Absinthe Recommends

Let's start by saying we do NOT recommend seeing "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." Very sad to say about Indiana Jones. (But "Iron Man" was quite cool.)

We've recently read and enjoyed I'd Like by Amanda Michalopoulou, translated by Karen Emmerich; Factory of Tears by Valzhyna Mort, translated by Franz Wright and Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright; and Diary of a Blood Donor by Mati Unt, translated by Ants Eert.

In addition, in an interview with Haaretz, Jonathan Littell, the American-French author of the notorious novel Les Bienveillantes, states that there are no authors he'd like to meet: "most writers are totally uninteresting." ArtInfo.com interviews the Picasso biographer John Richardson. The Goethe Institut discusses new trends on the German stage: "many of the most striking new plays ... have been penned by very young playwrights." The Financial Times profiles the "Sons of Sartre," and Bernard-Henri Levy (BHL) is called "a pretentious little jerk" by French president Sarkozy's speechwriter, Henri Guaino.

Like a Child

Picasso is quoted as saying, "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." The return to a child's way of viewing the world (one that is childlike as opposed to childish) is a theme that other artists and theorists have explored as well. Viktor Shklovsky's notion of defamiliarization has to do with the way art can refresh our automatized ways of perceiving language and the world, something that's necessary when we stop being children and fall into routines. There's nothing sentimental about it: children apprehend the world in unfamiliar and interesting ways, and their observations and ways of thinking can be fascinating.

My five- and six-year-old children were recently asked to come up with a list of questions they were interested in trying to answer for our school district's science fair. Below are some of their responses:

How do clocks know what time it is?
How did people know what food is good to eat?
How do our bodies move?
How do people make paper?
How do snakes slither?
How do factories make jelly beans?
Where does blood come from?
How does the world spin?
How do factories make paint?
How do people make sticky things?
Where does hardness come from?
How did the sun get so much fire?
How are factories made?
How does the sun give you freckles?
How do pencils write?
How was the universe made?