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soccomcsantos · 2 years ago

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AMG: três letras e 55 anos de performance exclusiva

Fundada em 1967 por Hans Werner Aufrecht e Erhard Melcher, a AMG celebra este ano o seu 55º aniversário. Mais de meio século a produzir alguns dos mais icónicos, inovadores e carismáticos desportivos da indústria automóvel, numa ligação umbilical ao universo Mercedes-Benz.

Colegas na divisão de motores de competição da Daimler-Benz, Hans-Werner Aufrecht e Erhard Melcher partilhavam a paixão pelo design e, acima de tudo, pela engenharia automóvel. Sempre que conseguiam, os dois engenheiros dedicavam-se a modificar modelos de Mercedes apenas por diversão. A sua primeira oficina rapidamente se transformou num "escritório de engenharia e centro de design e testes para o desenvolvimento de motores de corrida". Nesta pequena garagem em Burgstall, Alemanha, os dois começaram a construir motores de corrida inovadores e de alto desempenho. Esta é a origem do acrónimo AMG, que significa “Aufrecht, Melcher e Großaspach” (o local de nascimento de Aufrecht).

Em 1971, o AMG 300 SEL 6.8 (o célebre Red Pig) construído pela dupla alemã reclamou uma vitória completamente inesperada na sua classe e ficou em segundo lugar à geral nas míticas 24 horas de Spa-Francorchamps.

De Affalterbach para o mundo

A empresa que estava originalmente sediada em Burgstall, mudou-se para Affalterbach em 1976. Durante as décadas de 1970 e 1980, a AMG ficou conhecida como o modificador proeminente dos automóveis Mercedes-Benz. A AMG acabou por crescer para além da pista de corridas e entrou no mercado mais vasto da personalização de automóveis de estrada da Mercedes-Benz. Os motores, os detalhes estéticos, os interiores exclusivos e o desempenho desportivo dos AMG acabaram por destacar-se no seio da marca. Com o tempo, o símbolo AMG plano e alongado na tampa da bagageira de vários modelos exclusivos rapidamente se tornou sinónimo de potência, prestígio e desempenho.

A AMG produziu inicialmente uma gama de modificações não oficiais e vários acessórios para os modelos Mercedes-Benz R107 e C107 (SL Roadster de 1971 a 1989), Mercedes-Benz W116 (Classe S de 1972 - 1980), Mercedes-Benz W123 (antecessor do Classe E de 1976 - 1985 classe), Mercedes-Benz W124 (Classe E de 1984-1997), Mercedes-Benz W126 (Classe S de 1979-1992), Mercedes-Benz R129 (SL de 1989-2001) e Mercedes-Benz W201 (Classe C 1990-1993).

Design marcante

Outros detalhes de cosmética populares eram os kits de carroçaria AMG. Estes variavam desde os subtis spoilers frontais até aos agressivos alargamentos da carroçaria. Outras opções incluíam os bancos Recaro, volantes de menor diâmetro, painéis de instrumentos específicos, jantes, etc... Em 1986, o lançamento do AMG Hammer, baseado no Classe E W124, deu origem à berlina de passageiros mais rápida do mundo na altura. Equipado com um motor V8 DOHC de 5,6 litros e 32 válvulas, o Hammer debitava 360 cv e, dizia-se na época, seria mais rápido a recuperar dos 100 km/h aos 200 km/h do que um Lamborghini Countach.

No início da década de 90, a AMG assinou um acordo oficial com a então Daimler-Benz AG. Além de tornar a AMG uma espécie de preparador oficial da Mercedes, permitiu à empresa de Affalterbach aceder à imensa rede de distribuição mundial da marca. Em 1993, este acordo deu frutos e surge o C36 AMG, o primeiro desportivo desenvolvido em conjunto. Baseado no Classe C W202, o C36 AMG estava equipado com um motor de seis cilindros com 280 cv de potência, suficientes para levar esta berlina “familiar” aos 250 km/h (limitados eletronicamente) e de 0 a 100 km/h em apenas 6,7 segundos.

Este acordo representou a integração gradual no grupo Daimler, que começou em 1999 e foi, finalmente, concluída em 2005. Daqui em diante, a denominada Mercedes-AMG tornou-se uma subsidiária da Daimler AG e, em 2009, nasce o SLS AMG, o primeiro superdesportivo a ser desenvolvido inteiramente pela empresa.

Em breve, publicaremos a segunda parte deste artigo sobre os 55 anos da AMG. Uma história de estrelas apaixonantes e exclusivas.

