サブタイトルからも想像できるように、seekers and slackersとstrivers and thriversの2つに分けて前者から後者への流れを扱っているようです。まずはseekers and slackersから、モラトリアム中の若者の行き先としてお金稼ぎやエキゾチックな目的地として日本が選ばれていたようです。ALTなんかもこちらに分類されてしまうのでしょうか。 Like many new expat arrivals, I knew little about Japan other than it was the land of sushi, Sony, and Kurosawa—and that its economy was red hot. I alighted at Narita and within a week joined a small army of eikaiwa sensei in one of history’s more quixotic efforts at linguistic exchange.
The economy was booming, the biru flowing, and it wasn’t hard for young Western grads to enjoy some Eastern soul searching and adventure, while profiting off the backs of Japan’s hardworking sararimen and long-suffering housewives.
Japan’s Western population was exploding. Yes, there were a few karate students and Zen disciples among us. But the main draw for most was easy wages earned in a rising currency.
strivers and thriversの方はバブルがはじけた後に日本に来るタイプで、来日前から日本語もある程度できて、村上春樹や村上隆、宮崎アニメなどの知識があり、目的地として日本を選んで、ある程度長くいる覚悟ができている感じです。 Western twenty-somethings landing at Narita today often already speak Japanese. Thanks to the internet and the “Cool Japan” phenomenon, they know a lot more about Japanese culture. Less a land of Oriental mystery, it’s the world of the Murakamis (Haruki and Takeshi), Ichiro, Miyazaki—and a thousand expat blogs.
Though fewer in number, young Westerners frequently arrive with marketable skills aside from native English, and can integrate more quickly into Japanese companies. They also help fill the tech-savvy ranks of the Google and Apple crowds who have replaced the Roppongi Hills bankers, or are themselves tech entrepreneurs.
著者自らがstrivers and thriversだからでしょうか、そちらの方に好意的に書いています。生活し定着しようとしているので、派手な生活はしていないけど、日本で働いて、結婚をして、堅実に暮らすことで、日本でイノベーションを起こすことに貢献できるのではと書いています。ノバの倒産は外国人英語教師についてはリーマンショックと並ぶ事件だったようですね（苦笑）。 Nova, Lehman and Fukushima left more of the reduced group acculturated and/or biracial—even if they’re still only a sliver of Japan’s population. Immigration policies have been redesigned to make things easier, with streamlined visa procedures and no more re-entry permits. Japanese companies are even making noises about employing more foreigners. With more local hires and fewer expat packages, strivers and thrivers, married to locals or not and occupying a wider sphere of jobs, are going native like never before. Many are learning how to live more economical and tidy existences—like their Japanese neighbors.
If Japan can pave the way for these new 21st-century strivers to thrive, they could provide a source of innovation—and children—for its demographically challenged future.
So where are the seekers and slackers? A few still reach Japan, but more are to be found where the action is—in China or other booming BRIC-type destinations.
一方のseekers and slackersは中国とか経済躍進が目覚ましい国にいるんじゃないのと軽く突き放した書き方をしていますね（笑）
Banality in Evil（悪の凡庸さ）と言えば彼女が浮かぶほどの言葉です。以前も取り上げたことがありますが、オックスフォード学習辞典でも彼女が載っています。The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.（悲しい現実は、ほとんどの悪は、善良であるとか邪悪であるとか全く自覚のない人たちによってなされていることだ）というのは、日本で起きている事故を思い起こさせます。
（オックスフォード） Hannah Arendt (1906–75) a US political writer, philosopher and teacher born in Germany. She was Jewish and escaped from the Nazis by going in 1933 to Paris and in 1941 to the US. Her major books included The Human Condition (1958), Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963) and The Life of the Mind (1977). The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. Hannah Arendt
この映画では、身内のユダヤ人コミュニティーから大きな批判を浴びてしまうところも描いているようです。なぜそうなったのかは2つの理由があるようです。 She made two particularly provocative points. The first was that Eichmann, a senior SS officer, was not the malicious organizer of the Nazi death camps, as Israeli prosecutors charged, but rather a mediocre bureaucrat, “a leaf in the whirlwind of time,” as Arendt put it; “not a monster” but “a clown.” Hence the enduring phrase from her book’s subtitle: “the banality of evil.”
Arendt’s second point was that the “Jewish Councils” in Germany and Poland were complicit in the mass murder of their own people. They helped the Nazis round up the victims, confiscate their property and send them off on trains to their doom. Without these Jewish leaders, Arendt wrote, “there would have been chaos and plenty of misery, but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four-and-a-half and six million people.” She added, “To a Jew, this role of the Jewish leaders” was “undoubtedly the darkest chapter of this whole dark story.”
レビューを書いた記者は彼女のアイヒマンをbanality of evilとみなすのは反対のようです。アイヒマンは自分がそのようなことに関わっているのを自覚していたし、積極的に立案にも参加していたと記者は書いています。 Some of the attacks on Arendt — that she sympathized with Eichmann or demonized the Jewish victims more than their Nazi killers — were over the top. But some of Arendt’s views were over the top as well, not least her portrait of Eichmann. Her “banality of evil” thesis rests on the premise that Eichmann committed his deeds with no awareness of their evil, not even with virulent anti-Semitism. In fact, though, much evidence — some of it known at the time, some unearthed since — indicates that Eichmann very much knew what he was doing.
一方で、banality of evilが与えた影響の大きさは認めています。
Arendt misread Eichmann, but she did hit on something broader about how ordinary people become brutal killers. The postwar generation of young Germans took Arendt’s book as inspiration to rebel against their parents, who may not have personally killed Jews during the war but knew what was going on and did nothing.
In America, protesters invoked the “banality of evil” to rail against the outwardly decent family men who dropped bombs on North Vietnam or sat in nuclear-missile silos, ready to push the button — seeing them as the cold war’s version of Arendt’s “desk murderers.”
この映画監督はドイツ人だそうですが、何かしらの政治メッセージはないと言っています。アーレントはそんなことを言えば批判を浴びることは承知していたでしょうが、それでも自分で裁判を傍聴して思う所をまとめて書いて発表した。現に批判されましたが、The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.（悲しい現実は、ほとんどの悪は、善良であるとか邪悪であるとか全く自覚のない人たちによってなされていることだ）というbanality of evilに連なる言葉は晩年のThe Life of the Mind (1977)の著作にあるそうですから、自分の考えたことを最後まで貫いたようです。映画監督はアーレントのそのような態度に共感を覚えているそうです。 “I identify with these women,” Ms. von Trotta said. “Maybe it’s because I grew up stateless.”
(Her mother came from an aristocratic Russian family, fled after the revolution and settled in Berlin, where Margarethe was born — though, under German law, that didn’t make her a citizen).
“There’s a bit of this in Hannah,” she went on. “She left Germany when the Nazis took over. She was imprisoned in France for being German. She didn’t feel she had a home until she came to America. Then the attacks on the Eichmann book felt like a third exile.
“I’m not a missionary,” she added. “I don’t make films to have a message. I make films about people that I like or that interest me. But if there’s a message in this film, it’s that you should think for yourself, don’t follow an ideology or a fashion. Hannah called this ‘thinking without banisters.’ ”
最後にある自分で考えることの大切さ、アーレントの‘thinking without banisters’という言葉については、以下のサイトで一つの解釈が紹介されています。
朝日新聞デジタル：「手すり無きコミュニケーション」のすすめ - 私の研究室 ... 以上、私がコミュニケーション批評の授業で強調していることを三点ほど書きましたが、このようなことを知っていても、外国語が上達したり、人間関係が良くなったり、ビジネスで成功したりするわけではありません。ただし、複雑化・不確実化する現代社会において、コミュニケーションの「マニュアル」や「ルール」がそれほど「実用的」だとも思いませんし、悩みや問題を劇的に解決するコミュニケーション上の「秘訣」があると考えるのも「非現実的」でしょう。哲学者のハンナ・アレントは、現代社会においては、一般的な規則や基準を設けずに物事を熟慮し、その是非を判断する「手すり無き思考」（“thinking without a banister”）が必要であると主張しています。同様に、私たちの生きる社会では、コミュニケーションの不確実性や複雑さに目を向け、コミュニケーションが一種の権力行使であることを自覚しながらも、他者とどうかかわるべきなのかを模索し、実践する「手すり無きコミュニケーション」（communicating without a banister）が求められているように思います。コミュニケーションの日常性や偏在性にもかかわらず、コミュニケーションを深く掘り下げて考える機会は、さほど多くありません。授業の中でコミュニケーションを巡る問題を考え、議論し、そしてレポートなどを書くことを通して、言葉の説得力や作用、そしてその前提や倫理について理解を深めることができれば、「手すり無きコミュニケーション」の実践に多少なりとも寄与すると思います。そういう意味で、大学でコミュニケーションを学ぶことは、「実用的」と言えるのかもしれません。
By nearly any measure—personal, political, even literary—Abraham Lincoln set a standard of success that few in history can match. But how many of his contemporaries noticed?
Sure, we revere Lincoln today, but in his lifetime the bile poured on him from every quarter makes today’s Internet vitriol seem dainty. His ancestry was routinely impugned, his lack of formal learning ridiculed, his appearance maligned, and his morality assailed. We take for granted, of course, the scornful outpouring from the Confederate states; no action Lincoln took short of capitulation would ever have quieted his Southern critics. But the vituperation wasn’t limited to enemies of the Union. The North was ever at his heels. No matter what Lincoln did, it was never enough for one political faction, and too much for another. Yes, his sure-footed leadership during this country’s most-difficult days was accompanied by a fair amount of praise, but also by a steady stream of abuse—in editorials, speeches, journals, and private letters—from those on his own side, those dedicated to the very causes he so ably championed. George Templeton Strong, a prominent New York lawyer and diarist, wrote that Lincoln was “a barbarian, Scythian, yahoo, or gorilla.” Henry Ward Beecher, the Connecticut-born preacher and abolitionist, often ridiculed Lincoln in his newspaper, The Independent (New York), rebuking him for his lack of refinement and calling him “an unshapely man.” Other Northern newspapers openly called for his assassination long before John Wilkes Booth pulled the trigger. He was called a coward, “an idiot,” and “the original gorilla” by none other than the commanding general of his armies, George McClellan.
