Posted: 04 Nov 2015 03:06 PM PST
More than 1.3 million students drop out of high school every year in the U.S., making them ineligible for 90% of jobs in America, according to DoSomething.org.
But while it’s by no means considered the path to success — Tumblr founder David Karp dropped out of high school at the age of 15 and told Forbes he doesn’t recommend it to others since he missed out on so much — some people made the most of their time outside the hallowed halls of school.
Here is the special breed of super successful people that overcame their “high-school dropout” status and turned the world on its head.
Richard Branson dropped out at 15
The Virgin Group founder is an international powerhouse currently worth about $4.9 billion, according to Forbes.
Branson founded his first business, Student magazine, after dropping out of high school at 15 and has spoken out against the university system on his blog.
Nearly 50 years after dropping out, he has overseen approximately 500 companies, with his brand currently on somewhere between 200 and 300 of them.
David Karp dropped out at 15
At the age of 15, Karp dropped out of an elite Bronx High School of Science and developed Tumblr, the blog-hosting and social network company, in 2007 in the “back bedroom of his mother’s modest Manhattan apartment.”
He sold the blog-hosting company to Yahoo for $1.1 billion in 2013, when his net worth reportedly exceeded $200 million, and he remains as the company’s CEO.
Aretha Franklin dropped out at 15
Regarded as a child prodigy, Franklin recorded her first tracks at age 14 and performed with her father’s traveling Gospel revival show, according to Bio. She dropped out of high school at 15 to care for her first child.
Franklin has since received numerous honorary degrees from universities like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and the Berklee College of Music.
In 1987, Franklin became the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She has sung at the inauguration of three U.S. presidents, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Franklin has 18 Grammys under her belt, and in 1994 was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Joe Lewis dropped out at 15
Lewis dropped out of high school at 15 to run his father’s catering business, Tavistock Banqueting, and is currently worth about $5.3 billion, according to Forbes.
The businessman — who works from his yacht most of the year — owns a planned community in Lake Nona, near Orlando, which is now one of the fastest-growing developments in America and houses a medical city that includes the University of Central Florida College of Medicine and Health Sciences Campus, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, the Orlando VA Medical Center, and a University of Florida Research and Academic Center.
As the main investor in Tavistock Group, Lewis owns more than 200 companies, according to Forbes, including London Premiership soccer team Tottenham Hotspur (Spurs), a stake in U.K.’s largest pub operator, Mitchell’s & Butlers plc, and approximately 135 restaurants and various resorts throughout the world.
He also has a covetable art collection that includes works by Picasso, Matisse, Lucian Freud, and Francis Bacon.
Mike Hudack dropped out at 16
Hudack dropped out of high school and started working at a small internet security and privacy company in Connecticut at 16. He then moved to New York and worked as a consultant for Time Warner.
In 2005, he founded Blip.tv, a hosting platform for creators of digital video content. In 2012, he left his position as CEO to become Facebook’s product manager.
Philip Emeagwali dropped out at 13
Called an “unsung hero of the Internet,” the supercomputer scientist dropped out of high-school in Nigeria due to war conditions and lack of tuition money. According to TIME, he was considered a math prodigy and continued to study on his own, earning an equivalency diploma and later a scholarship to Oregon College of Education in the U.S.
In 1987, Emeagwali came up with the formula for allowing a large number of computers to communicate at once. The record-breaking experiment was a practical and inexpensive way to use machines to speak to each other all over the world.
The discovery earned him the IEEE Gordon Bell Prize in 1989, and he has since been hailed as one of the fathers of the Internet, according to TIME.
Quentin Tarantino dropped out at 15
The Oscar winner attended Narbonne High School in Harbor City, California, until he dropped out at the age of 15 and started working as an usher at an adult film theater while taking acting classes, according to Bio.
While working at the Video Archives in his early 20s, Tarantino wrote the scripts for True Romance and Natural Born Killers, but it was his directorial debut in Reservoir Dogs in 1992 that won him wide critical acclaim.
He’s been nominated for several Academy Awards and is the winner of two — for Django Unchained and Pulp Fiction.
Francois Pinault dropped out at 11
According to Forbes, the French businessman dropped out of his private high school in 1947 to work at his father’s lumber mill in part because his school mates made fun of his poor background.
Today, as the majority shareholder of fashion conglomerate PPR, the billionaire businessman owns high-end fashion houses including Gucci, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen, and Yves Saint Laurent.
He also owns Christie’s Auction House and is currently worth around $12.9 billion, according to Forbes.
David H. Murdock dropped out at 14
The self-made billionaire businessman dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and worked at a gas station before being drafted into the Army in 1943, according to Forbes.
After World War II, Murdock bought his first business, a Detroit diner, and sold it several months later for a $700 profit. Now, after a lifetime of buying, building and selling, he’s worth an estimated $2.9 billion, according to Forbes.
The Dole Foods CEO took the company private in 2013 in a deal that valued the company at $1.6 billion.
At 92, Murdock is somewhat of a health nut — he told the New York Times he swore off red meat long ago and eats as many as 20 fruits and vegetables a day, going so far as to pulverize banana peels and orange rinds into the smoothies he drinks two to three times a day — and he says he wants to live forever.
George Foreman dropped out at 15
Foreman dropped out of school in the ninth grade and ran with street gangs until he joined the Job Corps in 1965, where he first started training as a boxer, according to Bio.
He has been inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame and the International Boxing Hall of Fame as a two-time World Heavyweight Champion and Olympic gold medalist.
Most of Foreman’s fortune came after his boxing career as a spokesperson for Russell Hobbs Inc.’s fat-reducing grill called the George Foreman Grill, which has earned him an estimated net worth of $250 million, according to TheRichest.
James H. Clark dropped out at 16
The self-made billionaire American businessman and cofounder of Netscape dropped out of high school at 16 after getting into some trouble and joined the U.S. Navy, where he earned his high school equivalency degree, began learning about electronics, and made money on the side by loan-sharking cash to other recruits at interest rates of 40%, according to Forbes.
Considered the first Internet billionaire, Clark’s timely investments in companies like Apple, Facebook, and Twitter have earned him an estimated current worth of about 1.85 billion, according to Forbes.
His philanthropic efforts include financially backing the Japanese dolphin hunting documentary, The Cove and pledging $60 million toward science research in 2013.
This article originally appeared on Business Insider
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Thursday, November 5, 2015
11 Successful People Who Dropped Out of High School - TIME
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
22 Fascinating Facts About Warren Buffett’s Success - TIME
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Posted: 03 Nov 2015 02:41 PM PST
Warren Buffett was picking out stocks at 11 years old — and he amassed the equivalent of $53,000 in today’s dollars by the time he was 16.
Today, the 85-year-old investing legend has an estimated net worth of over $70 billion, according to Forbes, making him the third richest man in the world.
Inspired by a Quora thread asking “What are some mind-blowing facts about Warren Buffett,” we rounded up astonishing facts about the “Oracle from Omaha” and his massive amount of wealth:
1. While his elementary school classmates were dreaming about the major leagues and Hollywood, 10-year old Buffett was having lunch with a member of the New York Stock Exchange and setting life goals.
Buffett’s legendary career all began with an epiphany at age 10 when he was on a trip to New York City with his dad.
Dining with a member of the NYSE planted the idea in young Buffett’s head to organize his life around money. [Business Insider]
2. He bought his first stock at age 11.
He purchased multiple shares of Cities Service Preferred for $38 apiece. [GOBankingRates]
3. When Buffett was a teen, he was already raking in about $175 a month — more than his teachers (and most adults).
He pulled this off by dutifully delivering the Washington Post. [Business Insider]
4. He had amassed the equivalent of $53,000 by the time he was just 16.
Paper delivery was just one of many small businesses teenage Buffett orchestrated: He sold used golf balls and stamps, buffed cars, set up a pinball machine business, and turned a horse track into a lucrative playground. [Business Insider]
5. He was rejected from Harvard Business School.
Buffett, confident he nailed his admissions interview, had already told a friend, “Join me at Harvard.”
“I looked about 16 and and emotionally was about nine,” he recalled of the in-person interview. Forced to look elsewhere, he settled on Columbia University, which only required a written application and no interview. [Business Insider]
6. His idol refused to hire him the first time he applied.
Buffett originally wanted to work with his idol, and author of “The Intelligent Investor,” Benjamin Graham, but Graham rejected him.
