Ernest Hemingway, one of my all-time favorite writers! Happy 114th birthday!

Let us remember and honor the great novelist and journalist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, one of my all-time favorite writers---Ernest Hemingway---today on his 114th birth anniversary.

Image of Hemingway below, sourced from guardian.co.uk



Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an outstanding American author and journalist. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in 1954.

This image below of the 1954 cover of Time magazine on Hemingway, sourced from time.com



I admire Hemingway's powerful yet understated, elegant yet economic and clean literary writing style as well as his robust, adventurous life!


Image below of Hemingway in his youth, sourced from en.wikipedia.org





Hemingway published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works.

Some of Hemingway's works:

Indian Camp (1926)

The Sun Also Rises (1926)

A Farewell to Arms (1929)

"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (1935)

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

The Old Man and the Sea (1951)

A Moveable Feast (1964, posthumous)

True at First Light (1999)

Image below of Hemingway's novel For Whom The Bell Tolls, sourced from washingtonpost.com

I had recently bought a private resort in Pansol, Laguna from the Collantes family, renamed it Hemingway Eco-Resort, and I'm now renovating this garden-style and tropical-inspired private resort as my humble way of honoring this outstanding and great writer.


Hemingway image below, sourced from gepl.org

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of the great writers and among my top novelists. I first read his novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude", it was so enthralling and well-written I felt that my imagination was on fire!
After reading the English translation of that novel, I even bought the Spanish-language original "Cien Años de Soledad". His other novels, books of short stories and prose are very interesting to read.

Colombian writer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, there's a new book about him as a journalist. Please read the news report below...

(Image below sourced by en.wikipedia.org)







Wednesday, Nov 28, 2012 03:00 AM +0800

Gabriel Garcia Marquez new book celebrates his reporting

 

By Associated Press

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — A lesser-known side of Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez is celebrated and analyzed in a new book that comes on the 30th anniversary of his being awarded the Nobel literature prize.

It’s called “Gabo, periodista,” the 85-year-old author’s nickname and the Spanish-language word for journalist. It will initially be published in his native language in Colombia and in Mexico, where the writer lives.

The 512-page volume includes reportage by Garcia Marquez and commentary from such well-known journalists as Jon Lee Anderson and Alma Guillermoprieto.

The author of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” was presented a copy last week at his Mexico City home.
Published in part by the Colombia-based journalism institute that Garcia Marquez founded, the book was being launched Tuesday at the Guadalajara International Book Fair.

Ernest Hemingway, one of my favorite novelists, he was an outstanding writer! Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I couldn't forget an inspiring quote from Hemingway cited by a Hollywood movie: "The world is a fine place and worth fighting for."



(These images below sourced from en.wikipedia.com)










(Image below sourced from biography.com)

Faulkner estate sues over quotes in Woody Allen film & Washington Post ad!

 

My Comments:

 

Whether these lawsuits by the heirs of the Nobel Prize for Literature winner and two-time Pulitzer awardee poet/novelist William Faulkner (1897-1961) are legally valid or not is, I believe, besides the point. For a writer like me, what is more interesting is that these news reports will hopefully encourage more people to be curious about the great literary writer William Faulkner and his works.

 

William Faulkner was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, a giant of the U.S. south.

 

Let us read these literary masterpieces:

 

The Sound and the Fury

 

As I Lay Dying

 

Absalom, Absalom!

 

 

 

Here is one of Faulkner's interesting quotes: 
"It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work."

 

– William Faulkner

 

 

 

Here is a news report about the hullabaloo...

 

Oct 30, 2012 3:51 AM Updated: Oct 30, 2012 7:52 AM

 

By JEFF AMY

Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - William Faulkner wrote that the past is never dead. His heirs say their copyright to that phrase is very much alive.

The author's literary estate is suing Sony Pictures Classics for using a paraphrase of the line in Woody Allen's 2011 film, "Midnight in Paris." It's also suing Northrop Grumman Corp. and The Washington Post Co. for using another Faulkner quote in a newspaper ad by the defense contractor.

The first lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in Oxford, Miss., says Sony infringed on the copyright when actor Owen Wilson slightly misquoted the line from Faulkner's "Requiem for a Nun." He said, "The past is not dead! Actually, it's not even past."