映画の冒頭でも取り上げられるGettysburg Addressについても、We pass over the silly remarks of the Presidentという批判があったのですね。 As for the Gettysburg Address—one of the most powerful speeches in human history, one that many American schoolchildren can recite by heart (Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth …) and a statement of national purpose that for some rivals the Declaration of Independence—a Pennsylvania newspaper reported, “We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them, and they shall be no more repeated or thought of.” A London Times correspondent wrote, “Anything more dull and commonplace it wouldn’t be easy to produce.”
No man is a hero to his valet.（英雄も従者にはただの人）ということわざがあったりするように、同時代の人にとって、利害関係が絡むこともあり、手放しの偉人というのはいないかもしれません。 Of course, Lincoln was elected twice to the presidency, and was revered by millions. History records more grief and mourning upon his death than for any other American president. But the past gets simplified in our memory, in our textbooks, and in our popular culture. Lincoln’s excellence has been distilled from the rough-and-tumble of his times. We best remember the most generous of his contemporaries’ assessments, whether the magnanimous letter sent by his fellow speaker on the stage at Gettysburg, Edward Everett, who wrote to him, “I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes”; or Edwin Stanton’s “Now he belongs to the ages,” at the moment of his death; or Frederick Douglass’s moving tribute in 1876 to “a great and good man.”
This process of distillation obscures how Lincoln was perceived in his own time, and, by comparison, it diminishes our own age. Where is the political giant of our era? Where is the timeless oratory? Where is the bold resolve, the moral courage, the vision?
Imagine all those critical voices from the 19th century as talking heads on cable television. Imagine the snap judgments, the slurs and put-downs that beset Lincoln magnified a million times over on social media. How many of us, in that din, would hear him clearly? His story illustrates that even greatness—let alone humbler qualities like skill, decency, good judgment, and courage—rarely goes unpunished.
Common Notions Common notion 1. Things which equal the same thing also equal one another.（同じものと等しいものは互いに等しい） Common notion 2. If equals are added to equals, then the wholes are equal.（同じものに同じものを加えた場合、その合計は等しい） Common notion 3. If equals are subtracted from equals, then the remainders are equal. （同じものから同じものを引いた場合、残りは等しい） Common notion 4. Things which coincide with one another equal one another. （互いに重なり合うものは、互いに等しい） Common notion 5. The whole is greater than the part. （全体は、部分より大きい）
Euclid's first common notion is this: Things which are equal to the same things are equal to each other. That's a rule of mathematical reasoning and its true because it works - has done and always will do. In his book Euclid says this is self evident. You see there it is even in that 2000 year old book of mechanical law it is the self evident truth that things which are equal to the same things are equal to each other.
エレクトロニクスを専門に取り上げるEE Timesでは、エンジニアはこの場面だけでもリンカーンを観に行く価値があるとまで言っています（笑） One scene in particular should be of interest to the engineer. In it, Day-Lewis’ Lincoln is again at the Telegraph Office, the chief executive’s refuge from the unrelenting pressures of the White House, the place where news from the front is received, unfiltered.
Lincoln regales the office clerks with a parable about the mathematician Euclid, mechanical law and its universality in the struggle to end slavery. This scene alone makes it worth seeing “Lincoln.”
もちろんリンカーンはThings which equal the same thing also equal one another.（同じものと等しいものは互いに等しい）を人間にみたてて解釈したわけなので、以下のようなトレーラーの文脈で解釈すべきなのでしょう。
カンヌ映画祭に出品されている是枝監督の『そして父になる』は英語のタイトルはLike father, like sonで、フランス語もTel père, tel filsと英語と同じ付け方です。
ロングマンはespecially when this behaviour is badという使われ方のニュアンスも付け加えてくれるので助かります。Free dictonaryの会話例は、煙草を吸うという悪い習慣と背が高いというニュートラルな類似点の2パターンをあげてくれていますね。
（オックスフォード） like father, like son (saying) used to say that a son's character or behavior is similar to that of his father
（ロングマン） like father like son used to say that a boy behaves like his father, especially when this behaviour is bad
(Free dictionary) like father, like son Prov. Fathers and sons resemble each other, and sons tend to do what their fathers did before them. Jill: George's father smoked all the time, and now George is smoking excessively, too. Jane: Like father, like son, eh? I think my son will grow up tall, just like his father. Like father, like son.
今年のカンヌ映画祭の審査委員長はスピルバーグのようで（AP通信ではa jury headed by Spielbergと表現されています）、父と子のストーリーが好きなスピルバーグが気に入るのではという書き方をしています。
Hot off the press: Seen and heard in Cannes The Associated Press Published: May 18, 2013 CANNES, France (AP) - Associated Press journalists open their notebooks at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival:
Will a switched-at-birth Japanese drama tug on Steven Spielberg's heart strings?
The Cannes Film Festival was wondering that Saturday, when Kore-eda Hirokazu's elegant and emotional "Like Father, Like Son" premiered. It quickly emerged as an early contender for the Palme d'Or, the winner of which will be decided by a jury headed by Spielberg.
Though reviews varied, "Like Father, Like Son" largely charmed Cannes with its sweet, understated examination of nature versus nurture.
「生まれの親か育ての親か」という場合は、英語ではnature versus nurtureという表現が定番のようです。ガーディアンの記事でもNature versus nurture is the obvious themeと書いていますね。
Cannes film festival 2013: Like Father, Like Son - first look review Hirokazu Kore-eda's baby-swap film is another good-natured domestic drama set in contemporary Japan, but it lacks the nuance and innovation of his earlier work Peter Bradshaw guardian.co.uk, Saturday 18 May 2013 06.23 BST Kore-eda has said that he was inspired by his own recent experience of fatherhood to write and direct this film and by the "baby-swap" cases in Japan in the 1960s. I wonder if he was not also inspired by Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, whose basic plot resembles this movie in a couple of key particulars. Nature versus nurture is the obvious theme, and this movie suggests that nature is far less important than we might think.
TIMEの記事でもNow the the four adults are encouraged to restore the boys to their natural parents, in a film that asks whether nature or nurture creates a true parent-child bond.とnatureとnurtureを使って紹介しています。ガーディアンの記事も少し辛口でしたが、TIMEも結論が読めると厳し目の評価です。The children’s performances are winning, but the director’s dogmatic social scheme saps the dramatic tension in a film whose predictable message is: to be like a real father, you must connect with your son.まあ、この2家族の描き方は典型的過ぎますよね。
Like Father, Like Son Six-year-old Keita sits between his affluent parents at an interview for admission to an advanced grade school. The boy volunteers that he and his father often bonded by flying kites — a lie that he told because his “cram coach” had suggested it. In fact, the father, Ryota (Masaharu Fukuyama), is so obsessed with his ladder-scaling corporate job that he has little time for the boy except to insist he spend all his time doing homework and practicing the piano. Ryoto’s dry dream of remaking Keita in his own go-getter image is crushed when he and his wife Midori (Machiko Ono) get word from the rural hospital where she gave birth that two babies had been switched. Keita is actually the child of a working-class couple: a feckless shop owner Yukari (Lily Franky) and his wife (Yoko Maki). Now the the four adults are encouraged to restore the boys to their natural parents, in a film that asks whether nature or nurture creates a true parent-child bond.
Writer-director Hirokazu Koreeda plumbed the plight of children separated from their parents in the 2005 Cannes entry Nobody Home. This time, applying the bright colors of a TV commercial, he concentrates on the parents, who fall into convenient class categories: the arrogant yuppies and the soul-of-the-earth couple whose rude manners are an expression of their warm hearts. The bumpkin Yukari may speak with his mouth full and hope for a big settlement from the careless hospital, but he lavishes love on both boys and, needless to say, finds the time to go fly a kite. The children’s performances are winning, but the director’s dogmatic social scheme saps the dramatic tension in a film whose predictable message is: to be like a real father, you must connect with your son. —M.C.
Spielberg has long gravitated to stories of fathers and sons, but whether "Like Father, Like Son" struck a chord with him won't be answered until the Palme d'Or is announced May 25 at the end of the festival.
WiredやBusinessweekなどが取り上げていたNetflixをNewshourも取り上げていました。一度にたくさんのエピソードを見るbinge-watchingって言葉はここでも登場しています。 The programs lend themselves to on-demand binge-watching. Netflix's 33 million subscribers can dip in and out whenever they want. Nielsen even has a name for some of these viewers: “zero TV households,” up to five million now from two million in 2007.
ANALYSIS AIR DATE: May 24, 2013 On Netflix, Streaming Entertainment Is New 'Development' for Traditional TV SUMMARY There's money in the banana stand, but what about in streaming entertainment? Traditional TV shows are showing up on online-only venues, including "Arrested Development," which is getting a second wind on Netflix after being canceled in 2006. Gwen Ifill talks to show producer Brian Grazer and Eric Deggans of the Tampa Bay Times.
面白かったやり取りは以下の部分です。Binge-watchingが当たり前になると“did you see what happened last night?”なんて会話ができなくなりますねと聞いているところです。 GWEN IFILL: And let me tell you guys both my problem with this, which is, of course, I watched "House of Cards" all online, and I couldn't talk to anybody about it.
When you're binge-watching, Brian, you don't have a chance to say, did you see what happened last night? Is isn't that a risk for the way we communicate as a people at the water cooler the next day?
BRIAN GRAZER: That's very interesting.
No one actually presented that question to me. I don't know. I think we generate -- there's other ways to -- I mean, I think I understand exactly what you're saying.
But I think excitement, curiosity and the explosive nature of how conversations work can still be applied, because you can say, I just saw five episodes of "Arrested Development." You might not be doing it on the water cooler the next day. You're going to be doing it on all your social media.
So I -- actually, I hadn't thought of your question or its answer, but I do think that it leads to other conversations that live within the demographic of the audience, and that is even more scalable because of the Internet.
回答者が語っているように、別のかたちでの会話が可能になるのでしょうね。ここでは会社の給湯室ではなく、ソーシャルメディアが会話の場所になると指摘しています。 You might not be doing it on the water cooler the next day. You're going to be doing it on all your social media.
