David Malouf has written a fairly straightforward, although not entirely uninteresting, article on Patrick White’s life titled “Patrick White reappraised”. Originally published in The Time Literary Supplement, the article is now available on The Age’s website.

While Malouf’s interpretation of White’s life follows closely that of David Marr’s biography, it is nevertheless interesting how Malouf evaluates White’s novels in his piece. Considering that I have never been quite able to enjoy Malouf’s own writing (which I believe to be a fault in me rather than in the writer), it is perhaps not entirely surprising that our views of White’s novels seem to differ as well.

While I personally go for the grandiose, sometimes over-worked symbolism and style that White was so good at producing, Malouf takes a more conservative view and appreciates less of the extremes, and more of the conventional in White. Of what is perhaps my favourite novel by White, The Vivisector, and the novel that immediately followed it, The Eye of the Storm, Malouf writes:

The Vivisector and The Eye of the Storm are overwrought, excessive, unlikeable books, full of larger-than-life (theatrical) characters and grotesques, lurid situations, and an oddly old-fashioned view of the artist as sacred monster; a march of folly in which the traditional decencies have given way to rank opportunism and cannibalistic greed.

In some sense this is interesting coming from Malouf, who wrote the 1986 operatic adaptation of White’s Voss, a novel that I personally feel to similarly tip into the realms of “overwrought” theatricality and the mystique of the artist no less than any other novel by White. While I have unfortunately not been able to see the opera version, I seem to remember reading that White was considerably pleased with the production, which would suggest to me that these themes were also retained.

Researchers in the United States have come up with a test that could indicate if some of the basic pillars of String Theory do not hold water. While the test (as is typical of empirical tests of theories) cannot prove if String Theory’s view of the universe is actually correct, it is at least welcome news to those who have been concerned about the fact that so far no one has been able to come up with a way to actually test the predictions of the theory.

For the full press release, see EurekAlert!.

In the past few years, increasing attention has been given to what has been labelled an “allergy epidemic” by some, whereby more and more children in industrialised nations are suffering from allergies. A recent study conducted in Finland has now suggested that this phenomenon is not due to an increase in actual allergenic risk factory, but rather because of the “human immune system has not had the time to adapt to the rapid changes in the urban environment and way of life”.

A short article on this can be found at AlphaGalileo.org.

GreenCine Daily has a wonderful transcript of a Sundance roundtable talk with Hal Hartley, Tamara Jenkins, David Gordon Green and Gregg Araki on their current works and the state of independent American cinema today. While I originally started reading it mainly for the Hal Hartley comments (you can actually pretty easily jump around in the discussion without it getting confusing), I actually ended up reading the whole thing.

I’m really quite looking forward to Hartley’s new Fay Grim, which continues the “Henry Fool saga” started in 1997’s Henry Fool, and which Hartley is now jokingly comparing to the Star Wars saga. With the previous two Hartley films — The Girl From Monday and No Such Thing — having to me felt like somewhat searching for a direction, I am really curious to see where Fay Grim will take us.

Those of you who haven’t seen many or any of Hal Hartley’s movies, I would recommend Amateur and Henry Fool as starting points. Hartley has been one of the quirkiest screenwriter-directors of the past decade and half, and is certainly worth exploring if you appreciate cinema (and not just independent cinema).

Now that Kofi Annan has left his office as the UN head and returned to his native Ghana, BBC is wondering what Annan should do next. Suggestions range from domestic and international politics to farming and even starting a jazz quartet with Clinton, Blair and someone else.

The obvious decision, of course, would be to start a Coffee label called “Kofi’s Coffee”, from which all income would go to helping developing nations. It’s the least he can do with that name.

Update (31 January 2007): As if to prove my point, Emma Faust Tillman passed away after I wrote this post last week. She held the title of the world’s oldest person for less than a week.

There has recently been what I feel is a relatively high rate of “world’s oldest” people dying.

I know that old people in general tend to die with a higher probability than do younger ones, and that those who reach a grand old age of over 110 are even more probable of kicking the bucket, as I believe the scientific term in use is, but it would seem that this past half a year or so has been especially harsh for the “oldest” people. Let’s take a look.

On August 27 2006, María Capovilla who was the world’s oldest person at that point, passed on at the age of 116. She had been the world’s oldest person for two whole years, which is more or less the average of how long you get to keep the title (see Wikipedia). There are of course counter-examples to this: Shigechiyo Izumi for example held the title for nine whole years and some between 1976 and 1986.

After María Capovilla, the title of the world’s oldest person fell to Elizabeth Bolden, but the 116-year-old was unfortunately only able to hold the title for three and a half months, as she left this world on the 11th of December, 2006.

After this, the honour was given to Emiliano Mercado del Toro, who however died only a little over a month later on January 24th, 2007. The title has now moved to Emma Tillman, who is only 114.

It should furthermore also be noted that while del Toro was still the world’s oldest person, the world’s oldest woman at that point, Julie Winnefred Bertrand, also died on January 19th, 2007.

In summary, the “oldest” people to have died recently are:
María Capovilla (August 27, 2006)
Elizabeth Bolden (December 11, 2006)
Julie Winnefred Bertrand (January 19, 2007)
Emiliano Mercado del Toro (January 24, 2007)
Update: Emma Tillman (January 29, 2007)

Considering that, as I mentioned before, one usually gets to keep these titles for a couple of years, I feel that this is quite a number of casualties. Or then it is just a statistical thing. Or my brain interprets it wrong, making it a quirk of perception.

In any case, add to this also the many famous individuals who have died in the past couple of months — James Brown, Robert Altman, Saddam Hussein, Augusto Pinochet, Gerald Ford, Joseph Barbara, to name a few — and you must clearly agree that these clearly constitute the first signs of Doomsday. I, therefore, urge you all to hide your chickens and slaughter your oxen before your government gets you.