Buffett wouldn’t take no for an answer, and continued pitching Graham ideas until he eventually hired him. [James Altucher]
7. Buffett spent $100 to take a Dale Carnegie course on public speaking.
He was 21 and terrified of public speaking. It ended up being a worthy investment, as the course helped him propose to his wife. [Business Insider]
8. His house is a humble five-bedroom in Omaha, Nebraska that he bought in 1956 for $31,500.
If you want to be Buffett’s neighbor, the house across the street will cost you about $2.15 million. [James Altucher]
9. Buffett doesn’t keep a computer on his desk, and he chooses to use a flip phone rather than a smartphone.
There is, however, a World Book Encyclopedia set on his shelf. [James Altucher, Business Insider, CNN]
10. In fact, he’s only sent one email in his life, to Jeff Raikes of Microsoft. [CNN]
11. His distance from technology leaves him time for bridge, which he plays about 12 hours a week.
Oftentimes, his bridge partner is Bill Gates. [James Altucher]
12. He spends 80% of his day reading.
When he’s not playing bridge, he’s reading. “I just sit in my office and read all day,” he says. [The Week]
13. He drinks an alarming amount of Coca-Cola each day.
The business magnate is a notoriously unhealthy eater: “If I eat 2,700 calories a day, a quarter of that is Coca-Cola. I drink at least five 12-ounce servings. I do it everyday.”
He also likes to double-fist salt shakers, and don’t put it past him to enjoy a bowl of ice cream for breakfast. [Business Insider]
14. 99% of Buffett’s wealth was earned after his 50th birthday. [Fool]
15. Among investing legends, Buffett has the longest track record for beating the market.
The longevity of Buffett’s outperformance is greater than that of other savvy investors, such as David Einhorn and Walter Schloss. [Business Insider]
16. $1,000 invested in Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway stock in 1964, when Buffett took over the company and shares cost just $19, would be worth about $11.6 million dollars today. [Business Insider]
17. Buffett’s net worth is greater than the GDP of Uruguay.
Uruguay’s 2014 GDP was estimated to be $57,471,277,325.
18. Buffett has so far donated enough money in his lifetime to build four Apple ‘Spaceship’ Campuses, which are $5 billion endeavors.
The Apple Campus, one of the last major projects Steve Jobs worked on, is a futuristic-looking company campus that will feature curved glass panels, an underground parking lot, a private auditorium for keynotes and product launches, and a 360-degree view of nature.
Buffett has donated a lifetime total of $20 billion — the second-highest amount (following that of Bill Gates). [Forbes]
19. In 2013, Buffett made on average $37 million per day
According to Forbes, Jennifer Lawrence was the second-highest-paid actress in 2013, and she is estimated to have made $34 million that year.
Warren Buffett made $37 million per day in 2013. [MarketWatch]
20. The multi-billionaire reportedly earns only $100,000 a year at Berkshire Hathaway — and spends it frugally. [GOBankingRates]
21. People are so fascinated with the legendary Buffett that they’ll spend millions of dollars to eat lunch with him.
Buffett has been auctioning off a “power lunch” since 2000 at his charity event for GLIDE Foundation.
The highest bidder gets to bring up to seven people to dine with the steak-loving business magnate at Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in Manhattan, and the most recent winner paid $2,345,678. [Reuters]
22. He doesn’t think money equals success: “I measure success by how many people love me. And the best way to be loved is to be lovable.” [James Altucher]
This article originally appeared on Business Ins
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Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Russia-Ukraine conflict: Proof of MH17 tragedy’s real culprits grows - Reuter
Russia-Ukraine conflict: Proof of MH17 tragedy’s real culprits grows
By James Miller July 17, 2015
Tags: BUK | FLIGHT MH17 | MISSILE | RUSSIA | UKRAINE
A pro-Russian separatist holds a stuffed toy found at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, near the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region
A pro-Russian separatist holds a stuffed toy found at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, near the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region, July 18, 2014. REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev
One year ago, Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was shot out of the sky over the war zone in eastern Ukraine, and one year later we are closer than ever to proving who is ultimately responsible for this tragic act.
I have been compiling and analyzing information gathered over the last 12 months by field reporters and bloggers, statements from the Russian and Ukrainian governments, and the investigations launched by various government and non-government agencies, including the official inquiries of the Dutch Safety Board. The goal is to find and address similarities and discrepancies, and to use new information to verify or debunk parts of the narrative put forth by either the Ukrainian or Russian governments.
One theme struck me — just how well eyewitness testimony, the investigations of many journalists, videos and pictures uploaded by citizens of Ukraine, and even the intelligence assessments of the Ukrainian and Western governments all dovetail together with, ironically, the initial statements of the Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine to form a more complete and largely-harmonious picture of what happened that day.
For instance, within minutes of the aircraft being shot down there were already videos, pictures, and social media reports of the burning wreckage. But at this point, no one knew that a civilian airliner was missing. Instead, the assumption was that the Russian-backed separatists had shot down another Ukrainian military aircraft, one of many destroyed in the weeks leading up to the downing of the civilian airliner. Even the separatists themselves took to social media networks, using accounts which they have never renounced and which they continue to use, to take credit for the destruction of yet another Ukrainian “bird.”
Within hours of the crash, as the world learned that a civilian aircraft, not a military one, had been shot down, the separatists worked to hide their previous statements while citizens of eastern Ukraine and journalists who were positioned in the area furiously uploaded pictures, videos, and eyewitness reports — pieces of a puzzle which clearly indicate that those initial statements by the leaders of the Russian-backed fighters were accurate, the pro-Russian separatists were indeed responsible for the shooting down of a civilian airliner.
The supporting evidence for this claim is overwhelming. Arms experts quickly realized that the anti-aircraft missiles which the Russian-backed fighters were known to possess were not capable of hitting an aircraft at MH17’s altitude. But with the fighting in eastern Ukraine building to a crescendo, the area was crawling with war correspondents, and journalists for the Associated Press witnessed the prime suspect in this disaster, an advanced Buk anti-aircraft missile which had not previously been documented in this conflict.
Pictures and videos showing the Buk in various locations in near the crash zone were also uploaded by citizen journalists, as experts such as myself worked to confirm the locations shown in the citizen reports.
Eyewitnesses overheard in videos and interviewed by journalists talked about a missile which was fired somewhere south of the town of Snezhnoye which hit the aircraft. A photographer in the area, not far from where the Buk was believed to have been launched, photographed a smoke trail ascending into the sky. Citizen bloggers were able to determine where the picture was taken by comparing the topography in the picture with satellite photos and geotagged pictures. Journalists then traveled to these various locations, interviewed residents, confirmed the location of pictures, and were able to piece together a convincing timetable for where the Buk had traveled before, during, and after MH17 was shot down.
Now, sources from the official Dutch Safety Board have told CNN that their official report, slated to be released in October, will say that MH17 was destroyed by “a Buk missile — a Russian surface-to-air missile — that was used, launched from a village in Russian rebel controlled territory.”
The broader question, though, is whether the Russian government is ultimately responsible for this tragedy. As my full report points out, there is evidence that the Buk traveled from Russia before MH17 was shot down, and there is even better evidence that it returned to Russia after MH17 was shot down. The report also links to evidence that the same Buk which shot down MH17 was documented in a Russian military convoy on the Russian side of the border before it was spotted in the area of MH17’s crash site.
But while stories about anti-aircraft missiles and Russian conspiracy theories have received plenty of attention, forgotten in some analysis of MH17 is the wider context. In the two months that led up to MH17, the fledgling Ukrainian government, perhaps confident that it had a public mandate and did not face a counter-revolution, was doubling-down on its efforts to reunify the country. The Russian-backed fighters were rapidly losing territory to the Ukrainian military throughout late May, June, and early July. It was during this period that a large influx of new weapons reached eastern Ukraine, weapons which had no clear point of origin and many which had not been seen on Ukraine’s battlefields.
The Buk was just one of these weapons, though perhaps the most significant, and its presence in Ukraine that day was part of a wider pattern of expanded Russian military involvement in the Donbass.
By James Miller July 17, 2015
Tags: BUK | FLIGHT MH17 | MISSILE | RUSSIA | UKRAINE
A pro-Russian separatist holds a stuffed toy found at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, near the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region
A pro-Russian separatist holds a stuffed toy found at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, near the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region, July 18, 2014. REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev
One year ago, Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was shot out of the sky over the war zone in eastern Ukraine, and one year later we are closer than ever to proving who is ultimately responsible for this tragic act.
I have been compiling and analyzing information gathered over the last 12 months by field reporters and bloggers, statements from the Russian and Ukrainian governments, and the investigations launched by various government and non-government agencies, including the official inquiries of the Dutch Safety Board. The goal is to find and address similarities and discrepancies, and to use new information to verify or debunk parts of the narrative put forth by either the Ukrainian or Russian governments.
One theme struck me — just how well eyewitness testimony, the investigations of many journalists, videos and pictures uploaded by citizens of Ukraine, and even the intelligence assessments of the Ukrainian and Western governments all dovetail together with, ironically, the initial statements of the Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine to form a more complete and largely-harmonious picture of what happened that day.
For instance, within minutes of the aircraft being shot down there were already videos, pictures, and social media reports of the burning wreckage. But at this point, no one knew that a civilian airliner was missing. Instead, the assumption was that the Russian-backed separatists had shot down another Ukrainian military aircraft, one of many destroyed in the weeks leading up to the downing of the civilian airliner. Even the separatists themselves took to social media networks, using accounts which they have never renounced and which they continue to use, to take credit for the destruction of yet another Ukrainian “bird.”