（英辞郎） water-cooler gossip 〔仕事場やオフィスなどでの〕うわさ話◆water cooler（オフィスなどに置かれている飲み水の冷却器）の周りに集まってうわさ話をする様子から water-cooler moment 〔特にテレビの〕おもしろい場面◆翌日職場の休憩所で話したくなるような場面を指す◆【参考】water cooler
（オックスフォード） water cooler 1 a machine, for example in an office, that cools water and supplies it for drinking 2 used when referring to a place where office workers talk in an informal way, for example near the water cooler It was a story they'd shared around the water cooler.
MAY 20, 2013 OUT LOUD: GEORGE PACKER AND KEN AULETTA ON SILICON VALLEY POSTED BY THE NEW YORKER This week in the magazine, George Packer asks tech-industry insiders why the vast profits of the tech world have paralleled a growing disparity between rich and poor, and how they think about their social and political roles. Ken Auletta often writes about the tech industry for the magazine’s Annals of Communication column. Here, Packer and Auletta talk with the editor of newyorker.com, Nicholas Thompson, about the culture and politics of Silicon Valley. Also, Deborah Treisman channels Italo Calvino.
読み聞かせている本とDr Seussの著作を比較しているレビューがありました。Dr Seussの影響力はそれほど大きいのですね。 Small pants, big pants, giant frilly pig pants New pants, blue pants, one, two, three Rich pants, poor pants, swinging on the door pants How many more pants can you see? - Pants, by Giles Andreae
Small feet, big feet, Here come pig feet. His feet, her feet, Fuzzy fur feet In the house and on the street, how many, many feet you meet. - The Foot Book, by Dr Seuss
まずは書き出しです。日本と違いアメリカでは5月が成績や進路についていろいろ考える時期のようです。 May is the month parents freak out about children's academic progress. It could be their eight-year-old's below grade-level reading; or their middle-schooler's weak standardized test scores; or their high-school student's failure to keep up with the Jones' whiz kid who somehow aces three AP classes while playing two varsity sports and a musical instrument. Parental anxiety boosts demand for information about how to give kids a head start early in life, in the hope of avoiding academic trouble later.
How well and how much children read, in particular, is a hot topic at playgrounds swarming with toddlers, whose parents often intensely invest in their intellectual and social development, education, and well-being. In a new study, Michael Baker at the University of Toronto and Kevin Milligan at the University of British Columbia examine how such parents interact with their pre-school children. Baker and Milligan analyze surveys done in the United States, Canada, and Britain to delineate how parents spend that coveted one-on-one time, for example, in play, sports, reading, talking, singing, or arts and crafts.
One theory holds that girls might have a greater inclination toward such activities. (Theories suggesting innate differences between boys and girls and between men and women are hotly debated.) Another theory is that parents may be following cultural scripts and unconscious biases that suggest they should read with their daughters, and have active play with sons.
アトランティックの記者は、3人の子を持つ親として自分の子供たちを観察してみます。まあ、In the end, the children's individual differences mattered. Their gender did not.という結論に至っているので、それを言っちゃ～って感じになっていますが（苦笑） When researchers are stumped, they often call for more studies to shed light on unanswered questions. So here's a bit of data from a "natural experiment" done in the field: my home. As a mother of three boys and one girl, including boy-girl twins, I question whether little boys with the "wigglies" explains a gender difference in parental investment of time on teaching activities such as reading. One of my sons loves "story time," so we read together almost every night. Another experienced difficulty learning to read fluently, so we prioritized reading and practiced regularly for two years, despite his high energy, activity, and frequent resistance. Now here's where it gets interesting. With the twins, my daughter didn't show great interest in reading, but like the parents of boy-girl twins in Baker and Mulligan's study, I conscientiously tried to spend equal time reading with her and her brother. But my son liked reading non-fiction books such as The Magic School Bus series, and I too found them educational and entertaining. If I'd kept a time log, I'm sure it would show a gender difference--but one favoring the boys, in each case for a different reason.
For two of the boys, the "cost" of reading with them was low and, indeed, the "investment" yielded payoffs in knowledge acquisition and cuddles. For my third son, the urgency of making an investment to improve his reading skills obscured the cost: He needed more practice so he got the largest chuck of time. With my daughter, however, absent any particular urgency, payoff, or special subject-matter interest to motivate us, we read when we both felt like it. In the end, the children's individual differences mattered. Their gender did not.
(スクリプト) Listen, five years ago I knew nothing about Zombies but today I consider myself an expert. This whole thing started because I just wanted to do a film my boys could see before they turned 18, one they liked anyway and they loved Zombies. So we settled on this book, Max Brooks’ book called World War Z.
We were faced with two Herculean challenges. How do we keep the global spectacular dynamic scope of the book and how do we originate a Zombie film that’s been done quite often and really really well? What you are about to see is our answer to those two questions.
（答え） We were faced with two Herculean challenges.
（オックスフォード） Herculean adjective [usually before noun] needing a lot of strength, determination, or effort a Herculean task
origin From the Greek myth in which Hercules proved his courage and strength by completing twelve very difficult tasks (called the Labors of Hercules).
(ロングマン) Hercules in ancient Roman stories, a hero known for his very great strength and for performing twelve very difficult and dangerous jobs known as the Labours of Hercules. People sometimes use the name "Hercules" to describe a man who is physically very strong. In ancient Greek stories, his name is Herakles.
（アメリカンヘリテージ） Hercules n. 1. also Her·a·cles or Her·a·kles Greek & Roman Mythology The son of Zeus and Alcmene, a hero of extraordinary strength who won immortality by performing 12 labors demanded by the Argive king Eurystheus. 2. A constellation in the Northern Hemisphere near Lyra and Corona Borealis.
COVER STORY June 2013 Brad’s War In World War Z, Brad Pitt’s first attempt to build himself an action franchise, he would try to save the world from zombie domination. But amid delays, on-set drama, and rumors that the budget had ballooned above $200 million and that Pitt had clashed with director Marc Forster, Hollywood began to wonder if Paramount’s thriller was dead on arrival. As the blockbuster finally hits theaters, Laura M. Holson reports on the behind-the-scenes battles, the re-writes and reshoots, and the stakes involved. By Laura M. Holson Words checked = [6751] Words in Oxford 3000™ = [81%]
リーディングに関しては原作の方を読み始めたのですが、英語学習者にもおすすめできるかもしれません。副題にAn oral history of the zombie warとあるようにインタビュー形式で世界各地の状況を伝えるかたちになっているので、口語英語なので比較的英語がやさしくなっています。フィクションですが、日本も含めた世界各地が舞台となっているので、国連英検学習者の息抜きにはもってこいかもしれません。一番助かるのは、すでに翻訳版も出ていることですね（笑）
Bono’s daughter Eve Hewson will receive a degree from NYU at next week’s graduation ceremony, but the U2 frontman will not. We hear Bono politely turned down an offer to accept a graduate degree from the school, with sources telling us NYU also invited him to give the commencement speech at Yankee Stadium next Wednesday. A rep for Bono confirmed he was offered a degree, but not the speaking gig, explaining: “Bono was hugely honored to be asked by NYU to receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. Given his daughter is part of the graduating class, they discussed the invitation as a family and decided they wanted to keep the day a quiet one for the family in which Bono could simply be a very proud father.” Power lawyer and NYU Law alum David Boies will give the commencement speech and accept the Doctor of Laws honorary degree. A rep for NYU told us: “The process NYU undergoes to select its commencement honorees is confidential.”
何気ない記事ですが、最初の部分を読むだけでも表現を学んでいけます。
Bono’s daughter Eve Hewson will receive a degree from NYU at next week’s graduation ceremony, but the U2 frontman will not. We hear Bono politely turned down an offer to accept a graduate degree from the school.
丁重に断るは、politely turned down an offerのようにpolitelyをつければいいのか、それにwill receive a degreeがbut以降ではwill notで終わっていたり、a degree from NYUがa graduate degree from the schoolと言い換えられているなといろいろ自分なりの気づきを見付けられるでしょう。
英語でのコミュニケーションの観点からも大いに参考にできます。A rep for Bonoとボノの代理の言葉が以下です
“Bono was hugely honored to be asked by NYU to receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. Given his daughter is part of the graduating class, they discussed the invitation as a family and decided they wanted to keep the day a quiet one for the family in which Bono could simply be a very proud father.”
まず、was hugely honored と大変光栄であることを伝えて、申し出をしてくれた団体を立てていますよね。その後Given his daughter is part of the graduating classとGivenを使って状況説明をしています。Bono could simply be a very proud fatherなんて表現で断るのもスマートですよね。こういう話の組み立ては是非ともまねしていきたいです。
What is MESSIAH COMPLEX? is a complex in which sufferers have a desire to redeem and save others, some sufferers have harboured the delusion of being a saviour of people.
MESSIAH COMPLEX: "An individual suffering from a messiah complex typically believes they are a saviour of a group of people - hence, the name messiah."
（ウィキペディア） Limousine liberal Limousine liberal is a pejorative American political term used to illustrate hypocrisy by a political liberal of upper class or upper middle class status; including calls for the use of mass transit while frequently using limousines or private jets,[1] claiming environmental consciousness but driving low MPG sports cars or SUVs, or ostensibly supporting public education while actually sending their children to private schools.[2]
Champagne socialist Champagne socialist is a pejorative political term originating in the United Kingdom.[1][2] The phrase is used to describe self-identified socialists whose comfortable upper middle class lifestyles are perceived to be incompatible with their professed political convictions. The term is used by opposing politicians to portray and ridicule their opponents as hypocritical.[3][4]
> Rose: Both of these things we've been talking about today, music on the one hand and some commitment to make a better world, do they feed each other?
>> If music played a role for me it's probably as a kid looking out my bathroom window and listening to music having bob dylan or john len then or bob marley whispering words of dissent and encouragement into my ear.
What I got from their music was a simple idea that the world outside the window was not fixed. And it was more malleable than every else is telling you. We're telling you that the world can be changed and that you must change, too.
And I got this from songs and I've tried to demonstrate it as -- a band. Sometimes people say, oh, you " I won't play that song. That's the only John Lennon song I don't like.
They'd say "what do you mean? " I'd say no, no, I don't like -- I loved so many things about john lennon, you know? He wrote the blueprint. But imagining wasn't one of them. I'm more of a doing, more of an actions, more of a building and dreaming to me is a thing of the '60s.
Doing is a thing that we have to be a part of now and our manager paul McGuinness who I love and adore used to say to me, look, just describing the problem is the duty of the artist. Don't feel you have to go and do something about them.
