Tokyo Reverse

Mesmerizing excerpt from an 9 hour, slow tv program for French TV.

Neil Gaiman presents lifetime achievement award to Ursula K. Le Guin at 2014 National Book Awards

For more than forty years, Le Guin has defied conventions of narrative, language, character, and genre, as well as transcended the boundaries between fantasy and realism, to forge new paths for literary fiction. Among the nation’s most revered writers of science fiction and fantasy, Le Guin’s fully imagined worlds challenge readers to consider profound philosophical and existential questions about gender, race, the environment, and society. Her boldly experimental and critically acclaimed novels, short stories, and children’s books, written in elegant prose, are popular with millions of readers around the world.

In recognition of her transformative impact on American literature, Ursula K. Le Guin is the 2014 recipient of the Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She is the Foundation’s twenty-seventh award recipient.
 

A response to terror by Chris Riddell and Neil Gaiman - in pictures

In the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks, the award-winning illustrator and writer team up to present the artist’s creed in the face of atrocity.

A Museum in England Is Hiding a Forgery Among Its Masterpieces

Smithsonian.com shares a story of a South London gallery sparking a very valid art discussion:

What makes one piece of art more valuable than the next?

The curators at Dulwich Picture Gallery are bringing new life to the old question with a creative experiment. They will place a £120 replica of a highly prized painting into their collection, which includes work by Rembrandt, Poussin, Ruben and Veronese. But don’t expect any help from museum officials on determining which are authentic and which one is the fake. Instead, the Guardian reports, patrons will be challenged to make the identification themselves.

Shakespeare Folio Discovered In France

The New York Times:

“This is huge,” said Eric Rasmussen, an American Shakespeare expert who traveled to France over the weekend to authenticate the volume. “First folios don’t turn up very often, and when they do, it’s usually a really chewed up, uninteresting copy. But this one is magnificent.”

The book was discovered this fall by librarians at a public library in St.-Omer, near Calais, who were sifting through its collections for an exhibition on English-language literature. The title page and other introductory material were torn off, but Rémy Cordonnier, the director of the library’s medieval and early modern collection, suspected that the book — cataloged as an unexceptional old edition — might in fact be a first folio.

He called in Mr. Rasmussen, a professor at the University of Nevada in Reno and the author of “The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue,”who identified it within minutes.