The second lawsuit, filed Friday in Jackson, Miss., makes similar claims about the ad, which used a passage from a 1956 essay Faulkner wrote in Harper's Magazine. The quote, which says in part "We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it," was the conclusion to an essay criticizing the South's response to school integration.

Sony says the quote is "fair use," a legal term meaning the user doesn't have to license or pay for it.

"This is a frivolous lawsuit and we are confident we will prevail in defending it," a Sony Pictures spokeswoman said in a written statement.

Northrop Grumman declined comment. The Washington Post did not return a phone call Monday.

David Olson, a Boston College law professor who specializes in patent law and copyright, said he agrees that the estate is over-reaching legally.

Lee Caplin, who represents the estate, disagrees. He said these are the first lawsuits it has ever filed. Caplin said that the estate recently licensed a quote to the sitcom "Modern Family." He contrasted that to Allen's use of the quote in the movie.

"He just wanted to kind of take it and he felt entitled," Caplin said of Allen.

Caplin said the suit is not a "money grab." He said Sony was dismissive of his attempts to license the quote after the movie came out.

Under the fair use principle, people can take and reuse part of a copyrighted book, song or movie without permission. Generally, excepts can be used if they're short and if they're part of a new artistic work, scholarly work or a parody. Noncommercial uses are generally more permissible, Olson said.

"If it's for a commercial use, they do have to pay for it," Caplin said.

Olson, though, said that's a flawed understanding of copyright law.

"Commercial use isn't presumptively unfair," he said. He said no one watches "Midnight in Paris" as a substitute for buying "Requiem for a Nun."

"The Faulkner estate's interest is not being harmed in any way," Olson said. "If anything it draws a little more interest."

Caplin argued that even though the movie snippet is short, it's a key summing-up of the whole film, and that Allen took it because Faulkner said it better.

"This is Mr. Faulkner's most famous quote," Caplin said.

In the Northrop case, Caplin said he's not sure the heirs would have wanted Faulkner's name to be associated with an arms manufacturer.

Olson said the Northrop case may be stronger, but he fears that authors are using copyright to limit the political context in which works are quoted or used.

Olson said some estates are zealous about enforcing copyright, to increase revenue or limit discussions that

heirs find disagreeable. The suits could just be warning shots by the estate to other users.

"Part of what they could be doing is just trying to get the word out," Olson said.

CONGRATULATIONS to writer Craig Davidson, to literary arts & the written word!               

2012 London Film Festival "Best Picture" award goes to French-Belgian movie Rust and Bone  based on the short story collection of the same title as the movie and authored by Craig Davidson


(Photographs of the writer)



Craig Davidson is a Canadian writer of short stories and novels.

His first book, The Preserve, was a horror novel written under a pseudonym.

Craig's first short story collection, Rust and Bone, was published in September 2005, by Penguin Books Canada.

(Below is an image of Canadian edition of the book, plus another picture of the author on the right)




Here, a poster of the award-winning French-Belgian movie...





(an old photograph of the writer)

Rust and Bone, Jacques Audiard's soaring French-language movie about love, loss and killer whales, won the best picture award at the London Film Festival on October 20, 2012.

This cinematic thriller/melodrama tells the story of a boxer (played by actor Matthias Schoenaerts) and a whale trainer (played by Oscar Award-winning actress Marion Cotillard), how the guy fells in love even as the woman suffers a tragic accident at work.

Rust and Bone (French language: De rouille et d'os) is a French-Belgian film based on Craig Davidson's  short story collection with the same name. The tale is of an unemployed 25-year-old boxer in love with a killer whale trainer.

My Recommendation
I highly recommend that we all read the book first before watching the movie adaptation.

Congratulations to Asia and to China

writer Mo Yan wins 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature

Asia is rising not only economically, but hopefully also culturally. 

Chinese author Mo Yan has just won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature! 

The Nobel Prize is worth around US$1.2 million, but this achievement is priceless for the writer and for all of us Asians.. 

