Argentina vs. Mexico in the Federation cup, and many Berliners in Prenzlauer berg were out watching on the sidewalks on a sunny summer evening. (Argentina won on penalties, 1-1 (6-5).)
Berlin I
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Category Archives: Culture
Google politicking
People [Swedish] like to collect instances of google journalism — where journalists google a term and cite the number of hits they get back in support of whatever point it is they are trying to make.
Today I heard what may have been the first case (can it be? Surely not) of Google politicking: Leif Pagrotsky, Sweden’s minister for education, research and culture, was speaking at a conference on public diplomacy, nation branding, and Sweden’s image [Swedish] when he made the point that Swedish culture is far more important to its image abroad than Swedish politics.
He went on to illustrate this by mentioning how when he googled The Hives, he got far more results back (1,890,000) than when he googled Göran Persson (836,000). Case closed.
Or is it? First off, results vary depending on whether you encapsulate your search in quotes or not. Surrounded by accuracy-inducing quotation marks, “The Hives”‘s (625,000) victory over “Göran Persson” (540,000) is much less pronounced. But then you have to consider the fact that in English, hives moonlights as a skin condition, hogging the Google hits. So, as long as Göran Persson does not become a synonym for a wasting disease or somesuch, he will always labor at a disadvantage against hives in the google popularity stakes.
Thin-slicing my brain
Almost two weeks ago, fellow Bloggforum panel member Håkan tried to infect me with the booklisting virus that’s been doing the rounds of the Swedish blogosphere. I resisted answering, as this is my blog and nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to tell me what to write here. But now Erik has sent another dose my way, and I am simply not immune against a sustained memetic onslaught of such virulence.
Clearly, these questions are not really about books, but about me, so I’ve helpfully annotated my answers to clarify what essential revelatory information each book is meant to divulge.
Total number of books owned?
Answer: 80
What this is meant to show:
I am a light traveller, a globetrotter, a ruthless uncollector. My belongings fit into 10 cardboard boxes. I long for the day I can search all the world’s books via Google, subscribe to their contents, and download to a reader. I have no nostalgia regarding books. They are inefficient and inaccessible stores of knowledge.
What it really means:
I don’t read books much. Honest. Not since the internet, anyway.
The last book I bought?
Answer:
AppleScript: The Missing Manual, by Adam GoldsteinAged 14, apparently.
What this is meant to show:
I am not the overly literary type, nor a clear geek (geeks don’t buy manuals), and I am secure enough in my own skin to flaunt this ambiguousness publicly, right here on my blog.
What this really means:
Geeks don’t buy manuals because they figure this stuff out by themselves. Me, I’m too lazy and/or inefficient and/or stupid to be a geek, even though I do aspire to it.
The last book I read?
Answer:
Blink, by Malcom GladwellBut what about the book? It was like reading a themed issue of The New Yorker from cover to cover, with all that that entails.
What this is meant to show:
I am a regular and voracious reader of this type of book (you know, Everything Bad is Good for You, The Tipping Point, Freakonomics, Critical Mass, etc…) because I am serious about my status as a technoratus.
What this really means:
A friend had this book lying around on Skärgården (the Stockholm Archipelago) this past weekend, and I read it in one sustained go in part so that I could include it here in this post and make a good impression.
Five books that mean a lot to me? (AKA books I’ve read more than three times)“More than three times” should be in scare quotes because if I really had to list books I’ve literally (haha) read more than three times then we’d be stuck with 201 Swedish Verbs, 501 Spanish Verbs and 501 Italian Verbs.:
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
What I’ll say about it:
Great short books are the best, because the hardest part of writing lies in sublimating experience properly. Anything longer than The Great Gatsby better have an excellent excuse for its verbosity. (No, Tolstoy’s works don’t have one.)
What this really means:
I have attention-deficit disorder. Which is why I blog. I can’t sustain ideas for
The Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
What I’ll say about it:
Joseph Conrad is my great write hope, in the sense that he is one of the best-ever writers in English despite having learned the language as late as age 8. A role model, obviously.
What this really means:
Denial really is a river in Africa, only it’s called the Congo.
