latimes:

Big duck in the big city

The gigantic duck seen above is the work of Dutch conceptual artist, Florentijin Hofman. Titled “Spreading Joy Around the World,” the 16.5 meter-tall rubber duck has been traveling the world since 2007, appearing in 10 countries and 12 cities.

But after suffering structural damage, the duck has been unfortunately been deflated for repairs.

Photos: Jessica Hromas / Getty Images, Vincent Yu / Associated Press

theparisreview: I am lying in bed early in the evening. A burnt honey colored candlewick sits on my rosewood bedside stand sending blades of smoke into the French countryside air. I am falling asleep, maybe my eyelids are closing or I have just started dreaming, but I don’t realize it yet. How would Proust have been translated by other writers, such as David Foster Wallace, Philip Roth, and Joyce Carol Oates?
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theparisreview:

I am lying in bed early in the evening. A burnt honey colored candlewick sits on my rosewood bedside stand sending blades of smoke into the French countryside air. I am falling asleep, maybe my eyelids are closing or I have just started dreaming, but I don’t realize it yet.

How would Proust have been translated by other writers, such as David Foster Wallace, Philip Roth, and Joyce Carol Oates?

The movement is not primarily about speed, but about freedom: the freedom, at least on occasion and when the text demands it, to read as though we care about something other than being done reading. Slow has moved beyond food. Read Jessica Love’s essay about the makings of the Slow Reading movement, as well as about what, exactly, our eyes and brains do when we read. (Photo by Steve Caplin via The Guardian)
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The movement is not primarily about speed, but about freedom: the freedom, at least on occasion and when the text demands it, to read as though we care about something other than being done reading.

Slow has moved beyond food. Read Jessica Love’s essay about the makings of the Slow Reading movement, as well as about what, exactly, our eyes and brains do when we read.

(Photo by Steve Caplin via The Guardian)

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that we call totalitarian leaders ‘dictators,’ that is, nonstop talkers. In company, Hitler apparently never shut up, and, however various his interests were—in his own mind he was an architect, a philosopher, a political thinker; he was a sort of Renaissance man to ruin anyone’s idea of the Renaissance—his intimate conversation was limited.
Read Mark Edmundson’s “Enough Already,” a commentary on the many types of bores—in addition to dictators—one can find in the world.