But I can't -- I'm just whatever way I'm wired I feel I always want to -- to get involved in the thing so when we were part of live aid all those years ago and I saw the stories of those people that live far away with such december pyre, everyday despair, myself and ali got up and moved there for, like, five weeks and that turned my life upside down and following my nose, following my curiosity to understand people better, understand the world better, understand myself better.
What I got from their music was a simple idea that the world outside the window was not fixed. And it was more malleable than every else is telling you.と音楽を通じて、世界は固定されたものではなく変えることができると教えられた。We're telling you that the world can be changed and that you must change, too.と世界だけでなく、自分を変えていくことも入っていますね。
また、ジョンレノンのイマジンに不満な点をあげれば行動がないこと。He wrote the blueprint. But imagining wasn't one of them. I'm more of a doing, more of an actions, more of a building and dreaming to me is a thing of the '60s.と言っています。このあたりは社会派ロック的な態度が出ていますね。
Worked to Death By David Von Drehle Monday, May 20, 2013 Such callousness was once common in places like New York City, London and Paris. A century ago, it was understood that workers in the West put their lives on the line to sew clothes or make steel. In the rapidly developing U.S. circa 1910, nearly 100 workers died on the job every day on average. They were buried in collapsed mines, scalded by bursting steam engines, decapitated by flying saw blades, drowned aboard sinking ships.
（ウィキペディア） Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York and resulted in the fourth highest loss of life from an industrial accident in U.S. history. It was also the second deadliest disaster in New York City – after the burning of the General Slocum on June 15, 1904 – until the destruction of the World Trade Center 90 years later. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Jewish and Italian immigrant women aged sixteen to twenty-three;[1][2][3] of the victims whose ages are known, the oldest victim was Providenza Panno at 43, and the youngest were 14-year-olds Kate Leone and "Sara" Rosaria Maltese.[4]
Because the managers had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits – a common practice at the time to prevent pilferage and unauthorized breaks[5] – many of the workers who could not escape the burning building jumped from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors to the streets below. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers.
The factory was located in the Asch Building, at 23–29 Washington Place, now known as the Brown Building, which has been designated a National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark.[6]
The emotional reaction on beholding the horror in Bangladesh is naturally to vow never to buy so much as a T-shirt sewn in that country. The Walt Disney Co. decided to stop production of branded merchandise in Bangladesh in the wake of last month's fatal accident. But no one suffers more from a boycott than the impoverished workers themselves. The better idea is to engage, just as disparate reformers did after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Governments, corporations and individuals in developed countries have their own power, which they can put behind the message that endangering workers is no way to build an economy.
Kickstarter for Classrooms When I was a high-school student in Dallas, my math teacher Mrs. Bauer went to a conference and saw a demonstration of one of the first personal computers. She thought, These are going to be big. She enrolled in a night class in computer science so she could teach us how to use computers, even though she had to pay the tuition herself. Her dedication to bringing innovation into our classroom changed my life and launched a career I could never have imagined. How many of us had a teacher like Mrs. Bauer? Wouldn't it be great if we had a way to support the amazing educators who work so hard to expose their students to the world around them?
Well, we do, through DonorsChoose.org, which makes it easy to help teachers bring their ideas to life. DonorsChoose .org provides a simple way for people who want to lend a hand to help teachers meet their classroom needs.
Teaching is a very demanding job, and it's even tougher if teachers don't have a way to get the resources their students need. From kindergarten to high school, many public-school teachers routinely use their own money to buy materials for their classrooms, including basic items like pencils and books. If schools can't provide more expensive supplies, such as those for a chemistry lab, students have to go without and their learning suffers.
Through DonorsChoose.org, anyone can be connected to a specific teacher in a specific school with a specific idea abouta projectfor students. You can support teachers in your child's school, in your community, or anywhere in the country. You can choose projects in particular subjects you find interesting, from math and science to the humanities.
When you browse some of the projects at DonorsChoose.org, I think you'll be as impressed as I am by the creativity and resourcefulness of America's teachers. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is proud to support teachers and students by donating to DonorsChoose.org, and we encourage others to do the same. You never know how big an impact even a small contribution can make. -MELINDA GATES
30年に及ぶマラソンの中でボストンマラソンが一番気に入っているという話から、具体的なコースの説明をしていき、bombing in Bostonという言葉が出たのは以下の8パラグラフ目からでした。 Emotional scars may be similar. In a sense, the real pain begins only after some time has passed, after you’ve overcome the initial shock and things have begun to settle. Only once you’ve climbed the steep slope and emerged onto level ground do you begin to feel how much you’ve been hurting up till then. The bombing in Boston may very well have left this kind of long-term mental anguish behind.
Why? I can’t help asking. Why did a happy, peaceful occasion like the marathon have to be trampled on in such an awful, bloody way? Although the perpetrators have been identified, the answer to that question is still unclear. But their hatred and depravity have mangled our hearts and our minds. Even if we were to get an answer, it likely wouldn’t help.
To overcome this kind of trauma takes time, time during which we need to look ahead positively. Hiding the wounds, or searching for a dramatic cure, won’t lead to any real solution. Seeking revenge won’t bring relief, either. We need to remember the wounds, never turn our gaze away from the pain, and—honestly, conscientiously, quietly—accumulate our own histories. It may take time, but time is our ally.
For me, it’s through running, running every single day, that I grieve for those whose lives were lost and for those who were injured on Boylston Street. This is the only personal message I can send them. I know it’s not much, but I hope that my voice gets through. I hope, too, that the Boston Marathon will recover from its wounds, and that those twenty-six miles will again seem beautiful, natural, free.
痛ましい事件です。特に以下のようなレポートを見ると犯人に対して怒りがこみあげてきます。
EMILY ROONEY: So I'm sitting here looking thinking what would terrify me most, learning to drive again or not being able to play tennis? Do you have something?
ROSEANN SDOIA: The driving is a little scary, but I've had numerous people tell me that I can use my left foot. And then I've heard of different things that you can put in your car to adjust the driving or have it altered. So I'll drive at some point, but I think to me that's the scariest thing.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And is there something you're just going to say, well, I won't be able to do that again?
ROSEANN SDOIA: No. I haven't really thought of anything that I won't be able to do. I think -- I think there will be and I think that will be a down time when I hit it.
But everything has been -- I've been so positive just because I have to move forward. I can't -- there's no way to look back and say anything negative about it, or "I can't do that" or "I can't do this." I'm going to try to do whatever I can do.
先ほど取り上げた『砂の女』の一節がふさわしいのかわかりませんが、村上春樹は僕にとっては「片道切符のブルース」をしんみりと歌っている往復切符を持った人かもしれません。 Got a one way ticket to the blnes, woo woo―― （こいつは悲しい片道切符のブルースさ）……歌いたければ、勝手に歌うがいい。実際に、片道切符をつかまされた人間は、決してそんな歌い方などしないものだ。片道切符しか持っていない人種の、靴の踵は、小石を踏んでもひびくほどちびている。もうこれ以上歩かされるのは沢山だ。歌いたいのは、往復切符のブルースなのだ。片道切符とは、昨日と今日が、今日と明日が、つながりをなくして、ばらばらになってしまった生活だ。そんな、傷だらけの片道切符を、鼻歌まじりにしたりできるのは、いずれがっちり、往復切符をにぎった人間だけにきまっている。だからこそ、帰りの切符を紛失したり、盗まれたりしないようにと、あんなにやっきになり、株を買ったり、生命保険をかけたり、労働組合と上役に二枚舌をつかったりもするわけだ。風呂の流し口や、便所の穴から立ちのぼる、片道切符の連中の、助けを求めるあきらめの悪い叫び声から、耳をふさごうとして、やたらに大きな音でデレビをかけたり、せっせと片道切符のブルースを口ずさんだりすることにもなるわけだ。とらわれた人間の歌が、往復切符のブルースであっても、いぶかることは少しもない。
（英訳） Got a one way ticket to the blnes, woo woo …
If vou want to sing it, sing it. These days peple caught in the clches of the one-way ticket never sing it like that. The soles of those who have only a one-way ticket are so thin that they scream when they step on a pebble. They have had their fill of walking. "The Round-Trip Ticket Blues" is what they want to sing. A one-way ticket is a disjointed life that misses the links between yesterday and today, today and tomorrow. Only the man who obstinately hangs on to a round-trip ticket can hum with real sorrow a song of a one-way ticket. For this very reason he grows desperate lest the return half of his ticket be lost or stolen; he buys stocks, signs up for life insurance, and talks out of different sides of his mouth to his union pals and his superiors. He hums "The One-Way Ticket Blues" with all his night and, choosing a channel at random, turns the television up to full volume in an attempt to drown out the voices of those who have only a one-way ticket and who keep asking for help, voices that come up through the bathtub drain or the toilet hole. It would not be strange at all if "The Round-Trip Ticket Blues" were the song of mankind of imprisoned.
まあ、TIMEの最新号はME ME ME generationを特集していて、このような傾向を肯定的に捉えていこうとしているようです。読んでからこの特集の感想は書きたいと思います。
MAY 9, 2013 LOST IN TRANSLATION? POSTED BY ROLAND KELTS Last month, Haruki Murakami published a new novel in Japan. Before anyone could read it, the novel broke the country’s Internet pre-order sales record, its publisher announced an advance print run of half a million copies, and Tokyo bookstores opened at midnight to welcome lines of customers, some of whom read the book slumped in corners of nearby cafés straight after purchase. But this time, the mania was déjà vu in Japan—a near-replica of the reception that greeted Murakami’s last novel, “1Q84,” three years ago. The response was news to nearly no one. Except, maybe, Haruki Murakami.
“The fact that I have been able to become a professional working novelist is, even now, a great surprise to me,” Murakami wrote in an e-mail three days before the release of “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.” He added: “In fact, each and every thing that has happened over the past 34 years has been a sequence of utter surprise.” The real surprise, perhaps, is that Murakami’s novels now incite a similar degree of anticipation and hunger outside of Japan, even though they are written in a language spoken and read by a relatively small population on a distant and parochial archipelago in the North Pacific.