Within hours of the crash, as the world learned that a civilian aircraft, not a military one, had been shot down, the separatists worked to hide their previous statements while citizens of eastern Ukraine and journalists who were positioned in the area furiously uploaded pictures, videos, and eyewitness reports — pieces of a puzzle which clearly indicate that those initial statements by the leaders of the Russian-backed fighters were accurate, the pro-Russian separatists were indeed responsible for the shooting down of a civilian airliner.
The supporting evidence for this claim is overwhelming. Arms experts quickly realized that the anti-aircraft missiles which the Russian-backed fighters were known to possess were not capable of hitting an aircraft at MH17’s altitude. But with the fighting in eastern Ukraine building to a crescendo, the area was crawling with war correspondents, and journalists for the Associated Press witnessed the prime suspect in this disaster, an advanced Buk anti-aircraft missile which had not previously been documented in this conflict.
Pictures and videos showing the Buk in various locations in near the crash zone were also uploaded by citizen journalists, as experts such as myself worked to confirm the locations shown in the citizen reports.
Eyewitnesses overheard in videos and interviewed by journalists talked about a missile which was fired somewhere south of the town of Snezhnoye which hit the aircraft. A photographer in the area, not far from where the Buk was believed to have been launched, photographed a smoke trail ascending into the sky. Citizen bloggers were able to determine where the picture was taken by comparing the topography in the picture with satellite photos and geotagged pictures. Journalists then traveled to these various locations, interviewed residents, confirmed the location of pictures, and were able to piece together a convincing timetable for where the Buk had traveled before, during, and after MH17 was shot down.
Now, sources from the official Dutch Safety Board have told CNN that their official report, slated to be released in October, will say that MH17 was destroyed by “a Buk missile — a Russian surface-to-air missile — that was used, launched from a village in Russian rebel controlled territory.”
The broader question, though, is whether the Russian government is ultimately responsible for this tragedy. As my full report points out, there is evidence that the Buk traveled from Russia before MH17 was shot down, and there is even better evidence that it returned to Russia after MH17 was shot down. The report also links to evidence that the same Buk which shot down MH17 was documented in a Russian military convoy on the Russian side of the border before it was spotted in the area of MH17’s crash site.
But while stories about anti-aircraft missiles and Russian conspiracy theories have received plenty of attention, forgotten in some analysis of MH17 is the wider context. In the two months that led up to MH17, the fledgling Ukrainian government, perhaps confident that it had a public mandate and did not face a counter-revolution, was doubling-down on its efforts to reunify the country. The Russian-backed fighters were rapidly losing territory to the Ukrainian military throughout late May, June, and early July. It was during this period that a large influx of new weapons reached eastern Ukraine, weapons which had no clear point of origin and many which had not been seen on Ukraine’s battlefields.
The Buk was just one of these weapons, though perhaps the most significant, and its presence in Ukraine that day was part of a wider pattern of expanded Russian military involvement in the Donbass.
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Could Hitler come to power today? - Economist
Could Hitler come to power today?
Jun 25th 2013, 18:25 BY B.C. | MUNICH
COULD Adolf Hitler come to power today? Timur Vermes poses this question in his debut novel “He’s Back” (“Er Ist Wieder Da”). Told in the first person, the plot sees Hitler randomly wake up from a 66-year sleep in 2011 Berlin. There is no explanation for how or why this has happened, but that is hardly the point. Hitler begins to muddle his way through this new Germany, and people can’t help but notice his unusual appearance, his uncanny likeness to the late Führer. Assuming no one would guilelessly decide to look like Hitler, many start to assume he is engaged in some kind of comedic performance art. Sure enough, Hitler begins to develop a following, appears on television, appeals to youth on YouTube and becomes a media star. Eventually he dabbles in politics—with a fervent campaign against dog muck on the streets, for example—and continues his professional advance. “He gets quite far,” says Mr Vermes at a bookstore in Munich's Marienplatz. “You have somebody with no means, no money, he looks like Hitler, he is Hitler. You tend to underestimate him, like he was underestimated back in 1920.”
Mr Vermes has clearly struck a chord: the book has been a bestseller in Germany since its release in late 2012, and it is being translated into 32 languages, with an English-language version due next year. The film rights have been sold.
The book’s fans and critics often point to the same thing: the way in which it humanises Hitler. “People try to see Hitler as a monster. The monster is just an easy explanation for us not to feel guilty,” says Mr Vermes. “The more powerful he is the less chance we had to resist. That is why we want to keep this monster.” By confronting readers with Hitler’s charisma, the author highlights the role that public popularity played in Hitler’s rise to power.
One chapter sees Hitler make an appearance on a comedy show with an ethnically Turkish host. Told from Hitler’s perspective, an encounter with a female stagehand is a fine example of the kind of awkward social interactions that populate the text. The stagehand’s informality clearly shocks the resurrected German leader:
“‘You’ve been on television before, Mr Hitler?’ she asked after a while. I noted that first names were no longer on the agenda. She had presumably been awed by my Führer ’s aura.‘Several times,’ I said, ‘but all rather a long time ago.’‘Oh,’ she said, ‘anything I might have seen you in?’‘I suspect not,’ I said. ‘It was here in Berlin, at the Olympic Stadium...’‘Were you the warm-up man for a headlining-act?’‘Was I what?’ I asked her, but she had stopped listening.”
Amusing as this may be, the book’s satire has a serious point. “At first it was just fun, but while writing it I realised there is something more in it,” says Mr Vermes. “It’s his side. We have his logic, his explanations. With this you can bring the reader to almost agree with him. You can see how it is to be seduced, to follow, how easy it was to connect with him. You are the only one who can say ‘no’.”
Mr Vermes, a 46-year-old born of a Hungarian father and German mother, formerly worked as a journalist in what he describes as “the yellow press”. It was there that he honed his skills for provoking readers. “In those tabloids you have to attract the buyer every new day,” he says. His idea for a Hitler book came about when he came across a copy of Hitler’s little known “Second Book”, written after “Mein Kampf” in 1928. Mr Vermes was inspired to write a third book by Hitler, and set about studying the man’s speeches and writings to better reproduce the Führer’s voice.
Despite the book’s provocative premise, Mr Vermes figured “He’s Back” would find a niche audience. He was mistaken. It has sold at least 600,000 copies in print and another 200,000 or so in ebook downloads and audio books.
Yet any attempt to delve into the psychology of the Third Reich comes with controversy. A review in the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung called Mr Vermes “politically naïve” and alleged that his readers may not be fully in on his joke. “Most of the people who have negative reactions haven’t even read the book. That is my experience,” said Christoph Stempl, a manager at the Hugendubel bookstore on Munich’s Marienplatz.
Stacked in the front window of most German booksellers, the book’s stylish cover draws the eyes in. It features a white background overlaid with a slicked black hairdo, its title written to resemble Hitler’s boxy moustache. The price is €19.33, the year the Führer became chancellor 80 years ago. Mr Vermes is facing calls for a sequel, something he finds highly unlikely. “I already thought about sending him to America, but then it is like the movie ‘Terminator 2’ or something. It gives you nothing new to think about.”
Read more at http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/06/german-fiction#vblSK1CTzABB8jq9.99
Jun 25th 2013, 18:25 BY B.C. | MUNICH
COULD Adolf Hitler come to power today? Timur Vermes poses this question in his debut novel “He’s Back” (“Er Ist Wieder Da”). Told in the first person, the plot sees Hitler randomly wake up from a 66-year sleep in 2011 Berlin. There is no explanation for how or why this has happened, but that is hardly the point. Hitler begins to muddle his way through this new Germany, and people can’t help but notice his unusual appearance, his uncanny likeness to the late Führer. Assuming no one would guilelessly decide to look like Hitler, many start to assume he is engaged in some kind of comedic performance art. Sure enough, Hitler begins to develop a following, appears on television, appeals to youth on YouTube and becomes a media star. Eventually he dabbles in politics—with a fervent campaign against dog muck on the streets, for example—and continues his professional advance. “He gets quite far,” says Mr Vermes at a bookstore in Munich's Marienplatz. “You have somebody with no means, no money, he looks like Hitler, he is Hitler. You tend to underestimate him, like he was underestimated back in 1920.”
Mr Vermes has clearly struck a chord: the book has been a bestseller in Germany since its release in late 2012, and it is being translated into 32 languages, with an English-language version due next year. The film rights have been sold.
The book’s fans and critics often point to the same thing: the way in which it humanises Hitler. “People try to see Hitler as a monster. The monster is just an easy explanation for us not to feel guilty,” says Mr Vermes. “The more powerful he is the less chance we had to resist. That is why we want to keep this monster.” By confronting readers with Hitler’s charisma, the author highlights the role that public popularity played in Hitler’s rise to power.
