"Now This Is Eternal Life"
Our time on Earth is fleeting. We must do the most with what we have: Maxims that’ve been installed in our hardwire since adolescence. And of course they’re true. But another indelibly human trait is to test boundaries, to reach beyond, into the unknown. Scientists around the globe are talking feverishly about extending our life expectancy. Read more in Vision. The Informers, a book about a dying man and his estranged son, is dissected in the Complete Review. The Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded in October and the winner’s name will live forever. Contemporary literature is given a new life — in comics. The NY Daily News has more. One man’s waste is another man’s book deal. No Impact chronicles a family’s decision to go without toilet paper for a year. The result: international fame. Who knew it was that easy. And finally, a critic from The Guardian steps into his time machine and revisits Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 classic, Blood Meridian, a nihilistic tale with nothing to live for. Except itself. — Kevin Murphy
– As our knowledge of the biochemistry of aging increases exponentially, it is no surprise that around the globe scientists are discovering hopeful paths that will provide ways to increase human longevity. Meanwhile, biotechnology companies are seeking to bring new products to market—drugs, cells, tissues, and procedures—which they, too, hope will go some way toward extending life as well as bring a profit. — Living Longer in Vision
Where Does One Store Eternity?
– We won’t learn the true identity of the winner till mid-October, but this is traditionally the time of year when Britain’s oddsmakers start their calculated guessing as to who will win the 2009 Nobel prize for literature. This year, according to British-based gambling company Ladbrokes, the oddest are shortest (4 to 1) for Israeli novelist Amos Oz. — Nobel Prize in the Christian Science Monitor
– Sikoryak combines iconic American comics with complimentary literary classics, creating a new identity for both works that is entertaining and thought-provoking. His comics are an example of how much the genre has grown up, and how far it’s come as a serious form of art. — Comics & Literature in the NY Daily News
– There are numerous first-person books about eco-adventures in urban farming, living off the grid and eating locally. But “No Impact Man” touches a nerve with people beyond hard-core environmentalists. Even Beavan was surprised that his project garnered so much attention. He’s been on “The Colbert Report,” “Nightline” and “Good Morning America.”– No Impact in the San Francisco Chronicle
No Certain Death In This Novel
– For two long weeks they rode through the arid burnt pumice of the desert sucking on antelope bones, dying of starvation. They passed a solitary jackal, the inhabitants all multilated save an old man pissing himself, before they were caught in a hail of Commanche arrows. Only eight survived. The rest were burnt in a bush on which hung the carcasses of dead babies scalped by the heathen. — Blood Meridian in the Guardian
– In 1991 father and son are more or less reconciled after the father undergoes a heart operation and turns to his son again, after three years they had spent at a distance. The son felt betrayed by the father’s overreaction — but the father felt betrayed by the book, and it is this betrayal (and what his father is hiding of his past and feels so tremendously guilty about) that the son slowly comes to understand, and that makes up this book, The Informers. — The Informers in the Complete Review
Video: William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Speech
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