July 9th, 2007 · Comments Off
“But now that he’s dead his books are finally appearing in English and here’s the surprise: the world really needs WF Hermans. Milan Kundera understands the way he’s literal and fantastic all at once, how he gets to the extraordinary by way of flatlands and dry prose, not self-indulgence. John le Carré was an early fan of his brilliance, as bright when writing farce as writing a thriller.
For the man is bleak, hilarious, angry, ruthless and plain. He’s as alarming as a snake in the breadbin. He’s also hugely entertaining, which, to be frank, may not be your first idea of a Dutch postwar classic; we’ve suffered a lot of philosophical interludes and foggy autobiography out of Holland. But The Darkroom of Damocles is a brilliantly worked wartime thriller, and exceptionally disturbing; Beyond Sleep is a ruthless farce, very funny and very dark. Nothing here is predictable; you take a risk reading Hermans.”
Michael Pye, Hostages to fortune
(Ook aandacht voor W.F. Hermans in The Wallstreet Journal, Willem Otterspeer over Beyond Sleep (Nooit Meer Slapen).)
Tags: literature,michael pye,milan kundera,w.f. hermans
June 10th, 2006 · Comments Off
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“As Wednesday morning dawned, northern Norway was hit with an impact comparable to the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima.” - Nooit meer slapen.
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“Italian artist Marco Boggio Sella travelled to Burkina Faso in search of people who had never heard about the moon landing. “
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“The rainmaking army uses rockets, artillery and aircraft to sow chemicals and artificially induce rain in times of need, said an official with the bureau’s Department of Forecasting Services and Disaster Mitigation.”
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“Rockets launched with chemicals to trigger rain after huge storm”
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“Contextual integrity ties adequate protection for privacy to norms of specific contexts, demanding that information gathering and dissemination be appropriate to that context and obey the governing norms of distribution within it.”
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“New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon’s National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks.”
Tags: burkina faso,china,cloud seeding,culture,data mining,literature,marco boggio sella,meteorite,moon landing,norway,nsa,privacy,space,w.f. hermans,weather