One chapter sees Hitler make an appearance on a comedy show with an ethnically Turkish host. Told from Hitler’s perspective, an encounter with a female stagehand is a fine example of the kind of awkward social interactions that populate the text. The stagehand’s informality clearly shocks the resurrected German leader:
“‘You’ve been on television before, Mr Hitler?’ she asked after a while. I noted that first names were no longer on the agenda. She had presumably been awed by my Führer ’s aura.‘Several times,’ I said, ‘but all rather a long time ago.’‘Oh,’ she said, ‘anything I might have seen you in?’‘I suspect not,’ I said. ‘It was here in Berlin, at the Olympic Stadium...’‘Were you the warm-up man for a headlining-act?’‘Was I what?’ I asked her, but she had stopped listening.”
Amusing as this may be, the book’s satire has a serious point. “At first it was just fun, but while writing it I realised there is something more in it,” says Mr Vermes. “It’s his side. We have his logic, his explanations. With this you can bring the reader to almost agree with him. You can see how it is to be seduced, to follow, how easy it was to connect with him. You are the only one who can say ‘no’.”
Mr Vermes, a 46-year-old born of a Hungarian father and German mother, formerly worked as a journalist in what he describes as “the yellow press”. It was there that he honed his skills for provoking readers. “In those tabloids you have to attract the buyer every new day,” he says. His idea for a Hitler book came about when he came across a copy of Hitler’s little known “Second Book”, written after “Mein Kampf” in 1928. Mr Vermes was inspired to write a third book by Hitler, and set about studying the man’s speeches and writings to better reproduce the Führer’s voice.
Despite the book’s provocative premise, Mr Vermes figured “He’s Back” would find a niche audience. He was mistaken. It has sold at least 600,000 copies in print and another 200,000 or so in ebook downloads and audio books.
Yet any attempt to delve into the psychology of the Third Reich comes with controversy. A review in the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung called Mr Vermes “politically naïve” and alleged that his readers may not be fully in on his joke. “Most of the people who have negative reactions haven’t even read the book. That is my experience,” said Christoph Stempl, a manager at the Hugendubel bookstore on Munich’s Marienplatz.
Stacked in the front window of most German booksellers, the book’s stylish cover draws the eyes in. It features a white background overlaid with a slicked black hairdo, its title written to resemble Hitler’s boxy moustache. The price is €19.33, the year the Führer became chancellor 80 years ago. Mr Vermes is facing calls for a sequel, something he finds highly unlikely. “I already thought about sending him to America, but then it is like the movie ‘Terminator 2’ or something. It gives you nothing new to think about.”
Read more at http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/06/german-fiction#vblSK1CTzABB8jq9.99
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Planetary Nebula - JKHC
- Planetary Nebula - What is it ? What is its significance to life on earth ? We are all stardust !
- A nebula is also known as a planetary nebula which is an exploded star at the end of its life when all its original hydrogen is fused under the nuclear fusion process until the whole star core becomes iron ( at which point no further nuclear fusion can proceed ). With the loss of the powerful outward force of nuclear fusion the core catastrophically collapses under the inward gravitational force of its entire iron core resulting in a huge and bright explosion called a supernova. It can shine as bright as a whole galaxy. A special type of supernova known as type 1a always produces a standard brightness which makes it a standard candle for measuring absolute distances in the universe. Thus, a supernova is very useful to astronomers. In my pet astronomy project - Galaxy Zoo - there is now a new sub-project of supernova hunt to look for more supernovae. Everyone can volunteer to help online.
Joseph K. H. Cheng All visible nebulae are within our own Milky Way galaxy as exploded stars in other galaxies are too dim to be seen. The next closest galaxy is the Small Magellanic Cloud ( SMC ) , a small irregular galaxy some 170,000 light years away. The next nearest spiral galaxy is the Andromeda galaxy some 2.5 million light years away.
Joseph K. H. Cheng How small and insignificant are we in our universe ? Yet each and everyone has his or her own talents and purpose in the grand design of the universe only if we care to find out for ourselves !- We are all stardust - http://jkhcforum.blogspot.com.au/2010/11/thoughts-to-you-from-yours-truly-48.html
Astronomy is a really inspirational and humbling subject for everyone especially the politicians as it will keep their inflated ego at a manageable level.
http://jkhcforum.blogspot.com.au/2010/11/prose-staring-at-stars-poetry-prose-3.html
Staring at the Stars ( 看星星 )
More stars than sand to be gazed upon they are really spectacular and cool.
繁星多越恆河沙數，燦爛而有性格，更可任人觀賞。
In my life time they have given me endless comfort and showed me the eternal truth.
在我一生中，它們給予我無限安慰和為我展示了永恆的真理。
Start staring at the stars to learn your life story, too.
你們也不防試試看星，或許也可以如我一般獲得些人生的啟示。
Start staring at them especially when you feel blue.
正當你感覺繁亂之際，這也正好是開始觀星的適當時候。
So, let us start what we must do from here and now until you know what to do.
那麼就讓我們開始做我們必須做的事， 直到我們學會怎樣做為止。
When you are born stare at the stars. Their mystical omnipresence will symbolize you.
當你誕生時，請看着星星。它們神秘地無處不在，正像徵着你生命的存在。
When you are young stare at the stars. Their illusive twinkling will mesmerize you.
當你仍年輕的時候，請看看繁星，它們虛幻的閃爍， 令你切底地着了迷。
When you are lost stare at the stars. Their lasting brightness will guide you.
當你感到迷失和落魄的時候，請看看星空， 它們的永恆光芒會指引你的路途。
When you are successful stare at the stars. Their profound grandeur will humble you.
當你成功之際，更要看看星星，因為它們的偉大壯觀，使你感覺謙卑。
When you are angry stare at the stars. Their soothing tranquility will clam you.
當你忿怒時，也得看看繁星，它們有着令人心情舒緩的寧靜， 會使你悄悄地安靜下來。
When you are down stare at the stars. Their glamorous beauty will lift you.
當你心情沮喪的時候，請看看星星，它們的優美和燦爛，令你情緒提昇。
When you are happy stare at the stars. Their constant wonders will excite you.
當你快樂時， 也應舉頭看星，它們有着經常性的奇妙， 會令你更加興奮。
When you are wavering stare at the stars. Their great steadfastness will inspire you.
當你舉棋不定時，你需要看看星星，它們的永固不移，會給予你深刻的啟發。
When you are tired stare at the stars. Their endless energy will revitalize you.
當你疲倦之際，你也得仰首觀星，因它們無盡的能量，能使你活力得予重振。
When you are in love stare at the stars. Their unfathomable eternity will reassure you.
當你沐浴愛河時， 你可以舉頭看星， 它們無法量度的永恆存在，令你得到愛的保證。
When you are old stare at the stars. Their everlasting myths will provide dreams for you.
當你年老的時候，你更加要看看星星，它們的不死傳說，令你可以繼續造你的長生夢。
When you are dead stare at the stars, too, for they will all be around you !
當你不幸死去，希望你仍能看着所有陪伴在你左右的繁星，因為這樣的話，你已經身處天堂了！
For all the above reasons, I love astronomy dearly and would gladly introduce it to all of you.
由於以上諸因，我浩愛天文學，更十分樂意將它推薦給各位仁兄仁姐，予以分享, 奇景共賞。
JKHC.
鄭冠合
Planetary
More stars than sand to be gazed upon they are really spectacular and cool.
繁星多越恆河沙數，燦爛而有性格，更可任人觀賞。
In my life time they have given me endless comfort and showed me the eternal truth.
在我一生中，它們給予我無限安慰和為我展示了永恆的真理。
Start staring at the stars to learn your life story, too.
你們也不防試試看星，或許也可以如我一般獲得些人生的啟示。
Start staring at them especially when you feel blue.
正當你感覺繁亂之際，這也正好是開始觀星的適當時候。
So, let us start what we must do from here and now until you know what to do.
那麼就讓我們開始做我們必須做的事， 直到我們學會怎樣做為止。
When you are born stare at the stars. Their mystical omnipresence will symbolize you.
當你誕生時，請看着星星。它們神秘地無處不在，正像徵着你生命的存在。
When you are young stare at the stars. Their illusive twinkling will mesmerize you.
當你仍年輕的時候，請看看繁星，它們虛幻的閃爍， 令你切底地着了迷。
When you are lost stare at the stars. Their lasting brightness will guide you.
當你感到迷失和落魄的時候，請看看星空， 它們的永恆光芒會指引你的路途。
When you are successful stare at the stars. Their profound grandeur will humble you.
當你成功之際，更要看看星星，因為它們的偉大壯觀，使你感覺謙卑。
When you are angry stare at the stars. Their soothing tranquility will clam you.