The Magus, by John Fowles
What I’ll say about it:
Brilliantly written. Nothing in this book can be taken for granted, and it forces you to read much more critically. Not unlike with blogs.
What this really means:
Set on a Greek island, smart promiscuous identical twins are hired to seduce me the narrator, who is the object of a God-game. Does self-indulgent fantasy get any better?
Mating, by Norman Rush
What I’ll say about it:
Together with Simone de Beauvoir’s Les Mandarins, this book contains one of the most compelling intelligent female characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. Plus it’s set in Southern Africa, where I’m moving to next.
What this really means:
I’ve failed to include a single female author [link in Swedish] in this list, so instead I’ve come up with a compelling female narrator written by a man. How does Rush do it? Impressive!
Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges
What I’ll say about it:
At the crossroads between science and art, literature and philosophy, the short stories in this book really do manage to encapsulate how irrational, finite Man comes to terms (or not) with mathematical truths and infinity.
What this really means:
I am trying to convey how intelligent I am purely through my taste in fiction written by other people.
Tag 5 people and have them fill this out on their blog:
AKA “Do unto others as others have done unto you.” Felix, Matthew, Oliver, Kim, Eurof, you’re It.
Dokubloggar
Någon har skickat mig en (tror jag) hemlig minnesanteckningThis is marginalia placed at the very start of the Dokubloggar post. Soon, it will make a point about the subsequent post. från Strix VD Anna Bråkenhielm till Bosse Andersson, redaktionell chef för Expressen.se. Det angår bloggar:
Hej Bosse,
Du frågade om några tips om hur man skulle kunna krydda Expressens bloggar och alltså får fler läsare. Vi har brainstormat. Härmed vårt förslag för den nästa bloggsäsongen. (Faktura är på väg).
Kram,
Anna
=======================
Förslag 1: Blogg Brother
Expressens 10 bloggare bor tillsammans i ett hus. Det är inte tillåtet att kommunicera med omvärlden utan genom ett blogginlägg. Bloggare får skriva vad som helst på deras “dagböcker på nätet” — sanningen, skvaller eller lögnar — om deras liv tillsammans. Expressens bloggläsare bestämmer varje vecka vem som är minst rolig och blir utkast.
Förslag 2: Bloggfarmen
Expressens 10 bloggare tvingas att driva egna bloggar, utan tech support. Mentor Annica ger uppdrag, till ex. att utveckla permalänkar, tillägga en RSS-strömma eller att publicera en podcast. Det leder ibland till upprörda känslor.
Förslag 3: Blogginson:
Samma som Bloggfarmen, men med dial-up istället av bredband.
On Graphemectomy at the New York Times
The New York Times has an article today about Dag Hammarskjöld’s diary cum autobiography, translated into English and published posthumously in 1964 as Markings. The book is receiving renewed scrutiny in the run-up to the centenary of Hammarskjöld’s birth in July 1905.
It turns out that comparing the original Swedish text to the English-language edition reveals a slew of heavy-handed “refinements” by the editor, W.H. Auden, reflecting Auden’s own obsessions and beliefs at the time:
“This behavior seems to me to be a kind of crime,” said Kai Falkman, a retired Swedish diplomat who has scrutinized the text and has written scholarly essays citing hundreds of flaws, starting with the translation of the book’s title, “Vagmarken” in Swedish, as “Markings.” He said it should be “Waymarks,” the word from the King James version of the Bible (Jeremiah 31:21) that was Hammarskjold’s source.
What I think is a kind of crime is that an article about accuracy in language manages not only to get the name of the subject of the article wrong (it’s Hammarskjöld, not Hammarskjold) but also the name of the book around which the discussion on accuracy centers. The original is called Vägmärken, not Vagmarken: The letters A and Ä are completely different letters in Swedish, situated on opposite ends of the alphabet. O and Ö are just as unlike.
Vägmärken corresponds to “waymarks”. Vagmarken, to the extent that it can be considered a word in Swedish, would translate to “the vague territory,” which presumably is not what Hammarskjold, nor Hammarskjöld, had in mind.