Murakami is a writer not only found in translation (in forty-plus languages, at the moment) but one who found himself in translation. He wrote the opening pages of his first novel, “Hear the Wind Sing,” in English, then translated those pages into Japanese, he said, “just to hear how they sounded.” And he has translated several other American writers into Japanese, most notably Raymond Carver, John Irving, J. D. Salinger, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose “The Great Gatsby” Murakami credits as the inspiration behind his entire career.
先ほどご紹介したMonkey Businessのシンポジウムは以下の部分を読んで知りました。英文学の受容のみならず、日本文学の紹介にも活躍されている柴田元幸さんはすごいです。 To fill that gap of understanding, Shibata and his friend Ted Goossen, a translator of Japanese literature and professor at Toronto’s York University, have for three years been publishing an annual English-language literary magazine called Monkey Business International: New Writing from Japan. (I am a contributing editor.) The project was born out of frustration: Why was Haruki Murakami the only contemporary Japanese writer anybody outside of Japan knew? Goossen urged Shibata to cull material from his own Japanese-language literary quarterly, the original Monkey Business. Murakami is a contributor, of course, but his writing takes on new colors alongside stories and poems by his Japanese contemporaries (younger and older), classic Japanese literature, and even Japanese manga.
村上春樹自身も翻訳にも注意を払っているようで、そのエピソードも紹介してくれています。 Still, I can’t help but wonder if the translation of literature, where the strengths and even personality of the original are embedded in the language, is futile, however heroic. “When you read Haruki Murakami, you’re reading me, at least ninety-five per cent of the time,” Jay Rubin, one of Murakami’s longtime translators, told me in Tokyo last month, explaining what he says to American readers, most of whom prefer to believe otherwise. “Murakami wrote the names and locations, but the English words are mine.” Murakami once told me that he never reads his books in translation because he doesn’t need to. While he can speak and read English with great sensitivity, reading his own work in another language could be disappointing—or worse. “My books exist in their original Japanese. That’s what’s most important, because that’s how I wrote them.”
But he clearly pays attention during the process of translation. Rubin said that the first time he translated a Murakami novel, “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,” he phoned the author several times a day to nail word choices and correct inconsistencies. “In one scene, a character had black-framed glasses. In another, the frames were brown. I asked him: Which one is it?” I found Rubin’s anecdote revealing. The Japanese language acquires much of its beauty and strength from indirectness—or what English-speakers call vagueness, obscurity, or implied meaning. Subjects are often left unmentioned in Japanese sentences, and onomatopoeia, with vernacular sounds suggesting meaning, is a virtue often difficult if not impossible to replicate in English.
村上春樹の翻訳についてのエッセイはリンク先で読めますが、彼はThe Great Gatsbyを訳しているんですよね。日本の映画上映は来月なので、原書と村上訳を読んでみたいなと思います。 Murakami would likely agree. In a recently published essay on his decision to render “The Great Gatsby” in Japanese, the sixty-four-year-old author reveals that it became something of a lifelong mission. He told others about his ambition in his thirties, and believed then that he’d be ready to undertake the challenge when he reached sixty. But he couldn’t wait. Like an overeager child unwrapping his presents, he translated “Gatsby” three years ahead of schedule. Translation, he writes, is similar to language and our relationship with our world. It, too, needs to be refreshed:
Translation is a matter of linguistic technique… which naturally ages as the particulars of a language change. While there are no undying works, on principle there can be no undying translations. It is therefore imperative that new versions appear periodically in the same way that computer programs are updated. At the very least this provides a broader spectrum of choices, which can only benefit readers.
Monkey Business 2013 (Complete) Share VideoEmbed codeSelectVideo linkSelect NEW YORK, May 4, 2013 — Novelist Paul Auster, poet Charles Simic, novelist and critic Gen’ichiro Takahashi, and tanka poet Mina Ishikawa engage in a cross-cultural dialogue between American and Japanese writers. Ted Goossen and Motoyuki Shibata, co-editors of the literary journal Monkey Business, facilitate the conversation. (1 hr., 51 min.)
Japanese and American Writers: Literature Inside and Outside 'the Box' NEW YORK, May 4, 2013 — In conjunction with the Ninth Annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, Asia Society hosted a cross-cultural encounter between leading American and Japanese writers that explored the challenges and rewards of contemporary literature in translation. Award-winning novelist Paul Auster and poet Charles Simic joined leading Japanese novelist and critic Gen'ichiro Takahashi and Mina Ishikawa, a fresh new voice in tanka poetry, in an afternoon of readings and discussion.
All of these writers are showcased in the current issue of Monkey Business, the innovative Japan/American literary journal (now in its third year) founded and edited by Motoyuki Shibata, a well-known Japanese translator of contemporary American literature. Monkey Business co-editor Ted Goossen moderated the afternoon's discussion with Shibata.
Poets Ishikawa and Simic explored the metaphor and formalism of poetry, especially short forms. Drawing on his book Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell, Simic referred to the work of the American visual artist Joseph Cornell, who created art works from boxes of found objects. Ishikawa offered the idea of tanka form as a version of Cornell's box, a small container which can contain what could be considered disparate words and concepts, "like putting words in a small box." Auster and Takahashi, both of whom are noted for their range across genres, came together with Auster commenting on how Takahashi's work encompasses everything from "violent satire to the most tender... [and] philosophical" modes.
Auster also lamented the current paucity of literature in English translation, noting that in the U.S. only 3% of books published are translations in compared to 60% of fiction published in Japan, which he feels "frustrating" as it is deprives him of being able to read more of Takahashi's work — out of Takashi's 15 novels, only his first book, Sayonara, Gangsters, has been translated into English.
この書評は2006年にペンギンクラシックスとして『砂の女』と『他人の顔』が再刊されるために、日本に住んでいたディヴィッド・ミッチェルに依頼したという感じでしょうか。 • The Woman in the Dunes and The Face of Another by Kobo Abe are reissued by Penguin Classics this month. To order a copy of The Woman in the Dunes for £8.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875. The DVD is rereleased by BFI Video Publishing (£19.99).
Things fail to go as planned, and the woman reveals a more chilling face. She tells the man how the village union sells sand illegally to a concrete manufacturer. The man fulminates that this would endanger the lives of all those dependent on dams not bursting and bridges not collapsing. The woman replies, accusingly, "Why should we worry what happens to other people?" A Japanese reader of The Woman in the Dunes is invited to assume that the villagers are burakumin, the little-discussed caste of untouchables historically obliged to work in "unclean" trades such as butchery, tanning or sewage removal and live where nobody else wanted to, and who were considered little better than animals. The villagers thus have just cause to distrust - to despise - a mainstream society that has always oppressed them.
The novel is not an apologia for the burakumin, but it does suggest that the man is trapped in a class war - or caste war - unacknowledged by society at large, yet taken for granted by the burakumin. This flash of relativism challenges the man's conviction that he is the innocent victim and the villagers the guilty perpetrators.
舞台監督、詩人でもあった安部公房ならではの文体を指摘しているところは作家ならではの詩的かもしれません。 Abe is an accomplished stylist. He was apt to frame his novels in "found" notebooks or other written artefacts, and The Woman in the Dunes closes with the missing persons report mentioned on its first page. It includes a page or two of its protagonist's jottings to himself; a dream, a hallucinatory flashback here and there, but the structure is simple and linear. The language, in E Dale Saunders' prudent and still crisp 1964 translation, has the clarity of a parable. Abe's first publication in 1947 was a privately mimeographed book entitled Poems of an Unknown Poet (Mumei Shishu), and the poet's eye - and discretion - informs Abe's use of imagery in his novels: "the sun was boiling mercury"; "it was like trying to build a house in the sea by brushing the water aside".
A further point of stylistic interest in many of Abe's novels is the sparseness both of their casts and their locations. Most of The Woman in the Dunes occurs either inside or immediately outside the woman's house, almost as if it were conceived for the theatre. Abe also enjoyed an international reputation as a playwright, and Abe the Stylist was informed by Abe the Stage Manager as well as Abe the Poet.
「鳥のように、飛び立ちたいと願う自由もあれば、巣ごもって、誰からも邪魔されまいと願う自由もある。飛砂におそわれ、埋もれていく、ある貧しい海辺の村にとらえられた一人の男が、村の女と、砂掻きの仕事から、いかにして脱出をなしえたか――色も、匂いもない、砂との闘いを通じて、その二つの自由の関係を追求してみたのが、この作品である。砂を舐めてみなければ、おそらく希望の味も分るまい」という安部公房自身の解説を読んでからだと以下の部分は少し分かりやすくなるかもしれません。 For this reader, the novel flaunts its symbolic and literal point and counter-point in its title. The woman is the animate; the mortal; the flesh; the impetus for sex; consolation in the cell of the unendurable. The dunes are the inanimate; the eternal; what confines us; the unendurable itself. Sand permeates the novel like a third major character. Sand gets in the food, the house, in clothes, into clocks. It is while brushing sand off each other's bodies that the man and the woman are ushered into sex. The sand of these dunes, laden with dampness, does not preserve but rots everything it touches: wood, leather, fabric, "morality". Like time itself, "Sand not only flows, but this very flow is the sand". To combat its voracity is what requires hapless men to be held captive in the first place. Sand is the prison: literally, symbolically; and not just for the man. We, too, are down in this burning sandpit. We, too, must spend a lifetime doing a job as meaningless (to the universe at large, if not to ourselves) as shovelling never-ending deposits of sand into buckets, getting nothing for our pains but the barest essentials. As we read about the man's predicament, existentially speaking, we are reading about our own.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. Buddhism is predicated on the impermanence of all things, including Buddhism. In a not dissimilar way, the meditations on freedom, captivity, the transient and the immutable in The Woman in the Dunes invite, and allow for, misinterpretations - which might be another word for "reinterpretations". Even the novel's opening epigram, "Without the threat of punishment there is no joy in flight", has fuzzy edges: is this an oppressor's justification or a would-be fugitive's consolation?
アバンギャルドすぎる感じがするのでタイトルだけをもらった気がします（苦笑）BBCのWorld Book ClubでDavid Mitchellの2010年の放送の再放送があったのですが、そこではCloud Atlas Sextetのイメージの一人として武満 徹の名をあげていました。
David Mitchell Rpt Sat, 2 Feb 13 Duration:54 mins David Mitchell talks to Harriett Gilbert, a studio audience and readers around the world about his bestselling novel Cloud Atlas which is also released as a feature film around the world.