#sociedade comercial c santos #mercedesamg #mercedes-benz #amg #história

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unwelcome-ozian · 2 years ago

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Can you please give more information on the Esalen institute?

Esalen is where the the human potential movement started. (Sensitivity training and primal therapy)

There is a large number of guest teachers who are famous. Some of them are: B.F. Skinner, Alan Watts, Alanis Morissette, Aldous Huxley, Ansel Adams, Deepak Chopra, Ray Brdbury, and Joan Baez.

Esalen has a cult quality to it that would use those programming methods.

~Josha

The Esalen Institute is a Human Potential Movement think-tank and centre in Big Sur, California, founded in 1962. They were central to the development of the Human Potential Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and are sometimes cited as a direct forerunner of the New Age movement. Esalen holds a number of courses, retreats, seminars, encounter groups, and lectures. Many early Esalen courses were of the encounter group sort, and Fritz Perls, the inventor of Gestalt therapy (a form of encounter group) lived at the centre from 1964 to 1969 and became closely associated with it.

A rather wide range of people associated with later human consciousness movements are Esalen alumni either from teaching there or taking Esalen courses. They include psychologists B.F. Skinner and Carl Rogers, R.D. Laing, Werner Erhard, gurus Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (early advocates for the therapeutic use of LSD), liberal Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, Zen teacher Alan Watts, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest author Ken Kesey, counterculture figures Jerry Rubin and Paul Krassner, dolphin researcher John C. Lilly, and Buckminster Fuller.

In 1975, Sarfatti co-founded the legendary Physics-Consciousness Research Group with Esalen Institute’s Michael Murphy, funded by EST guru Werner Erhard. Murphy was investigating revelations of the USSR’s intensive parapsychological research projects, later setting up the Soviet-American Exchange Program at Esalen in the 1980s, which attracted the likes of Boris Yeltsin during his 1989 U.S. visit. (Project Stargate)

Sarfatti achieved some notoriety among Esalen circles as well for an invention that was supposed to transmit coded information faster than light that he purportedly remote-viewed the design of through contact with extra-terrestrials, or artificial intelligences from our future.

Esalen had connections to many government organisations (Tavistock, CIA) MK-ultra doctors, are two.

#answers to questions #Esalen Institute #Esalen

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sonyclasica · 2 months ago

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L'ARTE DEL MONDO

ANTON ZIMMERMANN: SIMPHONIES VOL. 2

Tras recibir grandes elogios, el conjunto l'arte del mondo vuelve con su segunda grabación de sinfonías cuidadas y cautivadoras de Anton Zimmermann. Disponible en formato digital el 27 de septiembre.

Anton Zimmermann, nacido en Breitnau (actual República Checa), recibió su educación musical en su región natal y llegó a Pressburg a principios de la década de 1770. Al principio trabajó sin un puesto fijo antes de convertirse en compositor de la corte del príncipe Batthyany en 1776. Sus obras más famosas incluyen las sinfonías en re mayor, do mayor y fa mayor, así como sus cuartetos de cuerda en do mayor, fa mayor y sol mayor. Se presentaron en actos de alto nivel en Pressburg. La diversa instrumentación de sus obras demuestra el alto nivel de las orquestas de la época y la influencia de destacados músicos en sus composiciones. Murió el 16 de octubre de 1781 en Bratislava.

Para el primer álbum con grabaciones de obras de Anton Zimmermann, el conjunto L'arte del mondo y el director Werner Ehrhardt recibieron grandes elogios. "Pocas veces esperas con tantas ganas el siguiente CD después de escuchar el primero como con esta grabación de las tres sinfonías de Anton Zimmermann. Werner Ehrhardt y su conjunto L'arte del mondo han hecho un trabajo excelente, no solo desde el punto de vista interpretativo, sino también musical y editorial: ¡más de esto, por favor!", escribió NDR Kultur.

Con "Anton Zimmermann - Sinfonías Vol. 2", el conjunto y el director Werner Ehrhardt continúan reviviendo la notable pero infravalorada obra de Anton Zimmermann. Esta grabación profundiza en el inventivo estilo sinfónico del compositor con las cuidadosamente seleccionadas Sinfonías en si bemol mayor, mi menor y re mayor, cada una de las cuales ejemplifica la capacidad única de Zimmermann para mezclar melodías líricas con intrincados contrapuntos.

Alabado por su meticulosa atención a las prácticas interpretativas históricas, l'arte del mondo aporta una visión fresca y una energía vibrante a estas obras, mostrando la magistral orquestación y el rico lenguaje armónico de Zimmermann.

