Helen Darville (Brisbane, 7 januari 1971)
De Amerikaanse schrijver Nicholson Baker werd geboren op 7 januari 1957 in Rochester.Zie ook mijn blog van 7 januari 2007.
Uit: A box of matches
Good morning, it's January and it's 4:17 a.m., and I'm going to sit here in the dark. I'm in the living room in my blue bathrobe, with an armchair pulled up to the fireplace. There isn't much in the way of open flame at the moment because the underlayer of balled-up newspaper and paper-towel tubes has burned down and the wood hasn't fully caught yet. So what I'm looking at is an orangey ember-cavern that resembles a monster's sloppy mouth, filled with half-chewed, glowing bits of fire-meat. When it's very dark like this you lose your sense of scale. Sometimes I think I'm steering a space-plane into a gigantic fissure in a dark and remote planet. The planet's crust is beginning to break up, allowing an underground sea of lava to ooze out. Continents are tipping and foundering like melting icebergs, and I must fly in on my highly maneuverable rocket and save the colonists who are trapped there.
Last night my sleep was threatened by a toe-hole in my sock. I had known of the hole when I put the sock on in the morningit was a white tube sockbut a hole seldom bothers me during the daytime. I can and do wear socks all day that have a monstrous rear-tear through which the entire heel projects like a dinner roll. But at night the edges of the hole come alive. I was reading my book of Robert Service poems last night around nine-thirty, when the hole's edge began tickling and pestering the skin of the two toes that projected through. I tried to retract the toes and use them to catch some of the edge of the sock's fabric, pulling it over the opening like a too-small blanket that has slid off the bed, but that didn't workit seldom does. I knew that later on, after midnight, I would wake up and feel the coolness of the sheet on those two exposed toes, which would trouble me, even though that same coolness wouldn't trouble me if the entire foot was exposed. I would become wakeful as a result of the toe-hole, and I didn't want that, because I was starting a new regime of getting up at four in the morning.
De Franse schrijver, illustrator, filmmaker en schilder Roland Topor werd geboren op 7 januari 1938 in Parijs. Zie ook mijn blog van 7 januari 2007.
Uit: Die Wahrheit über Max Lampin
»Max Lampin ist eigentlich klein, verglichen mit meinem Haß. Gut, er ist ein Scheißkerl, aber kein außergewöhnlicher. Es würde auch nichts ändern, wenn er ein kleiner Heiliger wäre. Warum also beschäftige ich mich so verbissen mit ihm? Ich will es Ihnen sagen. Wenn man wie ich alt, arm, krank, erniedrigt und beleidigt ist, hat man nicht mehr den Hochmut und die Lust, sich seine Feinde auszusuchen. Der erste beste genügt. Er ist gut gegen Gallensteine. Das ist die Hauptsache. Wenn er seine Dienste getan hat, sucht man sich den Nächsten. Wichtig ist nur, daß man nicht an seiner Wut krepiert.«
De Australische schrijfster en journaliste Helen Darville werd geboren op 7 januari 1971 en groeide op in Brisbane als dochter van Britse immigranten. In 1993 kreeg zij voor haar roman The Hand that Signed the Paper de Australian/Vogel Literary Award. Zij hadf het boek geschreven terwijl zij Engelse literatuur studeerde aan de universiteit van Queensland. Het boek verscheen onder het pseudoniem Helen Demidenko, de suggestie wekkend dat Darville het levensverhaal van haar eigen voorouders beschreef. Toen dat niet waar bleek te zijn leverde haar dat nogal wat kritiek en commentaar op. Nadat zij enkele jaren gewerkt had als lerares in het voortgezet onderwijs gaf zij het schrijven op en ging zij rechten studeren in Oxford. Darville levert nu regelmatig bijdragen aan de libertarische groeps-blog catallaxy files. Momenteel werkt zij ook aan een tweede boek.
Uit: The Hand that Signed the Paper
As I drive down the Pacific Highway, the French are busy dropping bombs into the waters in which my nieces swim, the Americans and Iraqis are engaged in a bizarre competition to see who can destroy the world many times over most, and my uncle will soon be on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. I wonder casually, as I turn off the main road to fill up with petrol, if Eichmann had a daughter and is she felt the same way as I do now. It is an idle question, but I toy with it as the light and darkness at sunset plays over the glittering Ampol sign. This is one petrol station where they still serve you while you sit in your car. A pimply boy walks towards me across the asphalt and asks 'how much?' and I say 'twenty dollars'. I sit in the cockpit of my car, and look at my watch. The boy takes my keys. The key ring has a cheap plastic figurine of 'Expo Oz' attached. I've had it for four years, and Expo Oz's platypus bill has very little paint left on it.
Right now, I am missing my Set Theory and Logic lecture, and will soon miss my Modern Political Ideologies lecture. I left home earlier this morning, giving Cathe a weeks rent and telling her that I was going to drive down the coast to see about my uncle. Cathe -- and a few other of my close friends -- know that I am related to the Kovalenko who has recently been charged with war crimes. That in itself is no guarantee of a trial, but the fear is real. I have confirmed to Cathe that the charges are true, and that the family is in the process of engaging a lawyer
07-01-2008 om 20:32
geschreven door Romenu 
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