このラジオではthe weak are meat the strong do eatについて視聴者から質問を受けて、「弱肉強食」という日本語からだと話していました。彼の奥さんに聞かないと本当の意味は分からないと言っていましたが、この本の基本コンセプトの一つだと語っていました。英語学習的にはmeat/eatと韻を踏んでいるところも注目したいですね。
Japan Railway & Transport Review No. 42 (pp.60–61)
Another Perspective Japan and My Writing David Mitchell I need to write a paragraph about how Japanese arts have influenced me. This is a ruthlessly edited list. Haiku, I feel, is the optimum of ‘less is more.’ I would love to make such complex compounds in such simple crucibles. The ending of Ghostwritten is influenced directly by the ending of Mishima's problematic masterpiece, The Sea of Fertility, which in turn comes from Buddhist reality-is-illusion art. Haruki Murakami's novels show how literature can marry popular culture to cook up humour and metaphor. Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters exemplify how compulsive the mundane can become if you look at it in the right way. Zen art uses space as matter pregnant with possible meaning, and Toru Takemitsu's otherworldly compositions demonstrate how loud silence can be. Japanese film is adept at dialogue-through-gesture—perhaps this tradition has its roots in Noh theatre. Don't make a character say it—move the character's head, in just the right way, and it is said. I could have and would have learned the same things from non-Japanese sources (Bill Evans the jazz pianist is a master of the silent note, and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is an ordinary life in an extraordinary book) but it so happens I learned them through the media of Japanese art, and I think they affect the way I write.
映画『クラウドアトラス』は原作の世界観を十分に表現できなかったと批判する人もいますが、原作よりもよくなっている点もあるそうです。Doona's Sonmi is better than mine.とペ・ドゥナを褒めていました。
David Mitchell: 'I don't want to project myself as this great experimenter' David Mitchell never imagined his novel Cloud Atlas, with its labyrinth of interlocking stories, could be adapted for the screen. So what made him entrust Hollywood with the challenge? Stuart Jeffries The Guardian, Friday 8 February 2013 18.00 GMT
He's now writing his sixth novel, which was until recently billed on Wikipedia as the story of a young girl growing up in Ireland. "I hate to replace Wikipedia with the truth, but it's not about a girl growing up in Ireland – Claire Keegan and John McGahern have done that far too well for me, a British blow-in, to try it." He says the manuscript has to be handed in by June, but he won't reveal what it's about. Just before the interview ends, Mitchell tells me of another assault on his literary ego. I ask him what he liked most about Cloud Atlas, the movie - Hugh Grant cast against type as face-painted cannibal? Hanks's hilarious London-Irish accent? Mitchell say that, for him, the most impressive thing was the performance of Korean actress Bae as Sonmi-451. "In the book, she's a genetically modified human and she's got a limited working vocabulary of two or three hundred words. Then she's injected with stuff and narrates her recent past with newly acquired vocabulary. You know when you haven't got it right. But Doona did, partly because she learned English fast for the part. Doona's Sonmi is better than mine."
LOS ANGELES — As very early box-office numbers for “The Great Gatsby” rolled in — a strong $3.25 million from the Thursday late-night shows, Warner Brothers said on Friday morning — it was already becoming clear that the audience has a mind of its own.
More than a few critics were rough on the film. (“There may be worse movies this summer than ‘The Great Gatsby,’ but there won’t be a more crushing disappointment,” wrote Peter Travers, who reviewed it for Rolling Stone.) But Friday morning found Hollywood’s box office watchers privately predicting opening weekend numbers even higher than the $40 million or so being publicly bandied about in various reports.
（グーテンベルクから） Outside the wind was loud and there was a faint flow of thunder along the Sound. All the lights were going on in West Egg now; the electric trains, men-carrying, were plunging home through the rain from New York. It was the hour of a profound human change, and excitement was generating on the air.
ONE THING'S SURE AND NOTHING'S SURER THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET--CHILDREN. IN THE MEANTIME, IN BETWEEN TIME----
As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby's face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
As I watched him he adjusted himself a little, visibly. His hand took hold of hers and as she said something low in his ear he turned toward her with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most with its fluctuating, feverish warmth because it couldn't be over-dreamed--that voice was a deathless song.
They had forgotten me, but Daisy glanced up and held out her hand; Gatsby didn't know me now at all. I looked once more at them and they looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. Then I went out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them there together.
こういうときの喜びを表す表現は学べそうなのでAP通信の動画を見てみます。 World Trade Center Hits Record Height 公開日: 2013/05/10 The silver spire topping One World Trade Center on Friday brought the structure to its final height of 1,776 feet. Loud applause and cries of joy erupted from construction workers as the spire was gently lowered and secured into place. (May 10)
This is a great day for the country, it’s a great day for the Port Authority and particularly for all the thousands of workers that workers tirelessly to make this a reality. This has been more than a job for these guys; this has been a mission and they’ve been passionate and truly they’ve been working day and night as tribute to the victims of 9/11, a horrific event that happened here on this very site. I think people now are coming to New York to view and see this building as a symbol of the resiliency of our country, and freedom and liberty. And it’s great to have it back off today.
It is nice to be a part of it. Finally we’ve reached it. It’s symbolic, everybody knows that. I’m excited and proud to be here.
It’s an emotional day. People have been working on this for a decade. And the men and women working on this project, as I said, they’ve given their blood, sweat and tears. When the spire went up, there were tears in the guys’s eyes. You know, it’s not about handshakes. Today it’s about hugs. It’s about remenbering why we’re here. We’re going to rebuild for the good of the county. We’re going to rebuild bigger and bettter to show people that you know our freedom and liberty is something we are going to defend. People can attack it. But it’s is not something, We have resiliency and strength to come back to build the stronger.
以下のようなものは、どんな状況でも応用できそうですね。 This is a great day for the country It is nice to be a part of it. I’m excited and proud to be here
責任者の方がねぎらう言葉もありましたね。 This has been more than a job for these guys; this has been a mission they’ve been working day and night as tribute to the victims of 9/11 I think people now are coming to New York to view and see this building as a symbol of the resiliency of our country, and freedom and liberty.
以下のような泥臭い言葉もありました。blood, sweat and tearsとおなじみのイディオム表現が使われています。
It’s an emotional day. People have been working on this for a decade. And the men and women working on this project, as I said, they've given their blood, sweat and tears. When the spire went up, there were tears in the guys’s eyes.
One World Trade Center Reaches New Heights [VIDEO] When the Twin Towers were destroyed on 9/11, officials promised to rebuild. It took nearly a dozen years. (Cheers) And now, the new World Trade Center has reached its full height. With chants of USA!, construction workers put into place a long spire, making the new tower exactly 1,776 feet tall. It was a moment of celebration:
Construction workers: “This is a great day for the country.” // “We’re making history. It’s a long time coming.” // “It’s great to finish off the building.”
There’s still more construction work to be done, but the new World Trade Center is now the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.
Words checked = [3731] Words in Oxford 3000™ = [82%]
On a normal weeknight, Netflix (NFLX) accounts for almost a third of all Internet traffic entering North American homes. That’s more than YouTube, Hulu, Amazon.com (AMZN), HBO Go, iTunes, and BitTorrent combined. Traffic to Netflix usually peaks at around 10 p.m. in each time zone, at which point a chart of Internet consumption looks like a python that swallowed a cow. By midnight Pacific time, streaming volume falls off dramatically.
記事の書き出しでびっくりしたのが、米国のネット上のトラフィックのほぼ３分の１をNetflixが締めているということです。thousands of customers binge-watched the show（何千人もの顧客が番組を連続で見ている）と何話も連続で見るbinge-watchという言葉が動詞で使われていますね。
Netflix has more than 36 million subscribers. They watch about 4 billion hours of programs every quarter on more than 1,000 different devices. To meet this demand, the company uses specialized video servers scattered around the world. When a subscriber clicks on a movie to stream, Netflix determines within a split second which server containing that movie is closest to the user, then picks from dozens of versions of the video file, depending on the device the viewer is using. At company headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif., teams of mathematicians and designers study what people watch and build algorithms and interfaces to present them with the collection of videos that will keep them watching.
Netflix is one of the world’s biggest users of cloud computing, which means running a data center on someone else’s equipment. The company rents server and storage systems by the hour, and it rents all this computing power from Amazon Web Services, the cloud division of Amazon.com, which runs its own video-streaming service that competes with Netflix.
It’s a mutually beneficial frenemy relationship. Over the years, Netflix has built an array of sophisticated tools to make its software perform well on Amazon’s cloud. Amazon has mimicked the advances and offered them to other business customers. President Barack Obama’s data-fueled reelection campaign, for example, was run almost entirely on Amazon with the help of code built by Netflix engineers.
While Netflix started out as a DVD-by-mail rental service, it’s now striving to become something far more complex: an entertainment power on par with HBO, if not HBO’s parent company, Time Warner (TWX). Netflix plans to lead the shift to delivering television-style programming over the Internet and has developed sophisticated technology to support that transition. The company has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in original series—House of Cards, Hemlock Grove, Arrested Development, Orange Is the New Black, a Ricky Gervais show called Derek, and Turbo: F.A.S.T., a kids show co-produced with DreamWorks Animation (DWA)—to become a major player in Hollywood. “We think of the technology as a vehicle for creating a better, more modern experience for the content we have,” says Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings. “What we’re really competing for quite broadly is people’s time.”
About 18 months ago, Netflix and Hastings were spending much of their time trying to save face. Netflix had awkwardly unveiled plans to raise prices and separate into two companies—a DVD mailer called Qwikster and a streaming entity still under the Netflix name—and lost millions of customers in the process. The share price fell from $298 to $52.81.
After issuing a flurry of apologies, Netflix has mounted one of the all-time great comebacks. House of Cards arrived to mostly spectacular reviews, while investors were equally enthusiastic about the company’s first-quarter results. Revenue rose 18 percent from the same period last year to $1.02 billion, while the company added 2 million subscribers in the U.S. alone, dispelling widespread fears that its growth had slowed. Shares of Netflix are back above $200. It’s one of the best-performing stocks of the year.