El conjunto l'arte del mondo, fundado en 2004 por el director artístico Werner Ehrhardt, está especializado en música antigua con instrumentos históricos, pero también toca instrumentos modernos y música contemporánea. Conocido por sus programas únicos, que incluyen encuentros musicales interculturales, proyectos de ópera y redescubrimiento de obras olvidadas, el conjunto colabora habitualmente con solistas de renombre. Muchas de sus treinta grabaciones en CD han recibido premios. El trabajo de L'arte del mondo tiene sus raíces en la práctica interpretativa histórica y presenta programas innovadores que van más allá de las escenas de concierto tradicionales. Entre las colaboraciones con solistas famosos se incluyen Daniel Hope, Nils Mönkemeyer, Daniel Müller-Schott, Dorothee Oberlinger, Avi Avital y Xavier de Maistre.

Desde la temporada 2010/11, las grabaciones de l'arte del mondo han sido publicadas por Sony Music/Deutsche Harmonia Mundi con sensacionales primeras grabaciones mundiales, como "La finta giardiniera" de Pasquale Anfossi, la cantata fúnebre de Joseph Martin Kraus con el Coro de Cámara RIAS, y "La Clemenza di Tito" de Christoph Willibald Gluck, que ganó el Diapasón de Oro en 2014. En 2018, estrenaron mundialmente tres sinfonías de Anton Zimmermann, que recibieron grandes elogios de la prensa.

El director y violinista Werner Erhard fundó el conjunto y lo ha llevado al reconocimiento internacional. Su profunda musicalidad y su enfoque innovador garantizan experiencias de concierto memorables y grabaciones muy elogiadas.

TRACKLIST

Anton Zimmermann (1741-1781)

Symphony B-flat major 1 I. Allegro molto 2 II. Scherzando: Andantino 3 III. Menuetto, Trio 4 IV. Finale: Andante, Allegro vivace

Symphony E-minor 5 I. Allegretto 6 II. Andante 7 III. Menuetto, Trio 8 IV. Finale: Allegro

Symphony D-major 9 I. Allegro 10 II. Larghetto 11 III. Menuetto, Trio 12 IV. Finale Rondo: Allegro sostenuto

#L'arte del mondo #Anton Zimmermann

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ippnoida · 4 months ago

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Erhard Wienkamp: Messe Düsseldorf operative managing director to retire

Erhard Wienkamp has worked in various functions at Messe Düsseldorf since 1993. After holding positions in the foreign trade department of the Federation of German Wholesale and Foreign Trade in Bonn and the German-Argentinean Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Buenos Aires, he took over the project management of the Papro, K and interpack trade shows at the beginning of his trade show career.

Since 2002, the economics graduate has been responsible for Messe Düsseldorf’s international trade show business as divisional manager and authorized signatory. In this role, he was also responsible for partner and guest events, official participations such as the joint exhibition booths of the Federal Republic of Germany and the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, special events, and the management of Messe Düsseldorf’s international shows.

Erhard Wienkamp succeeded Hans Werner Reinhard as operative managing director in January 2020. In this role, he was responsible for the Plastics & Rubber portfolio with the leading global trade show K and nine trade shows abroad; the Health & Medical Technologies portfolio (Medica, Compamed, Rehacare and nine trade shows abroad); the Caravaning & Outdoor portfolio (Caravan Salon Dusseldorf and All in Caravaning in Beijing); the Wine & Spirits portfolio (ProWein and six trade shows abroad); and the Print Technologies portfolio (drupa, Print & Digital Convention and four trade shows abroad). He was also responsible for the areas Retail & Retail Technologies (EuroShop and EuroCIS in Düsseldorf, China in-store in Shanghai and in-store asia in Mumbai); Occupational Safety & Health (A+A and five trade shows abroad); Glass Technologies (glasstec and three trade shows abroad); and Beauty (Beauty Dusseldorf, Top Hair). Moreover, he led the corporate social responsibility unit and two of the three sales teams at Messe Düsseldorf. Erhard Wienkamp was also in charge of international participations and services; special events, which includes the German Houses at the Olympic and Paralympic Games; conference management; and the international business department.

Dr. Stephan Keller, lord mayor of the state capital Düsseldorf and chairman of the Supervisory Board of Messe Düsseldorf, is grateful for Erhard Wienkamp, “The trade shows that Erhard Wienkamp is responsible for are heavyweights in their industry, bringing people from all over the world to Düsseldorf year after year and not only enriching the international flair of our city but also promoting the regional economy.” The 78% of the 24,469 exhibiting companies in Düsseldorf in 2023 hailing from abroad meant the highest level of internationality among exhibitors ever (previous year: 75%), and with 39% of the 1,074,870 attendees coming from outside Germany, the share of international visitors was the second highest to date (previous year: 46%).