(Below is illustration of author Mo Yan by Adolfo Arranz from the October 13, 2012 article of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post on his forthcoming four new works http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1059912/new-books-way-nobel-laureate-mo-yan) 

(Below is DVD of director Zhang Yimou's first and award-winning 1987 movie Red Sorghum, based on a novel by Mo Yan and also  starring the actress Gong Li. The movie won the prestigious Golden Bear Award for best film at the 1988 Berlin International Film Festival )

The Swedish Academy’s official announcement read, “Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition.”

(Below images of writers Gabriel Garcia Marquez and William Faulkner)

As an aspiring literary writer who used to write poetry as a student, who penned two unpublished novellas and other works, and as an ethnic Chinese born and raised in the Philippines of which I am its citizen, as an Asian and as a lover of books and literature, I congratulate  the 57-year-old writer Mo Yan for winning the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature.

  

CHINA DAILY / REUTERS

Chinese writer Mo Yan smiles during an interview at his house in Beijing

Below is video of writers celebrating the win of the Chinese author.... 

Chinese author Mo Yan wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Chinese author Mo Yan has been awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for literature.

By British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) October 11, 2012

A prolific author, Mo has published dozens of short stories, with his first work published in 1981.

The Swedish Academy praised his work which "with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary".

The 57-year-old is the first Chinese resident to win the prize. Chinese-born Gao Xingjian was honoured in 2000, but is a French citizen.

Mo is the 109th recipient of the prestigious prize, won last year by Swedish poet Tomas Transtroemer.

Presented by the Nobel Foundation, the award - only given to living writers - is worth 8 million kronor (£741,000).

"He has such a unique way of writing. If you read half a page of Mo Yan you immediately recognise it as him," said Peter Englund, head of the Academy.

He said Mo had been told of the award, adding: "He was at home with his dad. He said he was overjoyed and terrified."

Born Guan Moye, the author writes under the pen name Mo Yan, which means "don't speak" in Chinese.

He began writing while a soldier in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and received international fame in 1987 for Red Sorghum: A Novel of China.

Made into a film which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1988, the novella was a tale of the brutal violence in the eastern China countryside, where he grew up, during the 1920s and 1930s.

Mo Yan "merges folk tales, history, and the contemporary", said Secretary of the Swedish Academy, Peter Englund, announcing the award

Favouring to write about China's past rather than contemporary issues, the settings for Mo's works range from the 1911 revolution, Japan's wartime invasion and Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution.

"He has a very impressive oeuvre," Michel Hockx, Professor of Chinese at the University of London, said.

"He has a large readership and he addresses the human condition in a way in which the Nobel Committee likes to see."

Mo's other acclaimed works include Republic of Wine, Life And Death Are Wearing Me Out and Big Breasts and Wide Hips.

The latter book caused controversy when it was published in 1995 for its sexual content and depicting a class struggle contrary to the Chinese Communist Party line.

The author was forced by the PLA to withdraw it from publication although it was pirated many times.

After it was translated into English a decade later, the book won him a nomination for the Man Asian Literary Prize.

Chinese people react to the news that writer Mo Yan has won the 2012 Nobel Prize for literature

Despite his social criticism Mo is seen in his homeland as one of the foremost contemporary authors, however critics have accused him of being too close to the Communist Party.

"A writer should express criticism and indignation at the dark side of society and the ugliness of human nature," the author said in a speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2009.

"Some may want to shout on the street, but we should tolerate those who hide in their rooms and use literature to voice their opinions."

His latest novel, Frog, about China's "one child" population control policy, won the Mao Dun Literature Prize - one of his country's most prestigious literature prizes - last year.

Mo and the other Nobel laureates for medicine, physics, chemistry and peace, will receive their prizes at formal ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on 10 December - the anniversary of the death of prize creator Alfred Nobel in 1896.

Excited with Franz Kafka Papers, finally to be released to the world soon!

 

This is Good News to all literature lovers of the world! I am celebrating this good news by starting this blog.

I couldn't forget my 2008 visit to the beautiful historic Prague City in the Czech Republic, and the highlight of the trip was my retracing the life of the great Jewish writer Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924)---from where he lived, worked, where he and the German Jewish scientist Albert Einstein had met/dined at a restaurant, to the synagogue and to the Jewish cemetery where he was finally buried.