Sony PS4 may not achieve expected shipments in 2013 Aaron Lee, Taipei; Joseph Tsai, DIGITIMES [Monday 6 May 2013] Sony's PlayStation (PS) 4 may have trouble achieving shipments of 12-16 million units in 2013 as expected, as the related upstream supply chain has not yet received any shipment instructions from the Japan-based vendor, implying a possible delay in the game console's mass shipment schedule, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.
Sony originally told its upstream suppliers that it will start shipping its new PS4 game consoles in June with mass shipments scheduled in August, and shipment volumes would have a chance to reach 20 million units in 2013.
わざわざ元記事を当たってみようと思ったのは「ゲーム機の販売台数が3400万台（2008年）から5500万台（2012年）に落ち込んでいる」というくだりに違和感を感じたからです。落ち込んでいるのに増えていますからねえ（苦笑）案の定dropping 40% from the peak of 55 million units in 2008 to only 34 million units in 2012.と台数が逆でした。。。。 しかしながら量産開始の遅延により出荷台数に影響が出るおそれがあるとされており、原因としてタブレット端末などのモバイル機器がゲーム市場のメインプラットフォームとなりつつあり、ゲーム機の販売台数が3400万台（2008年）から5500万台（2012年）に落ち込んでいることなどが挙げられています。
Because of handheld devices such as tablets, games consoles, which used to be the mainstream of the gaming market, have seen shrinking demand over the past few years with overall sales dropping 40% from the peak of 55 million units in 2008 to only 34 million units in 2012.
The best three entries will be sent, along with the authors’ names, to Mars aboard MAVEN, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission. The winners will also get a certificate of their involvement in the project.
The contest runs until May 20; MAVEN is expected to launch late this fall.
MAVEN’s mission, as Jakosky’s statement would indicate, is to hang out over and around Mars and find out where the planet’s atmosphere went. Because Mars is full of features like riverbeds and contains minerals that indicate the previous presence of water, scientists don’t think it’s a wild guess to speculate that Mars once had a thick atmosphere capable of containing water on the planet’s surface. Clearly, this is not the case today.
So MAVEN is going to dabble in atmospheric forensics, looking at today’s Martian solar winds and ionic activity and gathering data to figure out a bit more about how the planet’s atmosphere decayed.
Send your name & message to Mars! Go to Mars with MAVEN! Submit your name and a message to be sent into Mars orbit on the MAVEN spacecraft.
Who can submit a name and where will it go? Anybody on planet Earth is welcome to participate! However, to create a log-in you must be 18 or older. If you are under 18 and you would like to enter, please ask your parent or teacher for help.
Your name will be written to a DVD and sent into Mars orbit on the MAVEN spacecraft.
What is the Message to Mars contest? Craft your own original message to Mars! Messages, which must be in the form of a haiku poem, will be voted on by the public; the top three most popular entries will be sent to Mars onboard the MAVEN spacecraft and will be prominently displayed on the MAVEN website.
Messages must be in English.
How do I submit my name and message? You must be logged in to submit your name and message.
俳句コンテストの上位３つは、the top three most popular entries will be sent to Mars onboard the MAVEN spacecraft and will be prominently displayed on the MAVEN website.とありますから、MAVENの機体とウエブサイト上で紹介してもらえるということでしょうか。
ワシントンポストは以下のように締めていました。我こそはという方は是非！ You can use that as inspiration for your haiku.
GEEK CHICMay 3, 2013, 4:24 p.m. ET The Best E-Reader: Kobo's Aura HD With its remarkably sharp screen, a new luxury e-reader soars to the top of the nightstand, beating out the Kindle and Nook. The new Aura HD, from the Canadian company Kobo, is the first model that rivals the printed page. The biggest improvement is the screen—it displays text at 265 dots per inch (dpi), compared with the Kindle Paperwhite's 212 dpi or the Nook SimpleTouch's 167 dpi. While the differences between the numbers may seem relatively inconsequential, the Aura HD's higher resolution makes text markedly sharper. The screen is slightly larger, too: 6.8 inches diagonal instead of the 6 inches that are standard today—a subtle increase that fits considerably more words on each page.
解像度も細かくなり、大きさも6.8インチと少し大きくなっているのですね。もちろん、最大の欠点はアマゾンなど他の書店で買った電子書籍を読むことはできないということですね。それでもこのレビューアは、本好きなら値段も高いこのKobo Auraを買って損はないと一押ししています。 For those who have invested in e-books from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, switching to the Aura HD won't be easy. Most e-books purchased from each store are only viewable on that brand's devices. (Hopefully, this will change; six years after the iTunes Store launched, it began selling music that could be played on any device, not just iPods.) But Kobo's store is just as sprawling as its competitors', with over 3 million titles.
The Aura HD costs $170—more than the top-of-the-line Kindle and Nook models (both $119). For those who don't just read books, but devour them, it's a premium worth paying. $170, kobo.com
the last word Sayonara Tokyo Taking a Japan adolescence back to the UK Apr 25, 2013 | Issue: 996 | 5 Comments | 1,158 views I can also thank Japan for my eating habits. Five-year-olds are fussy eaters, but for me, eating raw fish and seaweed became less fearful and more enjoyable. Fish for breakfast might be an alien concept back home. But the interest the Japanese take in eating healthily has rubbed off on me. Drinking green tea and eating a nutritious bento at lunchtime has become something to carry on throughout my lifetime—trading potato chips for edamame all the way.
以上のパラグラフでDrinking green tea and eating a nutritious bento at lunchtime has become something to carry on throughout my lifetimeという文がありました。eating a nutritious bentoとbentoをそのまま使いnutritiousという形容詞までつけていますよね。
（前略） My first day sailed by smoothly, with the exception of one awkward trip as I was walking up the stairs. I observed as much as I could, bowed profusely when required, and plastered a look of “learning and concentrating” across my face.
Twelve-thirty rolled around, and coworkers began reaching into their bags for lunch. Taking cue, I too reached for my bag and produced my standard favorites: an avocado and cheese sandwich, a pottle of yoghurt, and a misshapen mandarin. Admittedly not the sexiest of lunches, but it does the trick.
Chatting awkwardly to my co-workers I noticed their eyes darting nervously between my lunch and me. Was something wrong? Was there avocado smeared across my teeth? Nervously tonguing each tooth I concluded that no, there was no avocado.
I ate quickly and returned to my desk to resume my “learning and concentrating” face, but my coworkers’ expressions stayed in my mind. What had I seen in their eyes? Pity? Confusion? General horror?
サンドイッチとヨーグルト、オレンの弁当を同僚から怪訝な顔をされたことにショックを受けています。次の日も、同じように怪訝な顔をされたので周りの人の弁当を見てやっと理解できたというのです。 The next day I pulled out my sandwich proudly. Today was pesto, cheese and chicken. Yet, despite the sexier ingredients, the same pitiful expressions stared back at me. Suddenly it occurred to me to look at what they were eating. Everything fell into place.
Lacquered boxes adorned the table; each individually packed with tantalizing treats. I could see rice, fish, pickled vegetables and sushi rolls, as well as small bowls of miso. The intricacy, love and attention that had been placed into each lunch box transformed my sandwich to a dry lump in the back of my throat. One colleague even had rice and seaweed fashioned to look like a panda bear. I hung my head in shame.
１カ月後、同僚になんでそんな顔をしたのか聞いたところ、小さなサンドイッチだけではお腹がすいてしまうのではないかと感想を語っていました。確かに日本人ならそのように思うかもしれませんね。 Months later, when I was feeling brave enough to ask, I asked a colleague about their pitying looks on my first few days. “We were worried you would get hungry. It was such a tiny sad little sandwich.”
少し脱線しましたが、Drinking green tea and eating a nutritious bento at lunchtime has become something to carry on throughout my lifetimeの文で、eating a nutritious bentoのように書くことの大切さ、弁当はlunch boxと単に字面を置き換えることをしてよしとするのではなく、日本の弁当は特殊なのでbentoとそのままにしてさらにnutritiousとおかずも豊富なので栄養があることを示唆するという表現の工夫は大切だなと思ったしだいです。
フリーペーパーのMetropolisの最後にあるThe Last Wordは日本在住のライターが日本について思ったことを書くものです。今回は日本でインターナショナルスクールに通っていたイギリスのJessica Chambersさんがイギリスの大学に戻るために日本の思い出を語っていました。 Jessica Chambers is an 18-year-old international school student who will be leaving Japan this summer for new adventures back home in the UK
日本の英語表現としてもいろいろ参考になるので、その当たりも見ていきたいと思います。
the last word Sayonara Tokyo Taking a Japan adolescence back to the UK Apr 25, 2013 | Issue: 996 | 5 Comments | 1,158 views I have been living in Tokyo for nearly a decade, most of my adolescence has been spent here, and I have been heavily influenced by the culture and experiences I have been lucky enough to have in this buzzing metropolis. When I first moved to Japan, I was only four. I had never been to Asia before and the experience was too much to comprehend. But I’m positive the time I spent in Tokyo then contributed in making me who I am today.
But I’m positive the time I spent in Tokyo then contributed in making me who I am today.なんて言ってもらえると日本人として嬉しいですね。making me who I am today（今の私を作るのに）みたいな表現は簡単な語ですが日本人ですっと書ける人は少ないかもしれません。 I can also thank Japan for my eating habits. Five-year-olds are fussy eaters, but for me, eating raw fish and seaweed became less fearful and more enjoyable. Fish for breakfast might be an alien concept back home. But the interest the Japanese take in eating healthily has rubbed off on me. Drinking green tea and eating a nutritious bento at lunchtime has become something to carry on throughout my lifetime—trading potato chips for edamame all the way.
eating raw fish and seaweed became less fearful and more enjoyableとあるように刺身に抵抗のある外国人は少なくないのでしょうね。Drinking green tea and eating a nutritious bento at lunchtime has become something to carry on throughout my lifetimeの文は主語を入れ替えればいろいろと応用できそうな表現ですね。something to carry on throughout my lifetimeなんてのも日本人が英作文しようとしても書けないでしょうね。
Any apprehension was lifted as we arrived in Tokyo in the midst of spring. Sakura fell like snow onto the grey tarmac streets of central Tokyo. A scene that may have been mundane a month before became something picturesque. Sakura in Tokyo is one of the things I will miss most.
I believe it was these brief periods of time each year that taught me to find the beauty in things that would otherwise be considered ugly.
