During a few hours he spent near the Kings Road apartment he once shared with model and actress Padma Lakshmi, Rushdie did not come across as either a distinguished literary figure — Rushdie’s swirling 1981 Booker-winner, “Midnight’s Children,” is arguably the greatest British novel of the last few decades, and he was recently knighted — or a man who’d once had a price on his head. He was more like a good-humored, slightly star-struck visitor to L.A., happy to be back among old haunts.
He also enjoyed being in a place where the paparazzi are distracted by more glamorous figures. “Here, there’s Hollywood,” he said, a balding man with wire glasses and a Cheshire cat grin. “You know, they want Lindsay Lohan — they don’t want me.”
Speaking of Rushdie, he was on the Colbert Report earlier this month:
“Libraries are better than schools. You can’t go to a University and get a diploma. It doesn’t mean a goddamn thing. You’ve got to go to a bookstore and a library and educate yourself. You go to a bookstore and find yourself. The surprises that you find on the shelves are you, represent the things that you need, not that the teachers need…”
I still haven’t posted about my getting to meet him last year at an event in San Berdoo — ASAP. Speaking of Bradbury, Redlands has chosen Fahrenheit 451 as the 2009 choice for their citywide book reading program.
The man who championed protecting natural spaces — especially in what is now Yosemite National Park — was born in Scotland, moved as a boy to Wisconsin and later hiked from Kentucky to south Florida; there, he got sick and headed to California to recuperate. Once he found the wilds of Northern California in 1868, he was smitten. He climbed rocks, cursed the sharp hooves of sheep that tore up wildflowers and even snuck President Teddy Roosevelt away from his handlers and into the backcountry for three nights of camping.
He also wrote like a fiend.
And if your fiendishness is lacking at any given moment, check out this big Think Simple Now article to take care of the problem: “Connect with Your Creative Writer”:
Although, the term writers block is popular, this feeling of blockage and mind blanking is not specific to writing, but of any creative feats. Other examples include, brainstorming for a new business, dancing, musical performances, music composition, painting or photography. I’ve personally experienced this during my photography work, blanking out as I stand in front of a client waiting for me for direction. I call these Creative Blocks, where your mind just comes up empty and you feel lost. It’s purely mental.
Through practice and observation, I’ve gotten pretty good at getting past these blank moments, and this article shares some insights for unlocking your creativity. Throughout the article, I will be using writing as the example, but keep in mind that it is equally applicable to any creative activity.
I wondered absently if actor Orlando Bloom were named for the character.
(And of course one of Bloom’s most famous roles came in the various Pirates of the Caribbean movies, based on a theme park ride you can visit in Orlando, Florida.)
Looking it up today, he was actually named for English (Tudor/Jacobean period) composer/organist Orlando Gibbons.
According to Wikipedia,
Gibbons was the “favorite composer” of the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. “Ever since my teen-age years his music has moved me more deeply than any other sound experience I can think of.”
Dubbed “the American Olivier” by New York Times theater critic Frank Rich for his stage acting…
Branagh himself was, of course, both praised and panned by the English theatre critics. Like this one for his portrayal of Hamlet in the late 80s,
Critic Milton Shulman for the Evening Standard wrote: “On the positive side Branagh has the vitality of Olivier, the passion of Gielgud, the assurance of Guinness, to mention but three famous actors who have essayed the role. On the negative side, he has not got the magnetism of Olivier, nor the mellifluous voice quality of Gielgud nor the intelligence of Guinness.”
This belief in the greatness of the Russian soul, Khrushcheva argues, is simply smoke and mirrors used to excuse the country’s backwardness. Russians prefer to fall back on this dreamy myth rather than take responsibility for their own lives. Rational individualism has never taken hold with Russians, and it is instead external forces such as fate and the state that provide meaning to their lives. Living in an idealized, poetic world — “a childish Russian paradise” — they are unable and unwilling to engage in practical activity.
The Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov, Khrushcheva writes, offers a way out of this backward state through the example of his own life and his characters. As a member of a wealthy family, he went into exile after the Revolution. His past and country destroyed, Nabokov was forced to rely on himself and create his own meaning for his life.