The global presence of Messe Düsseldorf, which Erhard Wienkamp had helped to promote, contributed greatly to these results, says Dr. Keller. The foreign trade shows and joint booths organized internationally by Messe Düsseldorf serve as powerful showpieces for Düsseldorf as a trade show and business location. Messe Düsseldorf’s portfolio now includes 73 events abroad, plus 25 trade shows at the home base.

Wolfram N Diener, president & CEO of Messe Düsseldorf, emphasized Erhard Wienkamp’ s immense contribution to the company’s success, “Erhard Wienkamp didn’t wait for the world to come to Düsseldorf, he went out into the world and carried the reputation of Messe Düsseldorf and the entire city to other countries and continents. His work has shaped the company like no one else’s.”

As of August 1, the 66-year-old will be succeeded in his function as operative managing director by Marius Berlemann. Having worked at Messe Düsseldorf for 13 years, the 38-year-old Berlemann most recently served as General Manager of Messe Düsseldorf Shanghai and managing director of Messe Düsseldorf China.

Erhard Wienkamp looks back on his time at Messe Düsseldorf with pride and gratitude, “It’s been an honor to be part of such a dynamic and dedicated team, one that has always strived to set the highest standards in the trade show industry. I’m confident that my successor, with his extensive experience and commitment, will continue to propel Messe Düsseldorf forward. I wish him and the entire team nothing but success for the future.”

#Messe Düsseldorf #Erhard Wienkamp

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alittlebitoftruthcan · 2 years ago

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‘Bhagwan, when you were talking about Werner Erhard, the businessman who discovered that personal growth sells better than encyclopedias, you said that the business of growth is just an American name for God. The San Francisco Examiner Chronicle, reporting this, noted that you did not comment on the personal growth marketing of your own Rajneesh International Meditation University here. What is the difference and what part does the university play in the life of the commune?’ The difference is great. He was a door-to-door salesman of encyclopedias. Our university is not going door-to-door to sell anything to anybody. Our university is a well. Those who are thirsty can come and drink out of it. It is available, but we are not persuading anybody. On the contrary, I am making every effort to offend them, to make them angry, become our enemies. Do you think this is business tactics? In business, the customer is always right. Here the situation is totally different: the customer is always wrong. From whatsoever source he comes, he is always wrong—and he comes on his own, in spite of all that I go on doing continuously to prevent him from coming. Nobody in the whole world has offended so many people as I alone have done, singlehandedly. But even after all this turmoil that I create, and offensiveness and antagonism in their minds, a few daring people come. These people can be relied upon. Just their coming is significant. Certainly, my university is not part of the marketplace. Werner Erhard was part of the market world. He was taking his EST from one hotel to another hotel around the country, then outside the country. And he was neither a philosophical man, nor religious; he had registered EST as a corporation, a business corporation. He was paying income tax for all his incomes. Our university is not a business. We don’t have to pay any taxes for the university. The degrees that our university gives are of no use in the marketplace, because we don’t want our degrees to be recognized by any government or by any university or any other institution. We refuse to be recognized by them, because just the fact that we let them recognize us means they are somebody higher than us, somebody more authoritative. We don’t accept any government’s recognition, because no government is worthy of it. Our university is absolutely a free phenomenon. Those who want to come, come knowing that whatever we have to offer is of no use in the marketplace. In fact it may make their market world more difficult for them, because a person who comes here for three months or four months to do a course in the university… we are not giving him growth the way Werner Erhard was giving. He started from where you are. Our work is first to destroy whosoever you are—whosoever, without any condition. We destroy you first, dismantle you first, and unless we have deprogrammed you completely there is no growth possible. We don’t teach you any growth. To be deprogrammed… you start growing on your own accord. Werner Erhard was teaching you techniques of growth, but if you are a monster and you are being taught techniques of growth, you will become a bigger monster. Werner Erhard never offended anybody. That’s simply the way of the businessman: never offend anybody. Everybody was happy with him. The government was happy, the churches were happy, the politicians were happy—not only in this country, but in other countries too. He used to go to India to pay respect to the so-called Hindu mahatmas. Muktananda was his guru. He even went to pay his respects to Morarji Desai, when he was the prime minister of India. And by mistake he even came to me, thinking I also belong to the same category of mahatmas that he has known all his life. He must have been shocked. When he was sitting in front of me, I could see how difficult it was for him just to sit there. And when I told him he can ask anything, he simply said, ‘No, I don’t have any questions.’ Laxmi had given him my latest books, just as a present. He went into the hotel—which was not far away, just a few minutes walk—and gave those books to one sannyasin, Hridaya, without even looking at them. Some great fear must have arisen in him. Reading those books might disturb his mind. And certainly I was not the person that he had expected. I would have destroyed his whole EST first. I have to begin from scratch. First I have to demolish the old building completely, I don’t believe in renovation. Howsoever beautifully you renovate a building, it still remains the old rotten thing; just painted here and there, a little bit supported, but it is just the old rotten building that you have given a facelift. No, it is better to live in an A-frame, but new, fresh, young. Werner Erhard is a businessman, there are no two opinions about it. And nobody can compare me with Werner Erhard. Our whole approach is totally different. Our approach is first to deprogram the person completely, and then leave him alone to himself. Don’t give him another program. Leave him alone, empty, just a pure nothingness. And out of that nothingness grows everything that existence wanted to grow in that man. We bring the person close to existence, from where he has been taken away. Once we see that you are communing with existence, our work is finished. We don’t give you growth, we simply take away all nonsense that is surrounding you and which perhaps you think is growth. Growth comes of its own accord, you just have to be utterly open and vulnerable. I am not a businessman. I could have been and then I would have defeated all the businessmen in the whole world. But I have chosen to offend everybody, ready for their hostility from every nook and corner of the world. A businessman tries to be respectable, and I have been trying my whole life to be notorious. Unless you understand me, you will not be able to see why I unnecessarily create hostility in people. I am not a businessman. I have nothing to sell to them. If they are courageous enough to come nearer to me, I am going to burn their whole personality. I’m going to take their whole skin off their body and then leave them alone so they can grow fresh from the very beginning. That growth will not be in any way a credit to me. That growth will be a credit to the person who dared to come, who dared to pass through the fire, who dared to risk his whole life. The whole credit goes to him.

