My Author of The Month (December 2011)

Stig Daggerman has had the touch of magic on my soul, irritably shaking the core with his shockingly direct and masterfully aggressive style. Daggerman epitomize the very simple and defenseless intellectual exposed to harsh reality of 20^th century. Sweden, his homeland was passing a crucial period with much pressure hinging on the laborer and low-income. Anarchism and syndicalism was surging all across the Europe stir up the calm nature of region. Joining syndicalism was the fruit of a complicated political/social background which is less dignified. Like all well-known public black-outs, a surging interest in his works has appeared since 1980s and a reward is called to his honor. He was the full-view representative of intellectuals highly affected in the wake of post-world war II era. His writings convey the themes of existentialism via artfully expressed feelings of fear and uncertainty. Imagine Kierkegaard’s level of consciousness stripped of all intangible chase for spirituality (Kierkegaard’s 2^nd and 3^rd layers) more focused on aesthetics of social conducts and family affairs instead.

I think something, an unknown factor still dominates his lines, haunting the reader. Definitely Dagerman’s family life and emotional conflicts have made the fair ground for his outstanding streak of writing to flow. I’ve spent a number of my desolation days with the highly emotive pulsation of Daggerman’s “Snake” under my skin. Feeling insecure lonely and hopeless is not a heavenly gift but admittedly has yielded some literary masterpieces, as history has shown.

I spent some pleasant time with Stig Dagerman's short stories in december. pedram

Limbic

“When the child then runs through the garden it thinks all the time about the river and the boat and the fish who are swimming and nobody whispers to it that it has eight minutes to live and that the boat shall remain where it rests all day and many days thereafter.”

Stig Dagerman

Closure

Small table
Back corner
Stark bar
He'd have nod off


Ghosts of the beloved...
Would have greeted him
Angels of oblivion
Would have embraced him
pedram

My Album of The Month (November 2011)

A decent post-rock album by german band "Collapse Under The Empire". The duo manage to conjure up a perfect blend.Shoulders & Giants is the first half of a two-part concept work that thematically deals with the human existence, the dream of advancement, a life of absolute freedom, isolation, and death. The album is bleak and severe, but subtly lit from within with touches of hope and beauty. It immerses the listener in the sensation of being alone in the mountains and crevasses of an arctic environment – the harshness of the bitter solace, the joy at the soaring beauty of nature’s splendour.

United: Adapting To Adversity

When Manchester United are at their fluent attacking best Sir Alex Ferguson's players delight in confounding opponents by frequently, if temporarily, interchanging roles. Invariably wonderful to watch, such positional rotation is something only very good teams dare indulge in. Moreover their managers tend to ensure that these fluid interludes of movement are firmly underpinned by the reassuring presence of tactical safety nets.

Under enemy fire, leading sides usually revert to default starting formations with defenders deployed conventionally and even free spirits in the Wayne Rooney or Dimitar Berbatov moulds detailed to perform specific marking tasks. Yet as Ferguson prepares to celebrate his 70th birthday on Saturday he knows that so many pieces of United's basic framework have recently required patching up with ill‑fitting parts that he has little option but to improvise for entire 90-minute stretches.
With 11 senior players – including the long‑term absentees Nemanja Vidic and Darren Fletcher – occupying the Old Trafford treatment room the phrase "positional rotation" has assumed a whole new meaning as United's fit squad members are asked to pretend they are Ajax-type "total footballers".
If Michael Carrick and Patrice Evra cannot be described as exactly "ersatz" centre‑halves, the fact that Ferguson's team played much of their 5-0 Boxing Day thrashing of Wigan Athletic with the midfielder and the left-back paired at the heart of defence can only have warmed Roberto Mancini's heart. Even so, Manchester City's manager knows that a wounded United represents a most dangerous enemy. Since his side humiliated Ferguson's men 6-1 at Old Trafford in October, their neighbours have proceeded to win eight of the subsequent nine Premier League games, the last two 5-0.
Yet if fielding a talented winger such as Antonio Valenica at right-back and again promoting the hitherto unwanted Darron Gibson from the reserves to central midfield, clearly did not cramp United's style against Wigan, greater challenges await. The prospect of being without a cadre of key performers during a January programme featuring tricky league trips to Newcastle and Arsenal could conceivably cost United the title.
Pointing out that they now stand level on points with City at the top of the table, Evra takes a rather less gloomy view. Although Chris Smalling and Phil Jones may well recover in time to man the centre-half stations against Blackburn on Saturday, the France international is confident he and Carrick could, once again, prove able deputies.
"At United, the team is the star," says Evra. "That's why you can put me and Michael Carrick at centre-back and we're still going to win. It's about the team effort and the team spirit and that's why I'm confident. The United spirit is that you can play everywhere, in any position. No other side has United's spirit. That's why I'm so proud to play here."
There have been blips along the way but Evra now regards the Champions League exit to Basel as a disguised blessing. "It was a big disappointment when we went out early," he says. "But it was a wake-up call; maybe everyone looked at themselves in the mirror and said 'we can do much better'. What the fans expect of every player, we're all doing now. We're working hard. Nothing is easy but we have to keep our momentum going and trust each other."
If such endeavour is thrilling Ferguson, his side surely cannot keep on exceeding the sum of their currently out of position parts. "The injuries start to be annoying," acknowledges Evra. "We want everyone fit if we want to win the league." The fear inside Old Trafford is that history could be in recycling mode. With the manager's room for January transfer market manoeuvre presumably restricted by the gargantuan debt imposed on the club by the Glazer family, memories have been rewinding almost 14 years.
Despite at one stage enjoying an 11-point lead over Arsenal, a rash of injuries variously afflicting Peter Schmeichel, Gary Pallister, Roy Keane, Ryan Giggs and Nicky Butt in March 1998 saw Ferguson forced to ultimately concede the title to Arsène Wenger.
Coming second to Mancini would hurt more but the Glaswegian is often at his most innovative when backed into corners. "United can adapt to adversity," argues Roberto Martínez, Wigan's manager. "They have the mentality every other team wants. Anyone wanting to win the league has to better United's mentality."
Louise Taylor
@Guardian