當你忿怒時，也得看看繁星，它們有着令人心情舒緩的寧靜， 會使你悄悄地安靜下來。
When you are down stare at the stars. Their glamorous beauty will lift you.
當你心情沮喪的時候，請看看星星，它們的優美和燦爛，令你情緒提昇。
When you are happy stare at the stars. Their constant wonders will excite you.
當你快樂時， 也應舉頭看星，它們有着經常性的奇妙， 會令你更加興奮。
When you are wavering stare at the stars. Their great steadfastness will inspire you.
當你舉棋不定時，你需要看看星星，它們的永固不移，會給予你深刻的啟發。
When you are tired stare at the stars. Their endless energy will revitalize you.
當你疲倦之際，你也得仰首觀星，因它們無盡的能量，能使你活力得予重振。
When you are in love stare at the stars. Their unfathomable eternity will reassure you.
當你沐浴愛河時， 你可以舉頭看星， 它們無法量度的永恆存在，令你得到愛的保證。
When you are old stare at the stars. Their everlasting myths will provide dreams for you.
當你年老的時候，你更加要看看星星，它們的不死傳說，令你可以繼續造你的長生夢。
When you are dead stare at the stars, too, for they will all be around you !
當你不幸死去，希望你仍能看着所有陪伴在你左右的繁星，因為這樣的話，你已經身處天堂了！
For all the above reasons, I love astronomy dearly and would gladly introduce it to all of you.
由於以上諸因，我浩愛天文學，更十分樂意將它推薦給各位仁兄仁姐，予以分享, 奇景共賞。
JKHC.
鄭冠合
Planetary
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
6 Common Grammatical Errors and How to Correct Them - Entrepreneur.com
6 Common Grammatical Errors and How to Correct Them
Jonathan Long / Entrepreneur.com July 21, 2015
Do not underestimate the power of incorrect grammar
Proper grammar seems to be a thing of the past — why stress about tiny technicalities, right? Wrong.
You should be a grammar stickler for many reasons. Do you want to risk turning off potential clients, employers and connections because of grammatical mistakes?
Many people are so concerned with what they are saying in an email or text message that they completely forget to pay attention to how they are saying it. If you chose to turn grammar mode off when you are communicating with friends, that is one thing, but there is absolutely no reason to send a professional communication that contains errors.
Here are six grammatical errors that are so simple, yet such common offenders. Make sure you aren’t making them.
1. Your/You’re
This is probably the most common mistake I see on social media, in text messages and in emails. This one is real simple — if you are trying to say “you are” then “you’re” is correct. If you are talking about something that belongs to you, such as “your car” then you use “your.”
2. Too/To/Two
Many people confuse these and don’t even realize they are doing it. It’s real easy — “two” is a number, “too” is an adverb that means “also,” and “to” is a preposition used to express motion, direction, limit of movement, contact, a point of limit in time, purpose, intention and destination — to name a few.
For example:
“I would like to become an entrepreneur.”
“I too would like to become an entrepreneur.”
3. There/Their/They’re
What should have been squared away in third grade continues to haunt grammar police on a daily basis. The there/their/they’re mistake is common — but it’s really simple to avoid.
Use “they’re” when you are trying to say “they are.”
“Their” should be used when you are indicating possession.
Finally, “there” needs to be used when referring to a location.
Example: “They’re going to love working there. Their company culture is amazing!”
4. You/U
This one is really just pure laziness rather than a grammatical mistake. Texting has completely ruined grammar and you/u is a perfect example. I understand that “u” is perfectly acceptable if you are texting a friend and are in a rush — but it’s not acceptable in a professional email.
Here is an excerpt of an email I received last week from a C-level executive who is in charge of a company that does business worth several hundreds of millions of dollars every year:
… that would be gr8! Talk to u soon!
He managed to nail two text slangs back to back like a champ. Again, if it was a text message, fine — but a professional email is no place for this. This email is actually what sparked me to write this article, so thank you grammatically challenged C-level executive.
5. Then/Than
When you are talking about time you use “then” and when you are making a comparison you use “than.” It really shouldn’t be that difficult to distinguish what one to use:
“We are going to grab a quick bite to eat and then head back to the office.”
“This new software update is much better than the previous version.”
6. It’s/Its
This one confuses a lot of people, mainly due to the apostrophe, which typically symbolizes possession. Use “it’s” when you are trying to say “it is” and use “its” when you are looking for the possessive form of “it.”
“I looked at its owners manual to get the correct settings.”
“It’s a beautiful day outside.”
This article originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com
Jonathan Long / Entrepreneur.com July 21, 2015
Do not underestimate the power of incorrect grammar
Proper grammar seems to be a thing of the past — why stress about tiny technicalities, right? Wrong.
You should be a grammar stickler for many reasons. Do you want to risk turning off potential clients, employers and connections because of grammatical mistakes?
Many people are so concerned with what they are saying in an email or text message that they completely forget to pay attention to how they are saying it. If you chose to turn grammar mode off when you are communicating with friends, that is one thing, but there is absolutely no reason to send a professional communication that contains errors.
Here are six grammatical errors that are so simple, yet such common offenders. Make sure you aren’t making them.
1. Your/You’re
This is probably the most common mistake I see on social media, in text messages and in emails. This one is real simple — if you are trying to say “you are” then “you’re” is correct. If you are talking about something that belongs to you, such as “your car” then you use “your.”
2. Too/To/Two
Many people confuse these and don’t even realize they are doing it. It’s real easy — “two” is a number, “too” is an adverb that means “also,” and “to” is a preposition used to express motion, direction, limit of movement, contact, a point of limit in time, purpose, intention and destination — to name a few.
For example:
“I would like to become an entrepreneur.”
“I too would like to become an entrepreneur.”
3. There/Their/They’re
What should have been squared away in third grade continues to haunt grammar police on a daily basis. The there/their/they’re mistake is common — but it’s really simple to avoid.
Use “they’re” when you are trying to say “they are.”
“Their” should be used when you are indicating possession.
Finally, “there” needs to be used when referring to a location.
Example: “They’re going to love working there. Their company culture is amazing!”
4. You/U
This one is really just pure laziness rather than a grammatical mistake. Texting has completely ruined grammar and you/u is a perfect example. I understand that “u” is perfectly acceptable if you are texting a friend and are in a rush — but it’s not acceptable in a professional email.
Here is an excerpt of an email I received last week from a C-level executive who is in charge of a company that does business worth several hundreds of millions of dollars every year:
… that would be gr8! Talk to u soon!
He managed to nail two text slangs back to back like a champ. Again, if it was a text message, fine — but a professional email is no place for this. This email is actually what sparked me to write this article, so thank you grammatically challenged C-level executive.
5. Then/Than
When you are talking about time you use “then” and when you are making a comparison you use “than.” It really shouldn’t be that difficult to distinguish what one to use:
“We are going to grab a quick bite to eat and then head back to the office.”
“This new software update is much better than the previous version.”
6. It’s/Its
This one confuses a lot of people, mainly due to the apostrophe, which typically symbolizes possession. Use “it’s” when you are trying to say “it is” and use “its” when you are looking for the possessive form of “it.”
“I looked at its owners manual to get the correct settings.”
“It’s a beautiful day outside.”
This article originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com
Monday, October 5, 2015
The making of Modiano - Nobel Prize winner in literature - TIME
August 21, 2015 4:16 pm
The making of Modiano
Tobias Grey
The Nobel laureate’s newly translated works take us back to the beginning of his project to grapple with the dark years of Nazi rule
French novelist Patrick Modiano in Paris in 1969©Sophie Bassouls/Sygma/Corbis
French novelist Patrick Modiano in Paris in 1969
Pedigree, by Patrick Modiano, translated by Mark Polizzotti, MacLehose Press, RRP£14.99/Yale University Press, RRP$25, 144 pages
The Occupation Trilogy: La Place de l’Étoile; The Night Watch; Ring Roads, by Patrick Modiano, translated by Caroline Hillier, Patricia Wolf and Frank Wynne, Bloomsbury, RRP£18.99/$18, 352 pages
So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighbourhood, by Patrick Modiano, translated by Euan Cameron, MacLehose Press, RRP£14.99/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, RRP$24 160 pages
In his unflinching coming-of-age memoir, Pedigree (2004), Patrick Modiano recalls how at 13 he was first confronted with images of the Nazi extermination camps. Modiano — who was born on the outskirts of Paris in July 1945 — had accompanied his Jewish businessman father, Albert, to a cinema where they watched a documentary on the Nuremberg trials. The experience would leave an indelible impression on the future novelist, as would his father’s silence on the subject of the Holocaust. “Something changed for me that day,” he wrote. “And what did my father think? We never talked about it, not even as we left the cinema.”