Osho (The Last Testament, Vol. 1)

#osho #growth #deprogramming #sannyas #society #EST #werner erhard #offensive #destruction #emptiness #business #notorious #courage #master #fire #risk #lbotca

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gunnarsohn · 5 months ago

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Bürokratie, Auflösung! "Wie Überregulierung unsere Innovationskraft erstickt"

Berlin. Dienstag, 2. Juli 2023. Das Ludwig-Erhard-Forum öffnet seine Pforten für die sechste Ausgabe der „Zivilisierten Provokation“. Die Bühne wird zum Schauplatz einer hitzigen Debatte zwischen Dr. Franziska Brantner, MdB und parlamentarische Staatssekretärin im Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz, und Christoph Werner, Vorsitzender der Geschäftsführung der dm-drogerie markt GmbH +…

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farfrombrooklyn · 10 months ago

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Reader’s Log, January 2024

Tinkers by Paul Harding

I may have read this one some time in the past, or at least thought about reading it. In any case, I picked it up this winter largely because of its unusual publication history — published by a tiny alternative press, it unexpectedly found an audience among indie booksellers, built a following just by word of mouth, and snowballed when it, shockingly, won the Pulitzer.

That's an inspiring story for someone like me, a novelist who just can't seem to make a sale!

Anyway, “Tinkers” begins with a declarative, and slightly morbid, sentence: “George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died.”

That's a tight starter! It sets a tone and establishes expectations for the reader. There is a kind of tension in it, a promise of a mystery to be solved — even if we know he will die, we don’t know why.

It’s a minor tension, though. We soon find out that he is dying, prosaically enough, of old age. He is in a rented hospital bed in his home, being watched over by various family members. We get a cursory sketch of his life — mechanical engineering, then teaching, then retirement, during which he finds a new vocation or at least avocation: clock repair.

The first dozen of so pages of this book are a gust of gorgeous writing, as George hallucinates that his life, his house and even the universe are falling on him -- as if, like a dying star collapsing on itself, his mortal body has become a black hole, sucking everything into its center.

I loved the opening of this book.

Alas, after that, the book spins out — shifting back in time to tell the story of George’s father, Howard, who suffers from epilepsy and who scratches out a living as a traveling salesman, peddling notions in backwoods Maine. We even go back in time to hear about Howard's father, a minister.

Every so often, a book that pushes back in generations to tell a tale in reverse order -- Anne Tyler's "A Spool of Blue Thread" comes to mind -- manages to succeed despite the demands placed on the reader. (By "demands" I mean that the narrative comes to a halt and the reader is required to reorient and learn an entire new fictional world of characters, situations, and, often, setting. That's a lot to ask of a reader.)

For me, the time-shifted story within the story of "Tinkers" doesn't work. I didn't want to go back to the previous generation, and I really didn't want to go back the generation before that.