I know it often happens that the Swedish language, when it travels abroad, loses something in translation, not least its graphemesIn Swedish the dots on the Ö are not an umlaut, nor a diaeresis; Ö really is a separate letter of the alphabet. A friend, Östen, regularly sees his name transformed into Osten in the US. This is quite amusing, now that I am in on the joke, as in Swedish Osten means “the cheese.”
But The New York Times has no excuse. It doesn’t bat an editorial eyelid at spelling Chloé tops with an accent, nor Mark Lappé. Those acute accents are just cruddy diacriticals. Why do they get special respect?
And why replace the Ö with an O, of all possible letters, and the Ä with an A? Because those letters look similar graphically? They certainly don’t sound similar phonetically. In English, if for some unfathomable reason it is very important not to write letters containing dots if the letters are not i or j, then it would be much more accurate, phonetically, to write Hammarskjuld, and Vegmerk. It would look just as ridiculous, but at least it would sound slightly better.
Sith pith
As I walked home from Episode III, the view from Slussen reminded me of night encroaching on Naboo: The classical turrets and spires of Gamla Stan were bright orange from the low-slung sun, Katarinahissen‘s metal struts hinted at wondrous technologies, and someone had parked a shiny cruise ship on the water — perhaps later it might take off for Tatooine or Tallin.
My father took me to see the first Star Wars in New York in 1977, and I came away extremely impressed. I was eight, fluent in Dutch but only a year into English, which meant that the word “Vader” carried a clear connotation not evident to most others in the cinema — it literally means father in Dutch. This would prove prescient, given subsequent plot developments. It would make even more sense some time later, when my English vocabulary came to include the word dearth, a synonym for “absence”. Darth Vader, quite clearly, means Absent Father.
Names in the most recent Star Wars movies provide similarly handy linguistic hints as to a character’s moral standing, should the costume not prove sufficient. Lord Sidious is obviously derived from the word insidious, “working or spreading harmfully in a subtle or stealthy manner.” General Grievous is probably derived from, er, grievous, “Causing grief, pain, or anguish.”
The origin of the name Palpatine reflects the ambiguous nature of the Chancellor’s role. Palpating can mean touching a body with one’s hands for medical purposes, such as when examining for breast cancer. But it can also mean molesting, for pleasure. Which of these, then, might be the most accurate description of what the chancellor is doing to the body politic of the Republic? (No spoilers from me.)
I shall leave the etymology of Sidious’s mentor, Lord Plagueis, as an exercise for the reader.
It was my first theatrical release of Star Wars here in Sweden, and it began with a moment of panic. The text at the start did not read “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” but its equivalent in Swedish (I was too shocked to remember how it was phrased). The introductory text floating off into space was also in Swedish, with the exception of the above-named villains, which made the overall effect rather comical. My fear that the entire film would be dubbed proved unfounded, but the Swedish subtitles continued to use “General Grievous,” “Lord Sidious,” etc., instead of their proper Swedish etymological equivalents.
I’d like to help along the cause of proper Star Wars Swedish. General Grievous should really be called General Smärtsam, if you want to have the same chilling subliminal effect in Swedish as the English name provides to anglophiles. Lord Sidious should be Herre Såtlig. Chancellor Palpatine: Kansler Palperar. Lord Plagueis: Herre Plågare. If Swedish is going to be defended from Swenglification, properly translated names are de rigeur of rigor.
Jan Yoors redux
By the grace of Google, Kore Yoors found my recent post about him and his father, Jan Yoors, and contacted me. It was wonderful to catch up, and it seems like our parents will also be getting back in touch. It turns out that he’s just gone live with JanYoors.com — a website dedicated to Jan Yoors’ life and art that gives a great idea of his versatility as an artist. (If I’m not mistaken, this is Kore.) It’s hard to capture the vibrancy of the tapestries in a picture, though.
Jan Yoors’ photographs from his time with the Roma also fill a newly published book, The Heroic Present: Life Among the Gypsies.
So it looks like it might well be time for a resurgence of interest in his work, especially in his native Antwerp. Stay tuned.