Santa Claus Is Weird

Every light is on fire

The final scene is empty

Your beautiful face is alive

What the hell am I supposed to do

I watch the meter drop

I can't think about external judgment

I wish you'd go away

I've got to grow up someday

The light is perfect now

Santa Claus is weird

Idaho

Les anges du peche (1943)

The Secular and the religious, the extremism and the wisdom, innocence and sin, these have been thematic concerns of Robert Bresson and are present as this movie as well. Bressonian stylistic signature is visible in images and narration. 
The story takes place in a convent which aim is to rehabilitate former convicts. The story orbit around the character of Anne-Mariea: a rich and idealistic girl who joined the convent  as a dedicated novice. In a visit from a jail she becomes preoccupied with a prisoner, an opportunistic person (Therese). After her release from prison, Therese kills an ex-friend because of which she has been imprisoned. Thereafter Therese joins the convent as an escape from the public and police. Anne-Marie's expects the event and embrace her with absolute fascination. Therese is reluctant to tell her the dark secret and protests against her innocence and kindness.  pedram


aka: Angels of the streets or Angels of sin
 Director/Writer: Robert Bresson
Starring: Renee Faure, Jany Holt, Mila Parely
Produced: 1943
Release Date (USA): 1950

My Author of The Month (November 2011)

I finished "The Buddenbrooks" in november and i dedicate this post to its great creator Thomas Mann. The drama is a twisted epic about the decline of a family. It conveys many dimensions which can be analyzed and studied. I attached an article from Ian Sansom, explaining the term "the Buddenbrooks effect", an extension of Mann's novel to fields like economics, history, etc. He intends to formulate a great dynasty through this. pedram 

Historians and economists sometimes refer to the Buddenbrooks effect. The term derives from Thomas Mann's 1901 novel, Buddenbrooks, in which he depicted the decline of a bourgeois family (which rather resembled Mann's own). The Buddenbrooks effect refers to the tendency among family businesses to decline over a period of about three generations. All good things, in other words, must come to an end. And all good columns also.

In our discussion of family dynasties we have covered princes and politicians, kings, queens and emperors, movie stars, musicians, writers, artists and wrestlers. We never quite got round to the Capetians, the Merovingians or the Carolingians. Many families of dictators got away, including the Gaddafis and the Kabilas. As for banking and business families, there were just too many: the Barings never got a look in, or the Fords, or the Gettys.
We barely mentioned the French – the Mitterrands, the Le Pens, the De Gaulles – let alone the Swiss Bernoulli family of mathematicians, or the English Knott family of lighthouse keepers. Among the fictional families, the Simpsons got a mention, but Tolkein's Tooks and JD Salinger's Glass family failed to make the cut.
For some of the families we surveyed, as well as many whose stories are untold, the Buddenbrooks effect certainly seems to apply. The classic Buddenbrooks downcurve looks like this. There is a founder of the dynasty. They achieve great success: they build a better mousetrap. Their son or daughter then struggles to achieve similar or greater success: there are only so many amazing things one family can do with a mousetrap. Then along come the grandchildren, who turn out to be nogoodniks who squander the inheritance, sully the family name, and sell the mousetrap business. And so back to square one.
This pattern applies particularly to family business dynasties: capitalism triumphs over hearth and home. But for others, the Buddenbrooks effect is only the beginning of a much longer and more complicated story, or simply does not apply at all. The Mughals, for example, ruled for generations, demonstrating, if anything, a kind of double Buddenbrooks effect. And there were dozens of Bachs who excelled as musicians from the 16th to the 19th century. The great Khan squash dynasty were more like a sprawling clan than a family. And the Holy Family abide by rules entirely of their own.
In his book Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Great Family Businesses (2006), economist David S Landes quotes from a set of rules drawn up by Robert Peugeot, scion of the French car manufacturing dynasty. Peugeot sought to secure the family future and fortune by insisting that "Shares in the enterprise would be passed only to sons, never to daughters or sons-in-law" and that "Black sheep had to be put aside, where they could make no trouble". It is one way of avoiding the Buddenbrooks effect. There are others.
Stephen R Covey, in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families (1998), suggests that families write their own mission statement, which may be worth considering, though try explaining your Latin motto – Virtus Repulsae Nescia, say, or Nec pluribus impar – to your Xbox-addicted teen. Versions of the Covey approach can be found in Matthew Kelly's Building Better Families: A Practical Guide to Raising Amazing Children (2008) and Steve Stephens' 20 Surprisingly Simple Rules and Tools for a Great Family (2006), where the first rule is simply, "Plan ahead".
Other ways to ward off the Buddenbrooks effect include: not having children; not allowing your children to have children; or simply ensuring that any children you do have inherit only your good humour, tolerance and a capacity to muddle through.

 by: Ian Sansom