Meanwhile, the longer the narrative runs, the more the prose purples. The intense dark poetry of the first section of the book grows cloying and self-consciously poetic.

The tales of Howard’s life stretch credibility, to the point that the reader wonders if the narrative has somehow snuck into the realm of magical realism. A signed volume of Hawthorne turns up in the hands of a man who could not possibly be old enough to have known Hawthorne (the book states this outright) and yet, there it is, a personal note from Hawthorne to a woodsman who seems more yeti than human. Who knows, the narrative seems to be saying, maybe he really is 120 years old!

Another discordant note: Howard’s boss is a kind of small-town Werner Erhard, making messianic proclamations about Howard’s sales pitch. Howard is a guy who sells pins and needles and thread in rural Maine! He wouldn't have had a boss, for god's sakes, let alone a boss-cum-EST-trainer. None of Howard's story makes much sense to me, and that's bad considering that the writer has basically dragged me back in time when I had committed to reading what had been presented (quite stirringly) as the primary narrative, which is George's life, not his father's or his grandfather's.

As the narrative traces these byways in increasingly ornate curlicues, you have the sense that all that is going on here is a writer following the whims of his own sentences, ever more poetically. It’s pretty and bland and, most of all, not credible. I read an interview with the author suggesting that the story/stories are based on family tales, i.e., "it really happened," and if in fact that is mostly the case, well, it only goes to prove that "true" stories don't always present as truth when they are written as fiction.

Having groused for several paragraphs now, I want to circle back to reiterate that the opening pages are really great and, for me at least, worth the price of the book despite the disappointment of the remainder.

I get why indie booksellers would go for this novel — it’s pretty and self-consciously well-written, and it obviously is straining for transcendence.

It works for a while and then it doesn’t.

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

Like "Tinkers," "The Stone Diaries" is a Pulitzer Winner. ("Tinkers" won in 2010, "The Stone Diaries" in 1995.) There aren't many parallels between the two novels other than the odd coincidence of being Pulitzer winners, and the fact that I picked them up had nothing to do with that, although I suppose I was aware of the titles because of the prizes. I had been meaning to read both of them for years.

One similarity: Both books are multigenerational tales. But "The Stone Diaries" begins, in essence, at the beginning, and ends at the end, where as "Tinkers" begins at the end and works its way backwards, as I have huffily noted above.

"The Stone Diaries" is the life story of Daisy Goodwill Flett, the only child of a poor stonecutter and his beloved, food-besotted orphan wife, who live in a small town in Manitoba, Canada. Tragedy strikes the family and Daisy is subsequently raised by an elderly neighbor and her adult son. From there Daisy moves to the American midwest, where she comes of age, marries, and so on and so on. (I'm not looking to give away the plot -- a pleasure of the book is learning how Daisy's life unfolds.)

Speaking of unfolding, "The Stone Diaries" has a weirdly herky-jerky way of proceeding through the years, jaggedly jumping forward without much warning or, it seems in the moment, attention to the development of plot and character. It works in spite of itself, I think.

Similarly, the book has no coherent voice or style. Sometimes it's told in the first person, mostly in third person, and in one section (a very effective one, I would add) the narrative progresses through the eyes of various friends and acquaintances and family members, all of them opining about Daisy's sudden descent into depression and what may have caused it. It's a really good piece of writing and it manages to surprise the reader with its outcome.

This novel is a pleasant read, for certain. It has an antic tone (some of it anyway) and is having fun with the narrative -- it's not Dickensian but certainly the trials and tribulations of of Daisy Goodwill Flett are many, and the story of her life takes plenty of twists and turns.

On the other hand, it doesn't strike me as a terribly weighty book -- it's fun, it's fluffy, it scuds along through the 20th Century with very little grappling with the issues of the day. Characters transform for the good of the narrative, and I for one never really had any sense of reality of any of the characters or situations: As an example, Daisy's father, at the outset, is a poor, tongue-tied stonecutter; later, he reappears as a loquacious, self-confident and self-satisfied businessman. Meanwhile, he engages in what might be called obsessive behaviors involving stone-cutting and monument-building. It's all more than a little bit non-credible, or what I would call "booky," i.e. constructed in the way that only seems to occur in midlist fiction.

But so what? The novel is funny and for the most part fun. It seems a bit lightweight for a Pulitzer Prize, but glancing at a list of books published the same year, I don't see anything that I would say obviously trumped this one as an award winner -- a second-tier Updike book; a Jonathan Lethem novel that wasn't "Fortress of Solitude"; a lesser-known William Gaddis work; etc. etc. 1994 was the year that James Kelman published "How Late It Was, How Late," which I would say was a masterpiece, but he's Scottish so he wouldn't be competing with Shields for a Pulitzer.