Christina Olsons hus
The translation, sort of:
Exactly 10 years ago this Easter Weekend, while I was at grad school in Washington DC, I was faced with a stark choice: Study for the final exams in May, or go for a road trip to Maine with a friend. The friend, Cole, had a car, and another friend needed a lift to Boston, and Cole’s girlfriend (you know who you are) was up in NYC for the weekend — so there were plenty of reasons to go, and it would certainly mean being able to avoid Clausewitz or Waltz for another 48 hours.
The trip began well. Four hours to NYC, where we spent the evening out on the town with friends. By 11pm it was time to drive on. We reached Boston by 5am and dropped off our passenger. By 7am, in New Hampshire, we were flagging, and decided to take a nap by the side of the Interstate, but were soon woken by state troopers, for whom old Volkswagen Jetta + Oklahoma plates + two plausible prison escapees was reason enough to check with HQ. Nothing came up so we were free to continue. (A few days later, another vehicle with Oklahoma plates would make world headlines.)
The goal was Acadia National Park, a beautiful peninsula halfway up the coast. As we crossed the state line, the Maine tourist center offered up something even more interesting (to me): The Olson farmhouse, past Portland, which Andrew Wyeth had painted so often. It’s the house in Christina’s World.
Precis för 10 år sedan på påsken, när jag studerade i Washington DC till min magister, stod jag inför ett val: Studera till sluttentorna i maj, eller göra en roadtrip med en kompis norrut till Maine, en delstat jag aldrig hade besökt. Kompisen, Cole, hade bil, en annan vän skulle behöva lift till Boston, Cole’s flickvän befann sig i NYC över helgen — så vi hade många orsaker till att åka dit; inte minst betydde det ju att vi inte skulle behöva läsa Clausewitz eller Waltz.
Resan började bra. Fyra timmar till NYC, där vi gick ut på kvällen med kompisar. Kl. 23 var det tid att fortsätta resan. Kl. 5 nådde vi Boston, där vi lämnade vännen. Kl. 7, i New Hampshire, sov vi lite i bilen vid sidan av motorvägen, men väcktes av polis, som misstänkte oss för vem vet vad, därför att bilen var jättegammal och hade en registreringsskylt från Oklahoma. Till slut var allt okej och vi var på väg igen. (1995 var påsken 16 april; Oklahoma City bombningen var 19 april — polis var verkligen förutseende.)
Målet var Acadia National Park, som är en mycket vacker del av Maine. Men på turistcentret vid delstatsgränsen upptäckte jag något ännu intressantare (för mig, åtminstone) som jag ville besöka: Bondefamiljen Olsons hus utanför Portland, som målades många gångar av Andrew Wyeth, en av mina absoluta favoritkonstnärer. Huset finns till exempel i Christina’s World, hans mest kända tavla.
Christina’s World, 1948.
När jag var liten hade vi hemma hos oss en poster av en av hans tavlor, en fotorealistisk closeup av en sida av detta hus, badande i nordens ljus. Jag hade växt upp med detta hus, om du så vill, och kände till dess minsta detalj, som ett barn som läser samma barnbok för ofta.
Weather Side, 1965. Above, the actual poster in question, wrinkles and all, from the Metropolitan Museum’s retrospective in 1976.
I motsats till en barnbok, dock, existerar huset i verkligheten, men jag hade aldrig vetat det. Det blev självklart något jag var tvungen att besöka.
Och det gjorde vi. Det kändes verkligen som en vallfart. Jag tog några foton, inklusive ett från samma perspektiv som posterns. Vädret var mulet, så vi såg inte ljuset som Wyeth hade målat så bra, och som jag gillar så mycket. (Kanske var det därför jag kom hit till Sverige? Jag såg samma ljus på Sandön i helgen, när det var så varmt i fredags, från en fortfarande insnöad strand.)
When I was a child we had a poster of one of his paintings at home, a photorealistic rendition of the side of that very same house, bathed in the attenuated light of the Maine coast. I grew up with that house, aware of every detail, like a child reading the same book far too often.
In contrast to what’s in most children’s books, however, the house actually exists, but I hadn’t known this until that day at the tourist center. It was obviously something I had to visit.
