The Malaysian Insider :: Books
The Malaysian Insider :: Books |
| British author attacks ‘plastic’ princess Kate Posted: 19 Feb 2013 02:30 AM PST  Prince William and his wife Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, take their first step as man and wife looking at each other as they come out of Westminster Abbey following their wedding ceremony. — AFP pic In an unusually scathing public attack on a British royal, Hilary Mantel said the princess had no personality, a "perfect plastic smile" and appears to have been designed by a committee. The writer's comments about the pregnant 31-year-old wife of second in line to the British throne Prince William sharply divided public opinion. Newspapers condemned Mantel's words as "venomous", "cruel" and "staggeringly rude", while supporters said it was a thoughtful analysis of the role of royal women over the centuries. "I saw Kate becoming a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung," Mantel said in a lecture at the British Museum in London earlier this month in which she spoke about her changing views about the princess. "She was a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore. These days she is a mother-to-be, and draped in another set of threadbare attributions." Mantel, who last year became the first Briton to twice win the coveted Man Booker prize for fiction, referred to the princess's severe morning sickness during the early stage of her pregnancy and said her role was to provide an heir. "Once she gets over being sick, the press will find that she is radiant. They will find that this young woman's life until now was nothing, her only point and purpose being to give birth," Mantel said in the lecture organised by the London Review of Books on February 4. The literary magazine reprinted the lecture on its website this week. 'MACHINE-MADE' Mantel, 60, is best known for her historical novel "Wolf Hall", about the rise of blacksmith's son Thomas Cromwell to the pinnacle of power in King Henry VIII's court. Her follow-up "Bring Up the Bodies" recounted Anne Boleyn's fall from grace. In her lecture, Mantel said the Duchess of Cambridge was "selected for her role ... because she was irreproachable", contrasting her with the "emotional incontinence" of William's late mother, Princess Diana. "As painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character. She appears precision-made, machine-made, so different from Diana," Mantel said. The author's agent was not immediately available for comment. A St James's Palace spokeswoman had no comment. Reaction on Twitter suggested Mantel had split public opinion. Royal commentator Robert Jobson said the "venomous attack" was "unfair and publicity-seeking". Others agreed with Mantel, saying she had elegantly articulated what many people had long thought about the royals. The lecture looked at the "fascination with royalty" and the "regal body", examining the lives of royal women and the importance of providing an heir. Mantel compared that to the fuss made about pandas mating in captivity. "Our current royal family doesn't have the difficulties in breeding that pandas do, but pandas and royal persons alike are expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment," Mantel said. "But aren't they interesting? Aren't they nice to look at?" — Reuters |
| Forgotten work by Japan Nobel laureate uncovered Posted: 18 Feb 2013 06:09 PM PST  Loneliness and empathy for the weak are strong themes in the story, which was first published when Kawabata was 27. – AFP pic TOKYO, Feb 19 – A previously unknown short story by Japan's first Nobel Prize-winning author Yasunari Kawabata, best-known for the novel Snow Country, has been uncovered by researchers decades after his death. Written early in his career, Utsukushii! ("Beautiful!") appeared in April and May 1927 in a newspaper in Fukuoka, western Japan, Takumi Ishikawa of Rikkyo University and his fellow researchers found, Ishikawa told AFP Monday. Ishikawa and Hiroshi Sakaguchi, publisher and director at a literary museum in Fukuoka, discovered the unrecorded work while looking back through the paper's archives. It was verified as a genuine article by the Kawabata Foundation, he said. The Kawabata Foundation is a body dedicated to preserving the late author's work, and annually awards a prize named after him. Utsukushii! is the story of an industrialist who buries a young girl in his disabled son's grave after she suffers an accident while visiting the tomb. On the common gravestone, the father inscribes: "A beautiful young boy and beautiful young girl sleep together". Loneliness and empathy for the weak are strong themes in the story, which was first published when Kawabata was 27, immediately after the release of The Dancing Girl of Izu, Ishikawa said. "It was during the period when many prominent authors sought outlets for their literary products in local papers after major Japanese publishers and newspapers based in Tokyo suffered devastating damage from the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923," he said. "The story also has a lot in common with his other story that was published in 1954 under the title Utsukushiki Haka (Beautiful Grave)," he added. Loneliness is a common theme in other stories by Kawabata, whose parents died early in his life, and whose sole carer—his grandfather—passed away when he was just 15. In the rediscovered story, "you can see the 'sprouting' of the worldview that is evident in Kawabata's later works," Ishikawa said. Kawabata's works in his later years include Snow Country, The Sound of the Mountain and The Old Capital and have been translated into English. Kawabata was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1968, the first Japanese to be recognised in the field by the committee. He committed suicide in 1972, at the age of 72. – AFP-Relaxnews |
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