Welcome to this week’s 5BF: a novel about beauty and her
consequences, a most extreme form of protest, ‘it’s not me the whole world is lost’, and more…
1 – what I read
Miramar by Naguib Mahfouz – set after the 1952’s revolution
in Egypt, Mahfouz’s novel tells the story of a pension in the city Alexandria,
where a beautiful young girl, Zohra, comes to work as a maid. After some young male
guests come to stay, they find themselves falling for Zohra, and a series of events
follow. The same story is told from the perspectives of the four guests living in
the pension.
Metroland by Julian Barnes – a boyhood novel about two
friends living in Metroland England, one of whom later moves to Paris and has
his first sex, love, and breakup, and later they get together in their 30s to
find themselves contradictory to how they were. Although one of my favorite
genres to read, Barnes’s debut novel was too involved in its setting that I felt
alienated by it.
2 – this week’s articles
Why I wrote a damning review of my book @guardian – in this
article Barnes’s talks about his struggle with publishing his debut novel ‘Metroland’,
and what it taught him to prepare for his successful journey as a writer in the
future.
How a single match can ignite a revolution @nytimes – this
articles talks about a series of setting-oneself-on-fire form of protests, from
the monk in Vietnam to the veg-seller in Egypt, and how extreme, shocking, yet
also effective, its affects have been in changing the otherwise corrupt systems.
GB Shaw’s crush on Stalin @nytimes – a most honored and
famed English dramatist, Shaw was the single most influential writer to unshackle
the thinking of the modern people with his ironic and satirical plays. Yet he was
also naively fond of communism and even of its horrendous ruler Stalin.
3 – movie I watched
Ain’t them bodies Saints (2013) – a Western movie about a couple
where at a shootout with the police, the wife shots an officer but the husband
takes the blame for it, and their reunion in the years coming. A slow and alluring
movie about sacrifice and patience.
Seven Psychopaths (2012) – a comedy about a couple of friends
who are trying to write a movie about seven psychopaths, which involve both
real people from their world and some made-up ones that they come up with. Not a
great movie, but a good one to kill some time.
4 – Modernism and Postmodernism
Aeon, the site where I read most of my essays/articles, in one
of their video-essays featured a video from the YouTube channel ‘Then & Now’
about how individual responsibility has changed over the centuries. Exploring
the channel further, I came across the following two videos about modernism and
postmodernism and what it means to be each. The clarity and scholarship with
which these two topics are explained reminded me of Adam Curtis’s documentaries.
A new, must follow, YouTube channel recommendation from me. But first, watch
these two eye-opening, and consolidating videos which made me realize that I am
not particularly incompetent or inadequate, it is the whole world.
5 – this week’s quote
“Raat din gardish mein hain saath aasmaan/ ho rahey-ga kuch
na kuch, ghabrayein kiya?”
Night and day the seven heavens are revolving/ something or
the other will end up happening – why should we be perturbed?
- Mirza Ghalib