And so we did. It felt a bit like a pilgrimage. I took pictures, including one from the same perspective as in the poster. The weather was overcast, so we never saw the house in the light that Wyeth had painted so well, and which I like so much. (Is that why I came to Sweden? I saw the same light on Sandön island in the Stockholm Archipelago this weekend, on Friday when it was so warm, from a beach still covered in snow.)
On we went to Acadia, where we ate far too many lobsters, ran up Acadia’s tallest mountain, froze on the summit, and then started on our way back to DC. But there was one thing left to do. Christina’s World is in NYC, so we decided to complete our pilgrimage with a visit to the painting. We drove straight to the Metropolitan, where I thought I remembered seeing the painting (it has other Wyeths) but in the end we had to head to the MoMA to find it. We took a picture, and were on our way again. In the meantime, I was coming down with something. By the time we reached DC, I had a fever. I ended up with a two-week bout of bronchitis as the price of our conquering an Acadian summit.
Därefter åkte vi till Acadia, åt för många humrar, sprang upp för Acadia halvöns högsta berg, frös, och var då på väg tillbaka till DC. Men det fanns en sak till att göra. Christina’s World kan ses i NYC, så vi bestämde oss för att komplettera vallfarten med att titta på tavlan igen. Vi körde rakt till Metropolitan Museet, där jag trodde mig minnas att tavlan fanns, men jag hade fel. Den fanns istället på MoMA, så vi körde dit, tog ett foto, och var på väg igen. Under tiden hade jag börjat må illa. Innan vi nådde DC hade jag en feber. Jag skulle komma att ha bronkit för två veckor darefter, tack vare vår expedition till toppen av Acadia.
(Visste du att “Christina” i Christina’s World inte är en ung flicka, men en vuxen, förlamad kvinna?)
Googliografi: Jan Yoors
Första i serien: Viola IlmaDen första gången jag bodde i New York var mellan 1976 och 1982, som barn, och då gick jag på UNIS, den United Nations International School. Där fanns bara en till person som pratade flamländska som jagAllright already, I relent. Tough crowd. Here is the translation of my Swedish homework for the week:
The first time I lived in New York, between 1976 and 1982, as a child, I went to school at UNIS, the United Nations International School. There was only one other kid who spoke Flemish like me, or so I remember. His name was Kore, and his father was an artist. We weren’t friends exactly, but our parents knew each other.
I thought Kore was a little wild, but I also felt a little jealous. His father died suddenly in 1977, and eventhough this was tragic, it seemed to me like he now had a very free life — that he could do as he pleased. And he lived in the exotic Greenwich Village, while my family and I lived in the boring upper east side.
In 1980 we were 11 years old, but while he knew about CBGBs and The Ramones, I still thought the B52s were a type of airplane. And when John Lennon was murdered in December of 1980 I did not know who he was, eventhough I had a favorite opera, Carmen, and a favorite conductor, Herbert von Karajan.
Kore’s father, Jan Yoors, had had a very interesting life. When he was 12 he had run away from home to travel with the Roma. Later he would write a book about the Roma, and it is to this day one of the few books that describes their life from an insider’s perspective.
During WWII he acted as a liaison between the Allies and Roma who were behind Nazi lines. In 1943 he was even arrested and condemned to death by the Gestapo, but managed to escape. After the war he went to London, where he learned the art of tapestry. In 1950 he went to New York, where he established himself as an artist. His life in Greenwich Village was bohemian, perhaps inspired by the Roma; he had two wives, for example. When Jan Yoors died in 1977 he left behind many full-scale tapestry patterns, which his wives continue to weave (interesting link, this one) to this day, in the studio in the Village that I visited in the 70s. Yoors’ art is perhaps not as hot as it once was just now — massive tapestries were all the rage in the huge lobbies of the skyscrapers that sprouted in the 60s and 70s, so perhaps they might now remind some of corporate art, even if I think they are very calming, peaceful works.
It must have been strange to be 12 years old and know that at this age one’s father had run away from home. Maybe that was why Kore acted wild, in my eyes. In the meantime, he too has become an artist. Like father like son, in the end.. Han hette Kore, och hans far var konstnär. Vi var inte kompisar, men våra föräldrar kände varandra.
