acclaimed biographer of Preston Sturges (Definitive Variety), James Whale, and W. C. Fields (By far the fullest, fairest, and most touching account . . . we have yet had. Or are likely to have Richard Schickel, The New York Times Book Review, cover review), gives us the life of one of the most revered screen actors of his generation.Curtis writes of Tracys distinguished career, his deep Catholicism, his devoted relationship to his wife, his drinking that got him into so much trouble, and his twenty-six-year-long bond with his partner on-screen and off, Katharine Hepburn. Drawing on Tracys personal papers and writing with the full cooperation of Tracys daughter, Curtis tells the rich story of the brilliant but haunted man at the heart of the legend. We see him from his boyhood in Milwaukee given over to Dominican nuns (They drill that religion in you) his years struggling in regional shows and stock (Tracy had a photographic memory and an instinct for inhabiting a character from within) acting opposite his future wife, Louise Treadwell marrying and having two children, their son, John, born deaf.We see Tracys success on Broadway, his turning out mostly forgettable programmers with the Fox Film Corporation, and going to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and getting the kinds of roles that had eluded him in the pasta streetwise priest opposite Clark Gable in San Francisco a screwball comedy, Libeled Lady Kiplings classic of the sea, Captains Courageous. Three years after arriving at MGM, Tracy became Americas top male star.We see how Tracy embarked on a series of affairs with his costars . . . making Northwest Passage and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which brought Ingrid Bergman into his life. By the time the unhappy shoot was over, Tracy, looking to do a comedy, made Woman of the Year. Its unlikely costar Katharine Hepburn.We see Hepburn making Tracy her lifes projectprotecting and sustaining him in the difficult job of being a top-tier movie star.And we see Tracys wife, Louise, devoting herself to studying how deaf children could be taught to communicate orally with the hearing and speaking world.Curtis writes that Tracy was ready to retire when producer-director Stanley Kramer recruited him for Inherit the Winda collaboration that led to Judgment at Nuremberg, Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and Tracys final picture, Guess Whos Coming to Dinner . . . A rich, vibrant portraitthe most intimate and telling yet of this complex man considered by many to be the actors actor.From the Hardcover edition.

Author: Jon K. Chang File Type: pdf Burnt by the Sun examines the history of the first Korean diaspora in a Western society during the highly tense geopolitical atmosphere of the Soviet Union in the late 1930s. Author Jon K. Chang demonstrates that the Koreans of the Russian Far East were continually viewed as a problematic and maligned nationality (ethnic community) during the Tsarist and Soviet periods. He argues that Tsarist influences and the various forms of Russian nationalism(s) and worldviews blinded the Stalinist regime from seeing the Koreans as loyal Soviet citizens. Instead, these influences portrayed them as a colonizing element (labor force) with unknown and unknowable political loyalties. One of the major findings of Changs research was the depth that the Soviet state was able to influence, penetrate, and control the Koreans through not only state propaganda and media, but also their selection and placement of Soviet Korean leaders, informants, and secret police within the populace. From his interviews with relatives of former Korean OGPUNKVD (the predecessor to the KGB) officers, he learned of Korean NKVD who helped deport their own community. Given these facts, one would think the Koreans should have been considered a loyal Soviet people. But this was not the case, mainly due to how the Russian empire and, later, the Soviet state linked political loyalty with race or ethnic community. During his six years of fieldwork in Central Asia and Russia, Chang interviewed approximately sixty elderly Koreans who lived in the Russian Far East prior to their deportation in 1937. This oral history along with digital technology allowed him to piece together Soviet Korean life as well as their experiences working with and living beside Siberian natives, Chinese, Russians, and the Central Asian peoples. Chang also discovered that some two thousand Soviet Koreans remained on North Sakhalin island after the Korean deportation was carried out, working on Japanese-Soviet joint ventures extracting coal, gas, petroleum, timber, and other resources. This showed that Soviet socialism was not ideologically pure and was certainly swayed by Japanese capitalism and the monetary benefits of projects that paid the Stalinist regime hard currency for its resources. **Review Burnt by the Sun is the best book in any language on the experience of Koreans inside Russia and the Soviet Union. It is first and foremost a micro-history of Koreans in the Soviet Union-initially greeted as allies in the building of communism, then victimized by Stalins national operations that targeted Koreans as likely traitors and fifth columnists working with the Japanese. --Jeffrey Burds, Northeastern University, author of Holocaust in Rovno Review To begin with, the book is a valuable reminder of how multiethnic the Russian Far East was at the beginning of the 20th century. . . . Overall, this is a fascinating book that makes excellent use of a wide-range of sources (including interviews with around sixty elderly Koreans deportees) in support of a clear and convincing argument. . . . Having said this, not only those with an interest in the Korean diaspora, but also anyone wishing to learn more about the history of the Russian Far East, of Soviet nationalities policy, or of Japans relation with Russia will find much of value in this monograph. (Kyoto Journal) By letting the ethnic Koreans that lived in the Soviet Far East and, later, Central Asia tell their own story, Jon K. Chang fills in many of the holes left by the archival records on their collective history. . . . The result is a multilayered history of the Korean minority of the USSR that illuminates both the development of Soviet policy toward this group and the collective response of individuals in this group to these policies. Not only is Changs use of oral sources to reconstruct the social history of the ethnic Koreans in the USSR unique, but his use of sources from the Soviet and other archives also leads to some new and very compelling interpretations of Soviet policy toward the ethnic Koreans. . . . Changs methodological and interpretive approach to the history of ethnic Koreans in the USSR is thus revolutionary. (The Russian Review) All in all, the book constitutes a crucially important contribution to the study of Korean diasporas abroad, and to research on early Soviet nationalities policies. It is based on a rich selection of primary and secondary materials . . . It remains to be hoped that this usable and highly important book will re-appear in paperback. (Acta Koreana) Chang makes an important contribution to various fields in this study of the deportation of Koreans from the Russian Far East (RFE) to Central Asia under Stalins Great Terror. . . . Changs most original insights come from oral histories of deportation survivors, which capture the counter narratives of non-state actors. Although not expressly an interdisciplinary work, Changs broad-ranging discussion of geography, labor, politics, social conditions, linguistics, and anthropology will appeal to readers interested in comparative approaches to the study of ethnic minorities and the Korean diaspora. (Choice) In the last decade, Korean studies scholarship has increasingly turned attention from the peninsula to overseas Koreans, especially in China and Japan. Jon Changs seminal study adds a new element to this work, by illuminating the archives and oral histories of Koreans of the former Soviet Union and providing a unique perspective on Soviet nationalities policy and diasporic identity among Soviet Koreans. . . . Changs book is well organized and accessible, outlining and supporting clear arguments. It navigates broad historical contexts deftly without bogging down in minutia. (International Migration Review)