The question of what Modiano’s evasive father did in occupied Paris during the war is one that has haunted the winner of last year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. Eventually he discovered that his father avoided wearing the obligatory yellow badge for Jews, did not register himself as one of them, and narrowly escaped deportation when “someone” intervened in his favour after he was arrested in 1943. But had Albert simply been a black marketeer who lived off his wits, as appears to have been his official line? Or was he, more tragically, what the French call a collabo — a willing collaborator with the enemy?
Before Modiano won the Nobel Prize, this most singular writer, noted for his elliptical plots and regretful tone of voice, had barely caused a ripple in the English-speaking world. Only eight of his 30 novels had been translated into English and most of those had fallen out of print. But since the award, publishers in Britain and the US have been falling over themselves to have their own Modiano moment.
Last year, Yale University Press rushed into print Suspended Sentences, a standalone book comprising a trio of newly translated novellas — Afterimage (1993), Suspended Sentences (1988) and Flowers of Ruin (1991). This month sees the UK publication of Bloomsbury’s Occupation Trilogy, a retrospective grouping devised by his Spanish publisher that constitutes translations of Modiano’s first three novels, originally published in France between 1968 and 1972. And in September, MacLehose Press will publish the first English-language translations of Pedigree and his most recent novel So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighbourhood, which came out in France last year; they are to be published in the US by Yale and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In January, MacLehose will also bring out new translations of Modiano’s 2007 novel In the Café of Lost Youth and The Black Notebook (2012).
Modiano has spoken about being a product of “the dunghill of the Occupation”. His mother, Louisa Colpeyn — a Flemish-speaking Belgian actress who spent the war years in Paris working for the German-controlled French film production company Continental — died earlier this year. In Pedigree he describes her as having been “a pretty girl with an arid heart” whose encounter with his father was a “rash” one. “Periods of great turbulence often lead to rash encounters, with the result that I’ve never felt like a legitimate son, much less an heir,” Modiano writes.
His fictions are most often meditations on identity and contain autobiographical elements — notably the names of streets where the author has lived or places he used to frequent. The 1978 Prix Goncourt-winning Missing Person, about an amnesiac detective investigating his own past, is just such a novel. Though he rarely invokes the Holocaust directly, its horrific violence — both physical and moral — seethes beneath the surface.
Modiano became famous in France at the end of the 1960s for being one of the country’s first novelists to dare to write about the underbelly of the Occupation and, in particular, about the French Gestapo. His novels, with domestic sales often in excess of 100,000 copies, receive the attention of the top French critics, who invariably describe his elegant, pared-down prose in terms of “la petite musique de Modiano”.
He is not much of a joiner and has turned down several requests by the Académie Française to become an immortel. For a long time Modiano lied about his age, telling interviewers that he was born in 1947 (the year his brother Rudy was born). His French biographer Denis Cosnard has suggested this was a way for Modiano to both pay homage to his brother, who died from leukaemia aged 10, and to distance himself from the war. At the beginning of his novel Ring Roads, Modiano quotes one of his favourite poets, Arthur Rimbaud: “If only I had a past at some other point in French history! But no, nothing.”
Ring Roads forms the third part of the Occupation Trilogy, which, along with The Night Watch (Modiano’s second novel), had already been translated into English in the early 1970s. Both have been subsequently revised for the new edition. The real discovery, though, is the first English-language translation of Modiano’s controversial debut, La Place de l’Étoile, originally published in 1968 when the author was only 22.
No doubt it took the imprimatur of Modiano winning the Nobel Prize to finally reveal La Place to English-language readers in all its youthful and frenetic glory. The novel’s protagonist is the wretchedly-named Raphäel Schlemilovitch — from the Yiddish tradition meaning son of a schlemiel (one who is bereft of luck). The luckless Raphäel is both Jewish collabo and anti-Semite to boot. In a tour-de-force of inventive pastiche, Modiano appropriates the chiselled, curt sentences and polemical style of collaborationist writers such as Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Lucien Rebatet and the journalist Robert Brasillach (all of whose books he had discovered in his father’s library) to depict a wartime France awash in corruption, complacency and concupiscence.
It was the work of an angry young man who wanted to torpedo the Gaullist myth of France as a country full of resistance fighters. It was also a son’s revenge. “In my first book I wanted to reply to all those people whose insults hurt me on account of my father,” writes Modiano in Dora Bruder (1997) — his peerless book about his investigation into the disappearance of a Jewish teenager during the war. “And [I wanted] to do it on the battlefield of French prose by once and for all reducing them to silence.”
Modiano’s vocation as a writer has always been about keeping memory alive, however much others might be keen to move on and forget. There remain some in Paris who would prefer for the Occupation, often referred to as les années noires, to be less visibly integrated into the city’s architecture. Last year outrage ensued when it was discovered that after some building work a plaque at 93, Rue Lauriston, commemorating the lives of tortured Resistance members, had not been replaced.
Though he rarely invokes the Holocaust directly, its horrific violence — both physical and moral — seethes beneath the surface of his novels
The business that rented the address — where the French Gestapo had its headquarters between 1941 and 1944 — argued that retaining the plaque would confront their clients with a bitter reminder of the past. The news surely didn’t escape Modiano’s attention. His father once had an office at nearby Rue Lord Byron and the author spent a great deal of time exploring the environs of the 16th arrondissement.
The Night Watch, published in 1969, features characters who are very closely based on Pierre Bonny and Henri Lafont, leading figures in the French Gestapo whose gang was known as “La Bande de la Rue Lauriston”. Into their midst Modiano introduces a rootless young man. He is not evil per se but far too easily influenced by those with more experience than himself: “Not enough moral fibre to be a hero. Too dispassionate and distracted to be a real villain. On the other hand, I was malleable, I had a fondness for action, and I was plainly good-natured.”
The novel’s protagonist is remarkably similar to the one Modiano and Louis Malle came up with in their screenplay for the Bafta-award winning film Lacombe, Lucien (1974). Both eschew a focus on ideology to show a young man being shaped by the environment in which he finds himself. In Lacombe, Lucien, this means presenting a thrill-seeking lout who, after being turned down by the French Resistance as a potential recruit, soon finds himself presented with the opportunity of enrolling with the enemy.
Some influential French film critics such as Serge Daney attacked Modiano and Malle for the blankness of their protagonist and a general lack of psychological insight. But it is precisely the passivity of these characters that explains their corruptibility. The world they enter into, to borrow Modiano’s words, is one of “flashy foreigners, abortionists, swindlers, hack journalists, shyster lawyers and crooked accountants”, not to mention “a whole battalion of women of easy virtue, erotic dancers, morphine addicts”. Ring Roads, which was published three years after The Night Watch, navigated similarly murky waters in its story of a young Jew who goes in search of his collaborationist father.
It is a world the novelist still contemplates today but in a far more restrained key. As a study in contrasts it is fascinating to read Modiano’s most recent novel, last year’s So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighbourhood alongside La Place de l’Étoile. There is still plenty of moral unpleasantness at play but the focus has narrowed and the intrigue has grown less haphazard.
The story begins when a reclusive but eminently sane writer, Jean Daragane, is contacted by a stranger, who says he has found the author’s address book and wants to return it to him in person. From this slender premise Modiano weaves a complex tale which switches between past and present. The Occupation is never mentioned but Daragane’s fallible memories are of a peripatetic upbringing straight after the war and the wayward individuals he encountered while his parents were absent.
Some French critics have suggested that So You Don’t Get Lost is Modiano’s most autobiographical novel yet. In his beautifully wrought Nobel lecture, he hinted as much by evoking his upbringing and how it shaped his future as a writer. Modiano recounted how he often found himself away from his parents, staying with their friends, about whom he knew nothing. (His mother was often touring in theatrical productions and his father’s fruitless business-dealings frequently took him abroad.)
At the time Modiano didn’t think much of it but later he tried — in vain — to find out more about the people on whom his parents had foisted him. Such early efforts to resolve enigmas beyond his grasp persuaded Modiano, he said in the Nobel lecture, to turn to fiction — “as if writing and the imagination could help me finally tie up all those loose ends”.
Tobias Grey is a critic based in Paris
The making of Modiano
Tobias Grey
The Nobel laureate’s newly translated works take us back to the beginning of his project to grapple with the dark years of Nazi rule
French novelist Patrick Modiano in Paris in 1969©Sophie Bassouls/Sygma/Corbis
French novelist Patrick Modiano in Paris in 1969
Pedigree, by Patrick Modiano, translated by Mark Polizzotti, MacLehose Press, RRP£14.99/Yale University Press, RRP$25, 144 pages
The Occupation Trilogy: La Place de l’Étoile; The Night Watch; Ring Roads, by Patrick Modiano, translated by Caroline Hillier, Patricia Wolf and Frank Wynne, Bloomsbury, RRP£18.99/$18, 352 pages
So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighbourhood, by Patrick Modiano, translated by Euan Cameron, MacLehose Press, RRP£14.99/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, RRP$24 160 pages
In his unflinching coming-of-age memoir, Pedigree (2004), Patrick Modiano recalls how at 13 he was first confronted with images of the Nazi extermination camps. Modiano — who was born on the outskirts of Paris in July 1945 — had accompanied his Jewish businessman father, Albert, to a cinema where they watched a documentary on the Nuremberg trials. The experience would leave an indelible impression on the future novelist, as would his father’s silence on the subject of the Holocaust. “Something changed for me that day,” he wrote. “And what did my father think? We never talked about it, not even as we left the cinema.”
The question of what Modiano’s evasive father did in occupied Paris during the war is one that has haunted the winner of last year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. Eventually he discovered that his father avoided wearing the obligatory yellow badge for Jews, did not register himself as one of them, and narrowly escaped deportation when “someone” intervened in his favour after he was arrested in 1943. But had Albert simply been a black marketeer who lived off his wits, as appears to have been his official line? Or was he, more tragically, what the French call a collabo — a willing collaborator with the enemy?
Before Modiano won the Nobel Prize, this most singular writer, noted for his elliptical plots and regretful tone of voice, had barely caused a ripple in the English-speaking world. Only eight of his 30 novels had been translated into English and most of those had fallen out of print. But since the award, publishers in Britain and the US have been falling over themselves to have their own Modiano moment.
Last year, Yale University Press rushed into print Suspended Sentences, a standalone book comprising a trio of newly translated novellas — Afterimage (1993), Suspended Sentences (1988) and Flowers of Ruin (1991). This month sees the UK publication of Bloomsbury’s Occupation Trilogy, a retrospective grouping devised by his Spanish publisher that constitutes translations of Modiano’s first three novels, originally published in France between 1968 and 1972. And in September, MacLehose Press will publish the first English-language translations of Pedigree and his most recent novel So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighbourhood, which came out in France last year; they are to be published in the US by Yale and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In January, MacLehose will also bring out new translations of Modiano’s 2007 novel In the Café of Lost Youth and The Black Notebook (2012).
Modiano has spoken about being a product of “the dunghill of the Occupation”. His mother, Louisa Colpeyn — a Flemish-speaking Belgian actress who spent the war years in Paris working for the German-controlled French film production company Continental — died earlier this year. In Pedigree he describes her as having been “a pretty girl with an arid heart” whose encounter with his father was a “rash” one. “Periods of great turbulence often lead to rash encounters, with the result that I’ve never felt like a legitimate son, much less an heir,” Modiano writes.
His fictions are most often meditations on identity and contain autobiographical elements — notably the names of streets where the author has lived or places he used to frequent. The 1978 Prix Goncourt-winning Missing Person, about an amnesiac detective investigating his own past, is just such a novel. Though he rarely invokes the Holocaust directly, its horrific violence — both physical and moral — seethes beneath the surface.
Modiano became famous in France at the end of the 1960s for being one of the country’s first novelists to dare to write about the underbelly of the Occupation and, in particular, about the French Gestapo. His novels, with domestic sales often in excess of 100,000 copies, receive the attention of the top French critics, who invariably describe his elegant, pared-down prose in terms of “la petite musique de Modiano”.
He is not much of a joiner and has turned down several requests by the Académie Française to become an immortel. For a long time Modiano lied about his age, telling interviewers that he was born in 1947 (the year his brother Rudy was born). His French biographer Denis Cosnard has suggested this was a way for Modiano to both pay homage to his brother, who died from leukaemia aged 10, and to distance himself from the war. At the beginning of his novel Ring Roads, Modiano quotes one of his favourite poets, Arthur Rimbaud: “If only I had a past at some other point in French history! But no, nothing.”
Ring Roads forms the third part of the Occupation Trilogy, which, along with The Night Watch (Modiano’s second novel), had already been translated into English in the early 1970s. Both have been subsequently revised for the new edition. The real discovery, though, is the first English-language translation of Modiano’s controversial debut, La Place de l’Étoile, originally published in 1968 when the author was only 22.
No doubt it took the imprimatur of Modiano winning the Nobel Prize to finally reveal La Place to English-language readers in all its youthful and frenetic glory. The novel’s protagonist is the wretchedly-named Raphäel Schlemilovitch — from the Yiddish tradition meaning son of a schlemiel (one who is bereft of luck). The luckless Raphäel is both Jewish collabo and anti-Semite to boot. In a tour-de-force of inventive pastiche, Modiano appropriates the chiselled, curt sentences and polemical style of collaborationist writers such as Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Lucien Rebatet and the journalist Robert Brasillach (all of whose books he had discovered in his father’s library) to depict a wartime France awash in corruption, complacency and concupiscence.
It was the work of an angry young man who wanted to torpedo the Gaullist myth of France as a country full of resistance fighters. It was also a son’s revenge. “In my first book I wanted to reply to all those people whose insults hurt me on account of my father,” writes Modiano in Dora Bruder (1997) — his peerless book about his investigation into the disappearance of a Jewish teenager during the war. “And [I wanted] to do it on the battlefield of French prose by once and for all reducing them to silence.”
Modiano’s vocation as a writer has always been about keeping memory alive, however much others might be keen to move on and forget. There remain some in Paris who would prefer for the Occupation, often referred to as les années noires, to be less visibly integrated into the city’s architecture. Last year outrage ensued when it was discovered that after some building work a plaque at 93, Rue Lauriston, commemorating the lives of tortured Resistance members, had not been replaced.
Though he rarely invokes the Holocaust directly, its horrific violence — both physical and moral — seethes beneath the surface of his novels
The business that rented the address — where the French Gestapo had its headquarters between 1941 and 1944 — argued that retaining the plaque would confront their clients with a bitter reminder of the past. The news surely didn’t escape Modiano’s attention. His father once had an office at nearby Rue Lord Byron and the author spent a great deal of time exploring the environs of the 16th arrondissement.
The Night Watch, published in 1969, features characters who are very closely based on Pierre Bonny and Henri Lafont, leading figures in the French Gestapo whose gang was known as “La Bande de la Rue Lauriston”. Into their midst Modiano introduces a rootless young man. He is not evil per se but far too easily influenced by those with more experience than himself: “Not enough moral fibre to be a hero. Too dispassionate and distracted to be a real villain. On the other hand, I was malleable, I had a fondness for action, and I was plainly good-natured.”
The novel’s protagonist is remarkably similar to the one Modiano and Louis Malle came up with in their screenplay for the Bafta-award winning film Lacombe, Lucien (1974). Both eschew a focus on ideology to show a young man being shaped by the environment in which he finds himself. In Lacombe, Lucien, this means presenting a thrill-seeking lout who, after being turned down by the French Resistance as a potential recruit, soon finds himself presented with the opportunity of enrolling with the enemy.
Some influential French film critics such as Serge Daney attacked Modiano and Malle for the blankness of their protagonist and a general lack of psychological insight. But it is precisely the passivity of these characters that explains their corruptibility. The world they enter into, to borrow Modiano’s words, is one of “flashy foreigners, abortionists, swindlers, hack journalists, shyster lawyers and crooked accountants”, not to mention “a whole battalion of women of easy virtue, erotic dancers, morphine addicts”. Ring Roads, which was published three years after The Night Watch, navigated similarly murky waters in its story of a young Jew who goes in search of his collaborationist father.
It is a world the novelist still contemplates today but in a far more restrained key. As a study in contrasts it is fascinating to read Modiano’s most recent novel, last year’s So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighbourhood alongside La Place de l’Étoile. There is still plenty of moral unpleasantness at play but the focus has narrowed and the intrigue has grown less haphazard.
The story begins when a reclusive but eminently sane writer, Jean Daragane, is contacted by a stranger, who says he has found the author’s address book and wants to return it to him in person. From this slender premise Modiano weaves a complex tale which switches between past and present. The Occupation is never mentioned but Daragane’s fallible memories are of a peripatetic upbringing straight after the war and the wayward individuals he encountered while his parents were absent.
Some French critics have suggested that So You Don’t Get Lost is Modiano’s most autobiographical novel yet. In his beautifully wrought Nobel lecture, he hinted as much by evoking his upbringing and how it shaped his future as a writer. Modiano recounted how he often found himself away from his parents, staying with their friends, about whom he knew nothing. (His mother was often touring in theatrical productions and his father’s fruitless business-dealings frequently took him abroad.)
At the time Modiano didn’t think much of it but later he tried — in vain — to find out more about the people on whom his parents had foisted him. Such early efforts to resolve enigmas beyond his grasp persuaded Modiano, he said in the Nobel lecture, to turn to fiction — “as if writing and the imagination could help me finally tie up all those loose ends”.