One last note about "The Stone Diaries": It skips back and forth across the U.S./Canada border in a way that I can't remember reading before. It seems to me that American writers basically have nothing to say about Canada, and Canadian writers don't often move characters to the U.S. (Margaret Atwood? Alice Munro? Robertson Davies? I can't recall any of them doing that.) I suppose that cross-border mindset came naturally to Shields, who was born in the U.S. but married a Canadian and lived the rest of her life there.

Slave Play by Jeremy Harris

Whoosh! It's hard to know what to think of a play that begins with an apparent scene of an overseer raping an enslaved woman -- and that's a relatively gentle coupling compared with the sexual acts that occur later in the same first act. I'll admit that, as I read the play (which I had heard about when it was first produced a few years ago) I was rolling my eyes, thinking, "Yeah, you're pushing my buttons, I get it, but so what?" Also: "This is shocking and repulsive, but so what?"

In short, for much of the play, I kept thinking, "Yes, but so what?"

Without giving anything away, I will simply say that these quasi-shocking scenes of sexual violence (only quasi-shocking because they seem designed to shock, which of course dulls the shock value) turn out to be play-acting (supposedly for the characters' benefit). The remainder of the play is a kind of therapy session as the characters work through their feelings about having participated in such troubling behavior.

I'm not exactly sure what the playwright is lampooning here -- white racism, black colorism, touchy-feely therapy talk, academia... I guess Harris is poking at it all. Like I said, I entered the world of this play skeptically; the point of it all seemed to be to shock the conscience of the reader/audience, but what audience would attend or read such a play unless they were, essentially, already in the artist’s corner? What I mean is that there are very few people in the world who would knowingly go to a play that displays a black man being anally raped by a white woman with a large dildo. There's just a small world of people willing to sit through that. (I certainly didn't want to attend the play when I read about it, and came to this work as a reader, rather than as an audience member, because I just thought the whole thing sounded so PC/transgressive/gross, it might be better to experience it in print, as opposed to in the theater.) In any case, it's gross, but there's a kind of tee-hee sense, “look what I can get away with,” that irritated me.

In short, I wonder if this isn't just a transgressive minister preaching to the choir.

That said, in the end, even though I wasn't sure I "got" the point, if there was in fact a point, the play did actually make me think about the question of race in our most intimate relationships -- about multiracial couples and the convolutions and confusions and tensions that must exist in most of them. Black/white marriages and partnerships have become common enough that I for one don't really think about them much. But America's crippling history of racism, and its present day racism, and the fact that everyone is, no matter what, occupying some kind of racial category, must surely cast a shadow over even the healthiest of intimate relationships. The sexual depredations of a slave-based society, the fear of other in white America, all of our gross, racially-based attitudes, however much we have struggled to free ourselves from them, must occasionally worm their way into any black/white couple... Or I suppose into every person in the whole society, whenever we interact.

And so I left this text feeling a mix of disgust, irritation, and ambivalence, but also some level of enlightenment. Reviewers of the play (writers that I admire, as it happens) note that it's both funny and sexy. I didn't laugh while I was reading but I could imagine nervously laughing in a theater. I didn't think it was sexy, either, but, again, maybe I would have felt it in the theater. (Speaking of which, I can't really imagine how they staged the very, very, very explicit sexual scenes.)

In any case, I came away from the play feeling, to my surprise, quite impressed.

Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector

I am still trying to make sense of my response to this novel.

I'm not sure I've ever been quite so perplexed by an author's reputation. Lispector is an absolute goddess of Brazilian lit. She practically reinvented Portuguese, to hear her readers tell it.

For me, though, getting through her brief volumes (this is the second Lispector I have read, having hacked through "An Apprenticeship" a couple years ago) is nettlesome and dull.

It's tempting to take a cynical view of her: She was, apparently, so extraordinarily beautiful and (my own assumption) so charismatic that a cult grew up around her and the reflective halo of her persona gilded her writing. I am not sure there is a single reference to her writing that doesn't also allude to her beauty. Her otherwise sober biographer, Benjamin Moser, can't seem to help bringing up her physical appearance, referring to her as "proud, beautiful Clarice" in the very first page of the biography. According to the translator Gregory Rabassa, Lispector looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf. And the poet Ledo Ivo, recalling the day he met her, reported: "The least I can say is she was stunning."

But of course it isn't that simple; it can't be that simple! Can it???