（ケンブリッジ） apprehension worry about the future, or a fear that something unpleasant is going to happen: > It's normal to feel a little apprehension before starting a new job. > There is some apprehension in the office about who the new director will be.
Sakura fell like snow onto the grey tarmac streets of central Tokyo.はちょっぴり詩的に表現していますが、アスファルトの通りのことをtarmac streetsと言うんですね。
When I leave this summer for university in the UK, I will miss Japan infinitely. But I will take the experiences I’ve had here with me throughout my life. Japan is a wonderful place for making memories. I hope any other kids and teenagers (and their parents) who read this will also realize the impact living here will have on them and appreciate this city for what it truly is—awesome.
I will take the experiences I’ve had here with me throughout my life.と語ってくれているように彼女は日本でたくさんのよい経験ができたようでよかったです。take … throughout one’s lifeなんて表現も読むとなんでもないですが、こういうのをさらっと英語で書けるようになりたいですね。
Always in Style by Philip Hook Published: 2009年5月14日 （前略） The appeal of the Impressionist paintings today is no longer edgy. By comparison with works by Modigliani or Magritte or Picasso, they seem old-fashioned. They have been overlaid with history. But that doesn’t mean they lack an audience. People find the works attractive because of the brightness of their colors, the serenity of their subject matter and the allure of the period they document. Collectors like the recognizability of the style and the lingering romance that attaches to Impressionist painters as the harbingers of modern art — men and women who weren’t understood in their own time. Not the least satisfying part of the enduring Impressionist myth is the reassurance it brings of human progress and the opportunity it provides for the smugness of hindsight. This is art that was difficult for the artists’ poor, misguided contemporaries to comprehend but that is easy to grasp for us, their enlightened descendants.
Over recent years the emerging economies — Russia, China, India and the countries of the Middle East — have spawned increasing numbers of superrich collectors who have been drawn into the art market. A sizable proportion of them have bought Impressionist paintings. So new money’s enchantment with the Impressionists repeats itself, on a more globalized scale. But as banks collapsed and financial markets went into meltdown at the end of 2008, dealers and auction houses held their breath. Would demand for such expensive art carry through into the new year?
The answer turned out to be an emphatic yes. At the unexpectedly successful Sotheby’s and Christie’s London sales that were held in February, the highest prices were achieved by a Degas — the posthumous bronze Petite danseuse de quatorze ans, 1922, which brought £13.3 million ($19 million) — and a Monet, Dans la prairie, 1876, fetching £11.2 million ($16.1 million). There was continuing competition from buyers hailing from the emerging economies. New collectors entered the fray.
Great Impressionist art is rare. Naysayers note that the quantity of good works available is not the same as it was a generation ago, and they’re right. But this rarity drives up bidding. How will the sparkling early Renoir Jeune femme à l’ombrelle, 1868, do on May 5 at Sotheby’s, which has estimated the painting at $700,000 to $900,000? However it plays out, the high price tag attached to the whole category is part of its appeal. Buying an Impressionist painting goes beyond investment and becomes an assertion of wealth, both cultural and financial. In other words, such work is still the ultimate trophy.
自分には以下の部分が印象的です。the reassurance it brings of human progressとあるように、まあ人類の進歩はおおげさかもしれませんが、生活の明るい面を描いているのが印象派という感じですよね。
Not the least satisfying part of the enduring Impressionist myth is the reassurance it brings of human progress and the opportunity it provides for the smugness of hindsight. This is art that was difficult for the artists’ poor, misguided contemporaries to comprehend but that is easy to grasp for us, their enlightened descendants.
印象派とファッションに焦点をあてた展覧会Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernityがフランスのオルセー美術館、米国のメトロポリタン美術館やシカゴの美術館を巡回しているようです。以下はメッツの案内です。
Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity presents a revealing look at the role of fashion in the works of the Impressionists and their contemporaries. Some eighty major figure paintings, seen in concert with period costumes, accessories, fashion plates, photographs, and popular prints, highlight the vital relationship between fashion and art during the pivotal years, from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s, when Paris emerged as the style capital of the world. With the rise of the department store, the advent of ready-made wear, and the proliferation of fashion magazines, those at the forefront of the avant-garde—from Manet, Monet, and Renoir to Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Zola—turned a fresh eye to contemporary dress, embracing la mode as the harbinger of la modernité. The novelty, vibrancy, and fleeting allure of the latest trends in fashion proved seductive for a generation of artists and writers who sought to give expression to the pulse of modern life in all its nuanced richness. Without rivaling the meticulous detail of society portraitists such as James Tissot or Alfred Stevens or the graphic flair of fashion plates, the Impressionists nonetheless engaged similar strategies in the making (and in the marketing) of their pictures of stylish men and women that sought to reflect the spirit of their age.
Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity an exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, September 25, 2012–January 20, 2013; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, February 26–May 27, 2013; and the Art Institute of Chicago, June 26–September 22, 2013 Catalog of the exhibition edited by Gloria Groom Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 335 pp., $65.00; $40.00 (paper)
"The decline of everyday home cooking doesn't only damage the health of our bodies and our land but also our families, our communities, and our sense of how our eating connects us to the world." -- MICHAEL POLLAN, AUTHOR OF "COOKED"
（スクリプト） JEFFREY BROWN: Now, the book -- and we're not going to go into all the -- but you divide it into classical categories of fire, barbecue, water, cooking in pots, air, baking, and earth, right, various forms of fermentation.
And you make yourself a sort of food -- a cook-to-be tourist, I guess, or not tourist, but ...
MICHAEL POLLAN: A student, apprentice.
JEFFREY BROWN: Student, yes, yes.
MICHAEL POLLAN: So what I did was a found a master of each of -- I divided cooking into these four big important transformations. These are the common denominators of anything you would make.
And then I looked for masters in each one, and I apprenticed myself and learned at their feet. And the book is really the story of my education.
You know, I'm willing to call it reporting, but it was really just fun. And I have never had more fun working on a book.
JEFFREY BROWN: One of the most amazing phenomenon of our time, I think -- and you do write about it -- you call it the cooking paradox.
MICHAEL POLLAN: Yes.
JEFFREY BROWN: That we watch so much -- that cooks, chefs are celebrities, that proliferation of all these programs about cooking, that we end up watching more than we actually cook ourselves.
MICHAEL POLLAN: Yes.
The average American today cooks only 27 minutes a day, puts that much time into preparing food, four minutes for cleanup. Your average Food Network show is 30 minutes or an hour.
JEFFREY BROWN: Why do you think this happens?
MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, to me, it was a very important clue about the importance of cooking, because there are many things in our lives we have outsourced and we haven't looked back, sewing our clothing, changing the oil in your car.
JEFFREY BROWN: Right.
MICHAEL POLLAN: We're very happy to outsource that and, OK, that's fine.
Cooking is different. I think people have very strong feelings about cooking. We all have memories of being in the kitchen when our mom was preparing a meal or our grandmother and watching those alchemies unfold and that wonderful smell and the feeling of love as she presented the thing she worked hard on.
So I don't think we're quite ready to let it go. And I think that's one of the reasons we're obsessing about it. The mystery is, why don't we do it? And I think a lot of people feel daunted. It's -- one of the interesting things about those cooking shows is they don't actually motivate you to cook. They make it look too hard.
Michael Pollan reads an excerpt from his new book, "Cooked," in which he tells the story of how he learned to make kimchi, the difference between "tongue taste" vs. "hand taste" and the cook's role in developing flavor.
PBSのReligion & Ethicsというお堅そうな番組でRoom to Readが取り上げられていました。リンク先にはスクリプトもあるので助かります。主にカンボジアの取り組みを紹介しています。ジョンウッズが番組で以下のように語っていますが、Their faces light up.とあるように子供たちの顔を見るとたまらなくなります。
WOOD: If you look around the developing world, when you bring bright, colorful children’s books into a child’s life, there’s just something instinctive, inherent inside them where they just get it immediately. Their faces light up.
May 3, 2013: Room to Read When former Microsoft executive John Wood discovered the world’s need for books, he was trekking in Nepal and says he recalled what he had read in the Dalai Lama’s book “The Art of Happiness” about the importance of giving something to someone in need. May 3rd, 2013 | 0 comments
Girl Risingというドキュメンタリーがあるのですが、これにもRoom to Readが関わった少女が登場しているそうです。この映画はちょうど全米で上映会が草の根で進められているようです。
Room to Readは図書館を作るだけかと思ったら、ネパールで強制労働させられている子供たちを助けるようなこともしていたのですね。
‘One Girl With Courage Is a Revolution’ POSTED BY ROBERT O. BLAKE / APRIL 30, 2013 Suma Tharu, a girl from Nepal, was sold into indentured servitude (Kamlari) at the age of six and braved another six years of forced labor and physical abuse, before a teacher took her under his wing. With the help of an NGO called Room to Read, whose work is supported by the State Department, Suma joined a local school and is close to graduating from high school. She plans to become a health educator and advocate for girls' education and ending the Kamlari system that entrapped her.
Suma's grit and determination to change the grim reality of the life into which she was born is truly remarkable. Her story was featured, along with those of girls from Haiti, India, Afghanistan, and other countries, in the inspirational documentary Girl Rising, which was previewed at a recent panel on girls' education here at the State Department. Their stories are evidence of the power of education to transform lives, and how educating girls benefits entire families, communities, and societies.
MAAZA MENGISTE: CAN LITERATURE AND ART CHANGE THE WORLD? One of the most exciting and unique aspects of 10×10 is partnering with some of the world’s greatest writers who will be crafting each story for our film. They are the ones who ultimately choose which girl to profile for their chapter and, after spending some one-on-one time with that special girl, put pen to paper and draft a script for the film.
Maaza Mengiste is our immensely talented writer for Ethiopia who was recently named runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her novel Beneath the Lion’s Gaze. Maaza shares with us her thoughts on this accolade and the power of story:
I’m touched that people have seen that my book, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, is not just about a revolution but also a testament to love, family, and the unending struggle of so many to maintain human dignity. I am thrilled to receive this honor and once more, it confirms for me the potential of literature and art to change perspectives and shift the dialogue.
Can a book create peace? No, but people can and my journey with 10×10 has been an affirmation.
Last week, 10×10 held a small celebration marking one year’s worth of production and campaign progress. Check out this video of Maaza reading a portion of her 10×10 script about a girl named Azmera:
