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누가 바이런의 회고록을 불태웠나…'잿더미 문화유산' 수난사 중앙일보 입력 2021.12.31 17:56 이후남 기자 '책을 불태우다' 표지 '변신'이나 '심판' 같은 카프카의 대표작이 그냥 사라질 뻔했다는 건 유명한 얘기다. 생전에 무명작가나 다름없었던 카프카는 친구 막스 브로트에게 자신이 죽은 뒤 미발표 원고를 모두 없애달라고 당부했는데, 브로트는 없애기는커녕 공들여 세상에 내놓았다. 고대 로마 시인 베르길리우스의 걸작으로 꼽히는 장편서사시 '아이네이스'도 없어질 뻔했다. 시인은 자신에게 무슨 일이 생기면 그 원고를 불태워 달라고 절친한 다른 시인에게 부탁했는데, 거절당했다. 이처럼 종종 작가의 뜻을 거스른 친구들 덕에 위대한 문학적 유산이 살아남은 경우도 있지만, 반대의 경우도 있다. 이복누이를 비롯..

By Rebecca Laurence and Lindsay Baker BBC. 23rd December 2021 From award-winning fiction to moving memoir, here are BBC Culture's top reading picks of 2021. Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead Following two acclaimed, heavyweight (and Pulitzer Prize-winning) novels, 2016's The Underground Railroad, made into a TV series this year, and 2019's The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead's latest is a crime c..

12 books I should have reviewed this year: A critic’s lament By Michael Dirda The Washington Post December 28, 2021 I ought never to have become a book reviewer. Aren’t critics supposed to resemble H.G. Wells’s Martians with their “intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic?” Instead, I’m a real softy, giving writers every possible break because I know how hard it is to produce even a so-so book. A..

Treason of the Intellectuals The French thinker Julien Benda made a high-minded case for the moral transcendence of the truth. The flaws in his argument show why speaking truth to power is a fraught endeavor. by Mark Lilla Tablet, December 07, 2021 Julien BendaOriginal photo: Wikimedia Common Certain books never live up to their memorable titles. Others do, but not in the way their authors might..

Via Basic Books Before Oxford’s Library Was the Finest Institutional Library in Europe, It Was… Kind of a Dump Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen on the Library’s Transformation Under Sir Thomas Bodley By Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen Literary Hub November 10, 2021 In 1598, the University of Oxford received an extraordinary proposal. Sir Thomas Bodley, a retired diplomat and Oxfor..

books and culture The Politics of Freedom An excellent new book on the work of Harry Jaffa is also an appeal to Americans to fight for our civic and civilizational inheritance. Daniel J. Mahoney City Journal November 4, 2021 The Soul of Politics: Harry V. Jaffa and the Fight for America, by Glenn Ellmers (Encounter Books, 394 pp., $31.99) For those who remain faithful to the spirit of American r..

Is It Possible to Explain How Consciousness Works? By Jim Holt New York Times Nov. 2, 2021 FEELING & KNOWING Making Minds Conscious By Antonio Damasio We all know what it means to be conscious. Consciousness is what distinguishes being awake from being in a coma or a state of dreamless sleep. I am now conscious, and so (presumably) are you. Many animals — probably all mammals — have conscious mi..

Apparitions Grace M. Cho’s memoir of food and empire. By E. Tammy KimTwitter The Nation October 4, 2021 Tonduk, Korea, 1951. (Afro American Newspapers / Gado / Getty) Some 20 years ago, in Beyond the Shadow of Camptown, a book about Korean military brides in the United States, the historian Ji-Yeon Yuh devoted considerable attention to food. The women brought stateside in the first decades after..

Robert Darnton and Zhang Chi: a conversation Posted on 16 September 2021 by voltairefoundation Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor, Emeritus and University Librarian, Emeritus at Harvard University. He is well known as a leader in the field of cultural history and history of books. Darnton’s works have profoundly changed historians’ understanding of the world of print and ..

History books The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam by Christopher Goscha – review A destroyed French tank and an aircraft propeller that are still kept as war relics in the Dien Bien Phu valley. Photograph: Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP/Getty Images This is the finest single-volume history of Vietnam in English. It challenges myths, and raises questions about the socialist republic’s political future Josh..