"Near to the Wild Heart" is a series of fragments, or shards, relating to the life of one Joana, a headstrong girl who grows up to be a headstrong and possibly amoral woman. As a child, she steals and refuses to see it as wrong. As a woman she has an affair with a stranger without compunction; she seeks out Lidia, a woman her husband, Otavio, is having an affair with (and Lidia is carrying Otavio's child) and vows that she, Joana, will cede Otavio to Lidia, but only once she has been impregnated with Otavio's child as well. (WTF? If nothing else, Lispector's attitudes about women did not exactly transcend their time and place, in this case, 1940s Brazil.)

In between, there are fragmentary passages in which Joana debates with herself about the nature of existence, reality vs. dreams, mortality, and so on. Joana falls into depressions, she busies herself with errands. The narration stabs away at whatever her conscious/subsconscious mind grabs hold of.

Oddly, about halfway through, the narration shifts away from Joana and occupies the mind of her husband Otavio, a lawyer and, it seems, a wannabe philosopher, who fusses with the papers on his desk and attempts to write something meaningful, for instance, "Determinism isn't the determinism of ends, but a narrow determinism of causes."

Possibly this passage and others are meant to suggest that Otavio is pedantic, a pedestrian thinker compared to the fiery Joana? (Just guesswork on my part. As far as I was concerned, Joana's own philosophical musings are no more coherent or meaningful than Otavio's.)

One rather interesting thing about the book is that it closes with Joana falling into a furious prayer: "Close my eyes and feel inspiration roll like a white cascade. De profundis. My God I wait for thee."

It's not a structured or ecclesiastical prayer; it's just a whirl of raw beseeching language. I suppose it's a prayer for some kind of clarity.

I mention this because it reminds me of the end of Jon Fosse's "Septology," also stream of consciousness, although in the case of Fosse, the narrator, Asle, is fervently Catholic, and his prayers are specific to his faith.

Also, incidentally, I have read some pretty grand claims about Fosse as a revolutionary writer; same goes for Lispector.

I don't know if there is anything profound in this comparison. It strikes me that, by the end of these two books, both of the characters, Joanna of "Near to the Wild Heart" and Asle of "Septology," have essentially thought all that they have to think. There is nothing left. And yet there is an incompleteness to their creation, and the writers are left with prayer.

One of the really striking things about the reaction to Lispector (in Brazil) was the sense that she had somehow broken new ground, that no one had written in Portuguese like her before. There were frequent comparisons to Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, which she claimed to be irritated by, saying that she hadn't read them (or at least she hadn't read Joyce) when composing "Near to the Wild Heart," her first book. It's certainly possible that was true -- after all, she was only 22 or 23 when she wrote the book, and she was studying to be a lawyer, not a professor of literature, not to mention that she was working for a newspaper as well. It's not like she had scads of time available to dig through Joyce. And as far as I can tell, a Portuguese translation of Ulysses didn't even exist until 1946!

I suppose it's also possible that no Brazilian author had yet attempted a stream-of-consciousness narrative before the 1940s -- although it seems somewhat unlikely. But who knows? Brazil, in many ways, is a world unto itself, an island of Portuguese in a South American sea of Spanish, a nation so much larger than any of its neighbors that, like the US, there is a certain chauvinistic attitude, a sensibility of "if it's not from here, we don't need it."

So it's possible that Brazil's writers were more likely to look back -- rather than outward -- for inspiration, and for whatever reason the cataclysms of Modernism that were jolting much of the rest of the world had less of an impact in Brazil. So when Lispector came along, with her spiky stream of consciousness, her casual carnality, her apparent disregard for traditional religiosity, it was like a sudden storm. And in fact a contemporary writer in Brazil did refer to her as "Hurricane Clarice."

Another thing that, apparently, set Lispector's writing apart: It is not rooted in Brazil. There's really nothing Brazilian about this book. It's not about anything but Joana and the few people she interacts with. Perhaps that alone was enough to make "Near to the Wild Heart" stand out from the rest of Brazilian literature, which was often engaged in the question of "What is a Brazilian?"

Having said all that, I'm not sure I have a single coherent or illuminating thought about this novel. I don't understand what made this book so beguiling, so striking, to its first readers. (Actually, Lispector herself didn't know what to make of it; "When I reread what I've written," she said to the writer Lucio Cardoso, "I feel like I'm swallowing my own vomit." Cardoso disagreed, urged her to publish it, and even came up with the title for her, a quote from Joyce.)

Well, who knows? I might try to read one or two of Lispector's better-known works, but I'm not sure I can rev up the patience for them if they too closely resemble this one.

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