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Portfolio | Le point | Polityka | Tygodnik Powszechny | Le Monde | L'Express | The Philadelphia Inquirer | Die Weltwoche | Le Nouvel Observateur | Odra | Observator Cultural | The Times Literary Supplement | Salon.eu.sk
Portfolio 01.11.2008 (USA)
What would you do if you were the owner of the New York Times? This is one of the questions put to 37-year old internet entrepreneur Marc Anreessen, the co-founder of Netscape, in an interview: "Shut off the print edition right now. You've got to play offense. You've got to do what Intel did in '85 when it was getting killed by the Japanese in memory chips, which was its dominant business. And it famously killed the business - shut it off and focused on its much smaller business, microprocessors, because that was going to be the market of the future. And the minute Intel got out of playing defense and into playing offense, its future was secure. The newspaper companies have to do exactly the same thing. The financial markets have discounted forward to the terminal conclusion for newspapers, which is basically bankruptcy. So at this point, if you're one of these major newspapers and you shut off the printing press, your stock price would probably go up, despite the fact that you would lose 90 percent of your revenue. Then you play offense. And guess what? You're an internet company."
Le point 23.10.2008 (France)
Having predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1976 and the decline of the US empire, historian, anthropologist and former literary critic Emmanuel Todd has now written a book "Apres la democratie" (Gallimard) on the political crisis of France and democracy. In an interview the avowed neo-liberalism critic expounds his theories and once again recites his favourite recipe: protectionnisme. Without it, the Frenchman maintains, France's future looks black: "The problem at the heart of democracy is that the political class refuses to question the principle of free trade. And free trade means incomes sink and inequality rises, in short, the majority of the population sees its standard of living drop. (...) Now we have to decide: it seems unlikely to me that we will see an ethnification of French democracy; the sequence involving 'impoverishment of young academics – class wars – authoritarianism and finally the break-down of democracy' seems more likely. The Communist Party is dead, but Marx is making a come-back. And so is Bonaparte unfortunately."
Polityka 23.10.2008 (Poland)
Jacek Kubiak has the following to say about the Milan Kundera case: "The corpus delicti consists of a police report. Why should we not believe a person who has exposed the communist system uncompromisingly, and paid a high price for it? But belief is only belief." Many commentators were shocked at what they perceived as a political U-turn taken by the magazine Respekt, which first published the incriminating document. Its editor-in-chief Martin Simecka argued that this was a 'non-personal search for truth'. Kubiak writes: "This argument unleashes a deja-vu wave in Poland. How many young journalists today are looking for truth, light, belief and hope under the aegis of the IPN", the Polish Institute of National Remembrance.
Tygodnik Powszechny 26.10.2008 (Poland)
Patrycja Bukalska reports on the Kundera debate in the Czech Republic: "The discussion continues: about the activities of the institute, about the credibility of the secret-police files, about their interpretation (some people are asking whether it is not too one-sided). The oppositional social democrats are again calling for closure of the institute (Ustr)– but as long as the conservatives are in power, they do not stand a chance."
Further articles: In the quarterly literary supplement, there is an announcement of the forthcoming Polish translation of the Virginia Woolf's last novel "Between the Acts". Translator Magda Heysel talks in an interview about how difficult the work was but she is relieved that the gaps in Woolf's translated oevre are finally being filled. (Woolf's early writings and literary criticism are still widely unknown in Poland).
Le Monde 24.10.2008 (France)
In Le Monde the historians Pierre Nora and Krzysztof Pomian join question the authenticity of the document which outlines Milan Kundera's denunciation of a western agent. "The Czech Republic is a member of the European Union. How is it possible that 'Stalinist security service' documents can be brought to bear in a public allegation without first being subjected to the most thorough scrutiny. How to explain this total contempt for constitutional principles such as the presumption of innocence?"
L'Express 23.10.2008 (France)
There has been a thorough inspection of the Kundera document – and just to put Nora and Pomian straight, the object in question is not a secret police document but a police report. There can be no doubt as to its authenticity, reports Jerome Dupuis. Dupuis travelled to Prague where he talked to historian Rudolf Vevoda from the Institute for the Research of Totalitarian Regimes. Vedova told him: "We had the document analysed by the Czech Security Forces Archive. The paper, the names listed, the identity and the signature of the officer were all examined – and the document was found to be authentic."
The Philadelphia Inquirer 26.10.2008 (USA)
The Kundera affair reminds Carlin Romano of how little interest is currently being shown in Eastern European writers. "The single newly published volume that enables one to size up and resist this long, strange spiral of brilliant literature into obscurity is Harold B. Segel's 'Columbia Literary History of Eastern Europe Since 1945'. Despite its reference-book title, it's a one-man show, the magisterial synthesis of a Columbia University professor emeritus of Slavic literatures whose 14 books display the same synoptic touch shown here. (...) Here, Segel examines the literatures of 15 countries: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, East Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine."
Die Weltwoche 23.10.2008 (Switzerland)
Dutch sociologist Paul Scheffer has just published a new book about immigration. In an interview he talks, among other things, about how immigration can benefit society. "I mean this in a tangible way and it's happening. We cannot throw demands at immigrants without having them bounce back at us. We cannot demand that they know about European history – if we are none the wiser. So now we are seeing an increased focus on history in Dutch schools. Immigration affects the entire society, it changes it. Immigration and integration cut much deeper into our own flesh that all this sentimental discourse about multiculturalism. Migrants can only be invited into and challenged in a society that itself has a strong sense of citizenship."
Le Nouvel Observateur 23.10.2008
In an interview the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel talks about his new book "Le cas Sonderberg" and speaks his mind about Nicolas Sarkozy's plan for French schoolchildren to "adopt" children who died in the Holocaust: "I am sure his intentions are good. But at what age can a child be expected to comprehend such a thing. Some might inquire at the age of eight, some at fourteen, but do we have a right to force it upon them? No. When a teacher sees a boy in the corner who doesn't want to hear anything about it, he should not be forced. Nicolas Sarkozy has failed to understand the drama involved here. I found his idea moving, but also outrageous."
Odra 01.10.2008 (Poland)
In a highly inspiring essay, Anna Nasilowska explains why postmodern theory and literature had such a difficult reception in Poland. "Polish postmodernism does not follow on the heels of modernism but of real socialism. This meant that Poland not only lacked any reference to a local modernist tradition, but also an awareness of the continuity of aesthetic changes." At this point Nasilowska brings in Stanislaw Lem, who moved in both worlds. "He is an acerbic critic of postmodernism who plays with postmodern aesthetic concepts. His work is typical of the paradox in the Polish reception of postmodernism: the polemic comes before the actual reception and what's more, before the attempt to apply the interpretations offered by this current to Polish reality. The postmodern aesthetic was watered down – when it could finally be deployed after the end of real socialism – it was no longer new."
Observator Cultural 27.10.2008 (Romania)
In the English section of the Observator Cultural, literary academic Carmen Musat looks back over Romanian literature of the 80s to assess its postmodern credentials: "Certainly, the subversive-political dimension of Romanian postmodernism, like that of other ex-communist countries, contributes to the outlining of particular aesthetic structures, quite different from those of American postmodern literature – and I have in mind, first, the 'new humanism' theorized by Musina and that Petrescu considers a distictive mark of the 80s literary model. Romanian postmodernism is the outcome of a specific horizon of expectations and originates, not so much in an economic and political context, but, as Carneci notes in her essay, in a series of socio-cultural and psychological causes, among which the opposition to the 'new man' projected by the party ideology plays a very significant role. The novelists of the 80s show an unconcealed interest in the authenticity of language and daily life, in the common man, as well as in the highly sophisticated, refined, and erudite one."
The Times Literary Supplement 24.10.2008 (UK)
David Hawkes reviews a book by a militant pro-capitalist literary critic: Russell A Berman's "Fiction Sets You Free": "Like the most doctrinaire dialectical materialist, he insists that cultural trends are epiphenomenal reflections of economic interests. Anti-Americanism is 'really' anti-capitalism, and in 'Fiction Sets You Free', Berman suggests that anti-capitalism is the true source of an intellectual anti-humanism which opposes imagination, enterprise, even literature itself. His argument is based on the thesis that literature assumes, and thus helps to create, a capitalist mentality in the reader. He is convinced that, by its very nature, literature 'contribute[s] to the value structure and virtues of a capitalist economy', and to 'the dissemination of capitalist behavior', because all fictional writing 'cultivates the imaginative prowess of entrepreneurial vision'. It does this, Berman suggests, simply because it is not true." That Berman also posits Adorno as an advocate of these "commodity aesthetics" is, says Hawkes "an outrageous provocation."
Salon.eu.sk 26.10.2008 (Slovakia)
Last week the Slovakian internet magazine Salon launched its English site. Salon provides press reviews with a focus on Central Europe and translates complete articles into English with links to the original versions. Salon cites our German mothership Perlentaucher as a source of inspiration for the project. We feel extremely honoured! Along side articles about the Kundera affair (here Adam Hradilek's article which started the whole thing), the first English translations address the fraught relations between Hungary and Slovakia (more here and here). Both countries are plagued by extreme-right fractions who are busy stirring up hatred against minorities.
Slovakian political scientist Miroslav Kusy finds it all completely irrational: Jan Slota, "the Chairman of the Slovak National Party, which is part of the ruling coalition, has now shed the last vestiges of self-control and, sounding more and more slurred, has continued to insult the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs (however, like all drunkards he is never particularly inventive, resorting to ever more menacing repetitions of the word 'unkempt'). The prime ministers of both countries blame each other for starting the row and the opposition is trying to exploit the situation by trying to appear even more patriotic than the nationalists." Kusy points out that a thousand years ago, the Slovaks were part of the Hungarian nation:"It is with the Hungarians that we share more history than with anyone else". (The article is also available in Hungarian here.)
What is homo intellectualis to do in this stand-off, asks Rudolf Chmel, the last Czechoslovakian ambassador in Hungary and the Slovakian Cultural Minister from 2002 to 2005. He should, Chmel says, tell the politicians what he thinks of them: "Politicians suffering from inferiority complexes, who until then - perhaps through no fault of their own had never left our mountain villages and valleys - suddenly tried to impose their atavistic stereotypes and traumas upon the country as a whole."
Hungarian philosopher Gaspar Miklos Tamas puts the problem in a European context: "The existing confederations (USSR, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia) disintegrated, harsh discrimination was enforced against members (Russians, Serbians) of those once-dominant nations who were left outside their nation's borders (...) the one remaining multi-national structure (Bosnia under NATO and EU supervision) is close to breaking up. In Austrian Carinthia the provincial government of Jörg Haider is persecuting Slovenes, while Slovenia itself has ordered tens of thousands of its inhabitants – those former citizens of Yugoslavia without Slovenian passports – to leave. In Macedonia, the Slav majority confronts an Albanian 'minority' consisting of almost half the population and peace is maintained by US and other NATO forces. The EU structures supposed to be protecting minorities have proved to be helpless."
RSS
The era of the book is over, publisher's editor Tom Engelhardt declares in The Nation. In the New Statesman Jonathan Derbyshire turns his thoughts to Weltliteratur since Goethe. In Polityka, Adam Michnik praises the Communists for passing their exams in Polish patriotism. Difficulty as a virtue has abandoned the realm of literature to be embraced by the computer game, John Lanchester writes in the London Review of Books. Standpoint takes Germany to task for its love of Russia. The New York Times tells the story of Mexico's victorious battle against the "culture of poverty". The Economist honours H.M., the man without memories.
In Outlook India Arundhati Roy analyses the nature of terrorism. In the London Review of Books, Tariq Ali describes an "honour killing" in his own family. In the Observator Cultural, the writer Mircea Horia Simionescu describes how useful it is to be the victim of infidelity. Elet es Irodalom examines the detrimental influence of the primitive Janos Kadar. In Gazeta Wyborcza Victor Erofeev wishes the credit crunch would hurt Russia more, so that it would be forced to change. In Lettre International Peter Nadas describes the legacy of simulation which had the Eastern Bloc in its grip. The New York Review of Books publishes the Chinese "Charter 2008".
In Al Ahram, Aijaz Zaka Syed calls upon Muslims to confront the terrorists in their midst. In Atlantic, Gao Xiqing tells the Americans to be nice to their money-lenders. In Przekroj Lech Walesa explains that he has to be top dog. In Nepszabadsag Laszlo Lengyel defines Hungary as bottom dog. In Merkur Dina Khapajewa explains how the Russians use WWII myths to repress memories of the gulag. The TLS maligns journalistic moralising. And the Spectator salutes the gentleman pirates of Somalia.
Outlook India investigates the attacks in Mumbai. In Salon, Martin Simecka outlines the difference between ex-communists and true dissidents. The Walrus pines for the wild Jews. In Przekroj, Dorota Maslowska warns about the imminent combustion of Polish society. In the TLS George Walden consoles hedge fund managers with tins of excrement. Umberto Eco buries himself in a dictionary of onomatopoeia. In the Nouvel Obs, Paul Virilio meditates on the omni-polis of the modern nomad. Sex ain't revolution the Nation declares, with an eye on Iran. The Wired watches Charlie Kaufman bleed. And the New York Times lifts the veil on the world's most powerful censors: the Google Three.
The American magazines - The Nation, the NYT, New Yorker - focus their attentions on V.S.Naipaul. The Nation also reviews Roberto Bolano's forgotten novel "2666" which, the Economist is astounded to reveal, is flying off the shelves. The Hungarian magazines take the temperature of the cold war between Hungary and Slovakia. Prospect waits for the bubble of bubbles to pop. Jose Saramago outs himself as a flush-faced blogger in El Pais Semanal. Dubravka Ugresic tells the Gazeta Wyborcza why Serbo-Croat is a throroughly modern language. And in the New York Times Kevin Kelly hurtles towards screen ubiquity.
Portfolio portrays the dark prince of Wall Street, who saw the storm coming, while the sun was still shining. In the Guardian, Jeanette Winterson explains why a tough life needs tough words. Polityka criticises the Catholic ideology officers monitoring Polish schools. Magyar Narancs is concerned about Hungary slipping back to the Stone Age. The New Republic eyes the collection of forceful characters on Obama's staff. And in Monde diplomatique, Juan Villoro describes a Mexico in the grip of a drug-induced here and now.
Who will be India's Obama? asks Outlook. The New Yorker looks at the tricky relationship between Obama and civil rights activism. The Guardian is stunned by the seething cauldron of neuroses that was the Wittgenstein family. Tygodnik Powszechny stares into the eyes of Polish Jews on film. Al Ahram introduces the ambitious online project of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina on Egypt's history. In Radar Rodrigo Fresan puts bestsellers in the dock. Vanity Fair meets the top news provider of the future: Bloomberg.
Shortly before his death, Studs Terkel calls for more reg-u-lat-ion in the Huffington Post. The Spectator shines a light on the China Poly Group - an arm of the People's Liberation Army, with a strong interest in art. The Observator Cultural compiles a dossier on the writer Mircea Nedelciu. The New Statesman looks into Chinese-Muslim relations in Kashgar. Umberto Eco finds suicidal tendencies in Italian terrorism. The New York Times portrays Lauren Zalaznick, the creator of "layered" TV for savvy urbanites. And in the New York Review of Books, Zadie Smith sounds the death toll for lyrical realism.
In Nouvel Obs, Oliver Roy explains what fundamentalists of every stripe have against culture. In Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan celebrates the golden age of journalism (we're in it). In ADN cultura, Paolo Coelho says we should look at Britain's history to worrying about internet piracy. For Commentary, the financial crisis is the fault of the state. For the Economist, the Milan Kundera case is just a drop in a toxic cloud.
The Observator Cultural introduces Stelian Tanase, a world champion of storytelling. In ResetDoc, the Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas recites his credo. In Lettre International, a Russian woman describes her childhood in a labour camp. In Esquire Mikhail Khordokovsky describes the Russian nomenklatura as the result of a process of natural annihilation. In Dissent, Carlos Fraenkel talks about teaching philosophy in Indonesia. In the Guardian Margaret Atwood sings the praises of Alice Munro. The Walrus visits Josef Skvorecky. Przekroj introduces Jacek Duka, the new Stanislaw Lem. And the Economist answers the call of nature. 
Protect investors from themselves, cries the New York Review of Books, in tune with George Soros. Teach the Roma how to work, calls Nepszabadsag. In La vie des idees, Historian Roger Chartier shows how the digital age has returned the book to its medieval state. The Economist thinks it has seen the light for the music industry. In Standpoint, tenor Ian Bostridge pops a rock 'n' roll bubble. Jonathan Littell goes to Georgia for Le Monde. Bollywood is to India what Dante was to Italy, says Outlook India. And the New York Times visits a rosy-cheeked Kleiner Perkins. 
In the Nation, Joseph Stiglitz is not buying anything the Bush administration is selling. L'Express introduces the "black book of publishing". The Times Literary Supplement warms to the unlikely Ukraine defender, Archduke Wilhelm Franz von Habsburg-Lothringen. Literaturen travels to Kamering with Austrian author Josef Winkler and his pepper spray. HGV has the end of lonely thinking in sight. And The Economist is keeping a beady eye on Total Information Awareness.
Portfolio portrays the billionaire Raymond Harbert who is knocking ever louder on the New York Times's door. In Espresso, Umberto Eco has a good old chuckle about downgrading. In the Gazeta Wyborcza historian 
Rupert Murdoch is fantasising about reaping sweet revenge on the New York Times, Vanity Fair believes. The New Yorker describes the sticky situation of the Putin-critical radio station Ekho Moskvy. The Spectator describes the impossible situation of bloggers in Iran. Le Monde diplomatique prints a posthumous text by Jacques Derrida about rogue states and how to outfox them. Outlook India celebrates India's rise to nuclear standing. And the Atlantic thanks the Met's Philippe de Montebello for never underestimating the public.