May 22

One of the best book covers ever:

http://www.abebooks.com/books/antiquarian-rare-design/collectible-cookbooks-food-recipes.shtml?cm_mmc=nl-_-nl-_-h00-bckbksA-_-01cta

Niona Bisyarina's A Trip to the Seaside is a very accomplished and charming piece of animation:



http://www.animationblog.org/2010/05/nina-bisyarina-trip-to-seaside-2008.html

J.P. Smith at The Millions relates Nicolas Roeg's wonderful film Don't Look Now (and the Daphne Du Maurier story on which it is based) to a larger tradition of stories set in Venice:

http://www.themillions.com/2010/05/death-in-venice-don%E2%80%99t-look-now.html

Rosemary Hill at the Times Literary Supplement describes the history and aesthetic of Horace Walpole's 18th century villa Stawberry Hill:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7130418.ece

Patrick Lennon at The Rap Sheet discovers a 1936 Swiss crime novel, Friedrich Glauser's Thumbprint:

Glauser was not your typical shy, quiet Swiss guy. A schizophrenic with a lifelong addiction to opiates, he progressed from reform school to prison--he escaped and was recaptured--and then to a series of mental hospitals and detention centers where he spent the bulk of his life in the 1920s and ’30s. Along the way, he worked as a waiter, forester, and coal miner; he also found time to join the French Foreign Legion for two years in North Africa. Thumbprint was originally published in 1936, and Glauser died two years later at age 42. With that kind of background, you might expect Glauser’s work to be highly distinctive, with dark undertones--and you would not be wrong.

http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2010/05/book-you-have-to-read-thumbprint-by.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Glauser

The Chinese artist Zhang Huan works in unusual media:

[The exhibition includes] ash paintings and cowhide sculptures. This new series of ash paintings are different from his previous paintings. Whereas in the past they were based on existing photographs, the new works are imagined wildlife scenes. The brushwork has a more expressionist and looser feel than before.

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=37823

Among notables born on this date are novelists Arthur Conan Doyle and Peter Matthiessen, poets Gerard de Nerval and Catulle Mendes, graphic novelist Herge, journalist/historian Garry Wills, painters Mary Cassatt and Jean Tinguely, television producer Quinn Martin, rock lyricist Bernie Taupin, composer Richard Wagner, jazzman Sun Ra, conductor Georg Tintner, pop singer Charles Aznavour, politician Harvey Milk, and actors Alla Nazimova, Laurence Olivier, Susan Strasberg, Richard Benjamin, and Paul Winfield. Sun Ra: Four words: Space is the Place.



The one time I saw Sun Ra live was in Berkeley in the late Eighties. This clip is from a 1988 San Francisco appearance, so the vibe is pretty similar to what I recall.