Jag tyckte att Kore var lite vild, men jag kände mig också lite avundsjuk på honom. Hans far dog plötsligt 1977, och även om det var tragiskt, verkade han vara mycket friare än jag därefter. Han fick göra vad som helst. Och han bodde i exotiska Greenwich Village, medan jag och min familj var trygga på tråkiga upper east side.
1980 var vi 11 år gamla, men medan han kände till CBGBs och The Ramones, till exempel, trodde jag att B52:or var ett sorts flygplan. När John Lennon mördades i december 1980 visste jag inte vem han var, även om jag hade en favoritopera, Carmen, och en favoritdirigent, Herbert von Karajan.
Kores far, Jan Yoors, hade haft ett mycket intressant liv. När han var 12 år gammal hade han rymt hemifrån för att resa med romerna. Senare skulle han skriva en bok om romerna, och den är fortfarande en av få böcker som beskriver deras liv inifrån.
Under andra världskriget var han kontaktperson mellan de allierade och de romer som fanns i nazi delen av Europa. 1943 blev han anhållen av Gestapo, och dömd till döden, men han lyckades fly. Efter kriget reste han till London, där han lärde sig väva gobelänger. 1950 åkte han till New York, och blev en känd konstnär. Hans liv i Greenwich Village var bohemisk, som romernas; han hade, till exempel, två fruar. När Jan Yoors dog 1977 fanns många vävmönster kvar. Fruarna fortsätter än idag att väva dem i studion i Village, som jag besökte som barn i 70-talet. Hans konst är dock inte så populär som tidigare just nu. Stora väggbonader var jättepopulära i de Amerikanska bankernas lobbies på 70-talet, så nu erinrar det lite om företagskonst, även om jag tycker hans konst är helt rogivande.
Det måste ha varit konstigt att bli 12 år gammal och att veta att ens far hade rymt hemifrån i samma ålder. Kanske var det därför Kore var så vild. Jag hade ingen sådan förebild. Under tiden har han också blivit konstnär. Sådan far, sådan son.
Stockholm International Film Festival
The 15th iteration of the Stockholm International Film Festival is up and running as of a few days ago, and lasts until next Sunday. So far, I’ve seen an interview with Todd Solondz; his latest film, Palindromes; and just now, Primer — this year’s surprise Sundance Grand Jury Award winner.
Solondz was interviewed by somebody who, apparently, is the doyen of Swedish film critics, but also in dire need of retirement — Nils-Petter Sundgren. Sundgren spent 45 minutes performing non-sequiturs on Solondz: He’d ask a question Solondz would need repeated, then he’d interrupt halfway through the response with “Yes, my children saw Deep Throat when they were 12,” to the most incomprehending open-mouthed stare by the director. Organizationally, too, it was a disaster, but Solondz seemed simultaneously pleased and confused to be there, so no harm done.
Palindromes is a slighter movie than Happiness. It has one big original idea: Changing the actress that plays the lead role every few scenes, to underscore a central theme of the movie — that our superficial looks are accidental, but that our identities are not. I’m not sure that this is true, but the movie remains interesting enough in that bleak but funny Solondz way to keep watchingThe soundtrack‘s theme song is extremely catchy, and the Christian rock scenes are hilarious..
Primer‘s originality is rawer and broader, and is one of those movies where the plot mechanics are so complex that they require a second viewing by default. Just as with Memento, the film radically alters the perceived timeline of events — in this case, by building a (first-ever believable) time machine, and then another, and then by transporting one machine through the other, and that’s just for starters. And just as with Memento, plot analysis is now flying thick and fast on bulletin boards. While this film is no new 2001: A Space Oddysey (who are these reviewers?) the shot compositions are very well done and the tense mood is sustained throughout the film, despite the fact (or is it because) you have no idea what is going on for most of the time.
You can catch Primer Monday at 1600h and Tuesday at 1500h, at Skandia on Drottninggatan. (Trailer). I need to see it again, and I recommend it, though ultimately more as an addictive puzzle-solving exercise than as pure cinematic bliss.
Update 0137h: I forgot to ask: Is there anything I should make sure not to miss this week?