Tobias Grey is a critic based in Paris
Sunday, October 4, 2015
What I Learned From Going On More Than 100 Job Interviews in 8 Months - TIME
Brittney Oliver / Levo League @levoleague Aug. 18, 2015
Be specific and adamant about what you’re looking for in a job
“I am a warrior with a warrior spirit!” This is the phrase I repeated to myself over and over again after I heard my pastor say it one Sunday morning. I quickly rushed home so I could jot it down and hang it up on my wall. Those seven words helped me stay encouraged through 8 months of unemployment—yes, that’s 243 frustrating, resume-writing, tear-filled days. And in that period, I went on more than 100 interviews, from the traditional, in-person sit-down to nerve wracking phone calls and dozens of video chats. There is so much that I learned about myself and the job search during that time that has made me a wiser woman and a more confident job candidate. I hope you’re never in my shoes, but if you are, keep these six things in mind:
1. Don’t give up on finding the perfect fit.
When looking to begin a career, you should not only be a good fit for the company, but it should be a good fit for you, too. When I graduated from college all I wanted was to live in New York City and work in consumer PR full-time. I didn’t have a specific firm that I wanted to work for, but I knew that I wanted an opportunity to get my feet wet. Companies are looking for candidates that they feel will adapt well with their teams and their corporate culture. There were times I would pretend to be a good fit for a team out of desperation, when I knew in my heart that the job or the company wasn’t right. Don’t do this. Be specific about what you’re looking for in a job—and consider asking for an informational interview before you send in an official application somewhere. Either way, decide it’s a fit before applying for the gig.
2. Avoid the job board black hole by doing your research.
Most job postings will take you down the road of an online application. Indeed, MediaBistro, LinkedIn, and other job boards are great tools that I used during my job hunt. However, I also went the extra mile to land my interviews by finding a contact at the companies where I applied. LinkedIn is a great way to connect with current employees to inquire about a position. If you use Craigslist as a job tool, make sure you look up the company before you interview. One time, I was asked to come to Atlanta for an interview, but after thorough research on Glassdoor, the company turned out to be a call center and not a marketing firm. I saved myself time and money on a flight by doing preliminary research first.
3. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
As I watched my classmates land exciting jobs, I grew more and more embarrassed to still be unemployed. I was tight-lipped about my job search challenges, but then I remembered a line from one of my favorite movies: “Closed mouths don’t get fed.” And its true. Your professional and personal relationships can greatly improve your job search. My mentors, alumni network and my colleagues helped me refine my pitch and sent along listings. They also offered to look over my resume, set up meetings with hiring managers, and even gave me mock interviews.
4. Life is so much more than a Valencia filter.
We have to remember not to live life through a Valencia filter—you know, that perfectly smooth photo effect on Instagram. We have to trust the process and be mindful that our journey is uniquely ours to take. My social media feeds began to affect me negatively during my job search. Although I was ecstatic to read job announcements from my colleagues, I was wondering when I would get to share mynew job status. I decided to take a break from social media to focus on me. Take breaks from your social media accounts to help you stay positive. Start off slow with a weekend hiatus and then progress to a week of newsfeed-free living. Like me, you’ll probably notice how much more you’re able to accomplish (and how much less bummed you feel) by taking a break.
5. When you open your mind, you open your world.
In the midst of my search slump, I began to see people turn their degrees and internships into transferrable skills that helped them land jobs outside of their fields. I decided to do the very same thing. I had tunnel vision when I started my job hunt and that was to land a PR job in New York City. I was not interested in anything else or living anywhere else. Once I realized that art and psychology majors were getting the PR jobs that I interviewed for, I decided to open myself up to other opportunities. From there I started applying to jobs all over the United States and in different industries. Be open when job-hunting, you never know where new doors will lead and you may just discover hidden talents.
6. Stay positive by finding a “pump you up” anthem.
Keeping a positive mind can change your circumstances. Christina Aguilera’s “Fighter” was my theme song during my job hunt. Even though it took me a while to find a job, it made me “a little bit stronger” and “a little wiser” each time I had an interview. I learned to train my mind to think positive by taking negative thoughts and turning them into hopeful statements. Instead of saying “I had a horrible interview,” try saying “I did the best I could during that interview.” Instead of saying “I’m a complete failure for not landing the job,” think, “ I may not have landed this job—but I have what it takes to get the next one.”
Once I opened my mind, I reached out to a relative that worked at the number one hospital in New York City. Equipped with the lessons I learned and utilizing her connections, I was able to get a job as an office assistant. After that short stint, I finally reached my goal and got a full time job in public relations. Be resilient and keep working towards your dreams, when the timing is right everything you wished for will happen for you.
This article originally appeared on Levo.com
Be specific and adamant about what you’re looking for in a job
“I am a warrior with a warrior spirit!” This is the phrase I repeated to myself over and over again after I heard my pastor say it one Sunday morning. I quickly rushed home so I could jot it down and hang it up on my wall. Those seven words helped me stay encouraged through 8 months of unemployment—yes, that’s 243 frustrating, resume-writing, tear-filled days. And in that period, I went on more than 100 interviews, from the traditional, in-person sit-down to nerve wracking phone calls and dozens of video chats. There is so much that I learned about myself and the job search during that time that has made me a wiser woman and a more confident job candidate. I hope you’re never in my shoes, but if you are, keep these six things in mind:
1. Don’t give up on finding the perfect fit.
When looking to begin a career, you should not only be a good fit for the company, but it should be a good fit for you, too. When I graduated from college all I wanted was to live in New York City and work in consumer PR full-time. I didn’t have a specific firm that I wanted to work for, but I knew that I wanted an opportunity to get my feet wet. Companies are looking for candidates that they feel will adapt well with their teams and their corporate culture. There were times I would pretend to be a good fit for a team out of desperation, when I knew in my heart that the job or the company wasn’t right. Don’t do this. Be specific about what you’re looking for in a job—and consider asking for an informational interview before you send in an official application somewhere. Either way, decide it’s a fit before applying for the gig.
2. Avoid the job board black hole by doing your research.
Most job postings will take you down the road of an online application. Indeed, MediaBistro, LinkedIn, and other job boards are great tools that I used during my job hunt. However, I also went the extra mile to land my interviews by finding a contact at the companies where I applied. LinkedIn is a great way to connect with current employees to inquire about a position. If you use Craigslist as a job tool, make sure you look up the company before you interview. One time, I was asked to come to Atlanta for an interview, but after thorough research on Glassdoor, the company turned out to be a call center and not a marketing firm. I saved myself time and money on a flight by doing preliminary research first.
3. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
As I watched my classmates land exciting jobs, I grew more and more embarrassed to still be unemployed. I was tight-lipped about my job search challenges, but then I remembered a line from one of my favorite movies: “Closed mouths don’t get fed.” And its true. Your professional and personal relationships can greatly improve your job search. My mentors, alumni network and my colleagues helped me refine my pitch and sent along listings. They also offered to look over my resume, set up meetings with hiring managers, and even gave me mock interviews.
4. Life is so much more than a Valencia filter.
We have to remember not to live life through a Valencia filter—you know, that perfectly smooth photo effect on Instagram. We have to trust the process and be mindful that our journey is uniquely ours to take. My social media feeds began to affect me negatively during my job search. Although I was ecstatic to read job announcements from my colleagues, I was wondering when I would get to share mynew job status. I decided to take a break from social media to focus on me. Take breaks from your social media accounts to help you stay positive. Start off slow with a weekend hiatus and then progress to a week of newsfeed-free living. Like me, you’ll probably notice how much more you’re able to accomplish (and how much less bummed you feel) by taking a break.
5. When you open your mind, you open your world.
In the midst of my search slump, I began to see people turn their degrees and internships into transferrable skills that helped them land jobs outside of their fields. I decided to do the very same thing. I had tunnel vision when I started my job hunt and that was to land a PR job in New York City. I was not interested in anything else or living anywhere else. Once I realized that art and psychology majors were getting the PR jobs that I interviewed for, I decided to open myself up to other opportunities. From there I started applying to jobs all over the United States and in different industries. Be open when job-hunting, you never know where new doors will lead and you may just discover hidden talents.
6. Stay positive by finding a “pump you up” anthem.
Keeping a positive mind can change your circumstances. Christina Aguilera’s “Fighter” was my theme song during my job hunt. Even though it took me a while to find a job, it made me “a little bit stronger” and “a little wiser” each time I had an interview. I learned to train my mind to think positive by taking negative thoughts and turning them into hopeful statements. Instead of saying “I had a horrible interview,” try saying “I did the best I could during that interview.” Instead of saying “I’m a complete failure for not landing the job,” think, “ I may not have landed this job—but I have what it takes to get the next one.”
Once I opened my mind, I reached out to a relative that worked at the number one hospital in New York City. Equipped with the lessons I learned and utilizing her connections, I was able to get a job as an office assistant. After that short stint, I finally reached my goal and got a full time job in public relations. Be resilient and keep working towards your dreams, when the timing is right everything you wished for will happen for you.
This article originally appeared on Levo.com
Saturday, October 3, 2015
A look inside the crazy five-tier caste system of Kim Jong-un's North Korea -TIME
A look inside the crazy five-tier caste system of Kim Jong-un's North Korea
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