"And yet Kafka was Prague and Prague was Kafka. Never had it been Prague so perfectly, so typically, as during Kafka's lifetime, and never would it be so again. And we, his friends, 'the happy few'...we knew that the smallest elements of this Prague were distilled everywhere in Kafka's work."
- Johannes Urzidil in The World of Franz Kafka 

I believe outstanding writers like Franz Kafka are indeed immortal! He was one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century.

(Below images of Franz Kafka and his handwritten letter)

 

 

 now, sharing the good news...

Israeli Court Rules Library to Get Kafka Papers, Lawyer Says

By Gwen Ackerman - Oct 15, 2012 12:01 AM GMT+0800 Bloomberg

A cache of as yet unseen Franz Kafka manuscripts will be made available online to scholars after an Israeli court ruled they weren’t given as a gift to the secretary of the author’s executor and friend Max Brod.

According to the Tel Aviv Family Court decision, the papers, which were stashed away in safes and attics for years, will become the property of the National Libraty of Israel, which promised in a statement to scan and put them on its website.

Papers that once belonged to Franz Kafka have been the subject of a court case as archivists collect other material by the late author. This photo shows a collection of photographs of the writer and his friends.


Source: The National Library of Israel via Bloomberg.

An undated handout photo, provided to the media on Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008 shows Franz Kafka. Source: Schocken Books via Bloomberg News

“We are talking about a historical decision that brought justice to Max Brod and his friend Kafka,” Meir Heller, lawyer for the library, said by telephone. Harel Ashwall, the lawyer for the secretary’s two daughters, disagreed and said he planned to appeal the ruling.

Kathi Diamant, director of the Kafka Project at San Diego State University, has said in the past that papers that may be part of the collection may help scholars locate some Kafka notebooks that the Gestapo confiscated from the author’s companion, Dora Diamant.

The dispute over the papers began with Brod, a German- language author best known for his Kafka biography and historical novels. Though Kafka’s last wish was for his papers to be burned, Brod kept them, ensuring the publication of “The Trial” and “The Castle.”

Literary Estate

When Brod died in 1968, he left his estate to his secretary Esther Hoffe, who then left it to her daughters. The court ruled today that the will intended for Brod’s literary estate, including the Kafka manuscripts, to be given to a public institution and kept intact.

“We think that the decision does not reflect the intentions and desire of Max Brod, in fact the opposite is true,” Ashwall said in an e-mailed response to the ruling. “We also think the ruling is flawed in legal terms.”

For decades, Hoffe declined to make the papers available to the public, frustrating archivists and scholars alike. Kafka specialists had hoped her daughters would open the files, providing new insights into the author, who died of tuberculosis in 1924.

When the sisters, now in their 70s, attempted to ratify their mother’s will in January 2008, the state of Israel  intervened. The case landed in the family court, where the National Library became a party to the proceedings.

Internet Plan

The library plans to catalog and preserve the papers, then, “in the not so distant future scan and open them up to all on the Internet, in this way fulfilling Brod’s will,” Oren Weinberg, director of the library, said in an e-mailed statement.

During her lifetime, Hoffe sold a handwritten manuscript of Kafka’s “The Trial” for $1.98 million at a 1988 Sotheby’s auction in  London.

Heller said he hoped that all Kafka papers that were bought from Hoffe in the past will now be returned to their proper place at the library in Jerusalem so they can be presented together to scholars.

Muse highlights include New York Weekend, Lewis Lapham on history and Richard Vines on food. s, Hoffe declined to make the papers available to the public, frustrating archivists and scholars alike. Kafka specialists had hoped her daughters would open the files, providing new insights into the author, who died of tuberculosis in 1924.

When the sisters, now in their 70s, attempted to ratify their mother’s will in January 2008, the state of  Israel intervened. The case landed in the family court, where the National Library became a party to the proceedings.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gwen Ackerman in Jerusalem at gackerman@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff at mhoelterhoff or.

***

The following are images I had researched in the Internet, on places and memorials in Prague City associated with the great writer Franz Kafka)


(Photo below is that of the unique Franz Kakfa Monument in Prague)




(Photo of the Franz Kafka grave in the Jewish Cemetery of Prague City)




(Photo below of the Jewish synagogue of Prague)




(Photo below of Prague's Spanish Synagogue)





(Photo of the entrance to the Franz Kafka Museum in Prague)