Margaret Atwood Just Schooled Us All On What ‘1984’ Is Really About

As you turned the last page of George Orwell’s 1984, were you overwhelmed by a surge of fatalistic angst? The hero (uh, spoiler alert) has lost his quest to overthrow the totalitarian regime against which he had rebelled, and that seems to be that: No hope, no change. 

Well, maybe we’ve been looking at that all wrongHandmaid’s Tale author and speculative fiction doyenne Margaret Atwood recently told the CBC.

1984 has a coda, and the coda is a note on Newspeak, which was the language being developed to eliminate thought, making it impossible to actually think,” she points out. “The note on Newspeak at the end of 1984 is written in standard English in the past tense, which tells us that Newspeak did not persist.” 

So, perhaps the tale of Oceania ends more hopefully than you thought, with the downfall of Big Brother rather than a “decisive victory”?

In her own dystopian classic, Atwood revealed the fall of the authoritarian Republic of Gilead not through her heroine, Offred, winding up triumphant, but through a similar epilogue that frames Offred’s first-person account as an artifact from a failed regime ― an object of study to scholars in the more liberal society that has replaced it.

Atwood has previously described the concluding 1984 essay on Newspeak as a direct influence on her own choice to end The Handmaid’s Tale with an academic epilogue, though the essay is typically read as an appendix rather than as the conclusion to the novel.

“The essay on Newspeak is written in standard English, in the third person, and in the past tense, which can only mean that the regime has fallen, and that language and individuality have survived,” she wrote in The Guardian in 2003. “For whoever has written the essay on Newspeak, the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four is over. Thus, it’s my view that Orwell had much more faith in the resilience of the human spirit than he’s usually been given credit for.”

From a rather practical standpoint, Atwood explained to CBC, “Doom and gloom all the way through is not motivating to people. If we’re all going to go swirling down the plug hole, why make any effort, why not just stay in bed all day or party?” By revealing that freedom and justice will eventually triumph, the dystopian author offers us motivation to fight.

The reassurance that totalitarianism is unsustainable may reassure some in the current political climate ― though it’s worth remembering the often lengthy time-frame, and the casualties. In Y.A. dystopian sagas, readers can follow along as the protagonists singlehandedly dismantle a crushing regime (Harry Potter, The Hunger Games) or at least nobly die while putting the final cracks in it, all by the age of 18. After the 2016 election, many liberals took solace in comparing opposition to Donald Trump to Harry Potter’s fight against Lord Voldemort, a dramatic yet pacifying narrative in which an oppressive government is overthrown by a single hero.

More realistically, books like 1984 and Handmaid’s Tale focus on the midst of the struggle, on resistance fighters who fail and are forgotten. Offred and 1984’s Winston Smith may see the promised land, but they won’t enter into it. That may not seem like cause for optimism, but it seems in dystopia, optimism is all a question of perspective.

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Nicki Minaj Is Paying Off Fans’ Student Debt On Twitter

The New York Times once called Nicki Minaj “a walking exaggeration, outsize in sound, personality and look.” This week, Minaj proved that sentiment true by making waves with an unprovoked Twitter-spree of philanthropy.

Minaj was promoting a contest on Twitter when a young fan dropped a tweet asking for help with their student debt. Unexpectedly, Minaj responded minutes later and asked the student for proof of their enrollment. As soon as she received it, Minaj made good on her promise.

It didn’t take long for a flood of struggling students to come to the rapper asking for help. Minaj promised to support over thirty fans by paying for tuition, loans, and school supplies (just look at her feed). Her total donations amounted to $30,000, and she’s not done yet.

She promised to make it rain again soon. So if you’re struggling with student debt, you better turn on Twitter notifications for Minaj’s account.

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Breathtaking Aerial Photos Show The Gorgeous Contrasts Of The Namib Sand Sea

Photojournalist Jeremy Lock’s aerial obsession began when he served as a military photographer with the U.S. Air Force for 22 years. While clocking over 800 hours in the air, Lock found that he had a good bit of downtime on particularly long missions. “I started taking photos out the window to give myself little challenges,” he says. When he retired from the military in September 2013, the game had grown into such a passion that wherever he travels, he makes a point to spend time in the air, camera in hand.

Ever since retiring, Lock says that he loves traveling with his wife to places where he can continually hone his craft. On their 30-day trip through Africa, Lock grasped the perfect opportunity to not only get off the grid, but off the ground as well. Together with a pilot, the couple spent three days flying around the 1,000 miles of burnt orange and caramelized brown stretching along the Atlantic coast. According to Lock, those three days were the highlight of their trip to Africa ― her riding shotgun in the J430 and him hanging out the backdoor, together “exploring the old scars and shape shifting land of Namibia.”

Lock says, “When I was young, after cutting my eye open on a sled, my mother told me that scars add character to a person. I think scars add character to the Earth.” In some areas, these scars are caused by the even the smallest amount of rainfall ― less than 0.39 inches annually.

Along the shoreline, Lock found marks in the terrain from parallel sets of dunes butting against the water. Strapped into the aircraft with only the seatbelt keeping him safe, Lock captured the wall that these dunes formed against potential storms blowing across the water.

“The oldest dunes are those of a more intense reddish color,” says this photojournalist. The more intense the color, the higher iron concentration in the sand. From the air, then, the landscape takes on sunset colors.

Skeleton Coast and the Sands of Hell ― both names describe the line where the Atlantic Ocean meets the desert in northern Namibia. Lock says that the coastline has long been known to be a graveyard. According to legend, the coastline destroyed many a ship and crew.” The Skeleton Coast is his favorite shot from the desert set because of the way the desert and ocean meet.

Visiting the Kunene River was the first time Lock saw and interacted with the people who inhabit the area. He experienced it from the air, chasing a small runoff as it made its way to join the sea, and also from the ground. It was the first time he saw any people who inhabited the place. The Himba people used an ochre and butterfat mixture to create a red pigment which they rubbed all over their bodies. Lock and his wife, without a translator, used smiles in lieu of spoken language. The Himba children played with his wife’s hair, marveling at it and she, in turn, played with their hair. There, next to a river in a desert, mutual curiosity for each other overrode traditional communication.

Meeting the Himba reminded Lock of two lessons he learned in the military. “There is more to life than the white picket fence with two-and-a-half kids,” he says. “You don’t need a lot to be happy, but respect and love each other.”

For Lock, photography is about first experiencing something incredible and then communicating that experience to someone else. The time spent zooming around above the desert was particularly special for this photojournalist as he was able to share the experience with his new wife, showing her what he does and why he does it.

On one trip, he captured lichens organizing themselves into carpet-like ruffles across the dunes near Swakopmund, a city on the west coast of Namibia. After shooting the Namib Sand Sea, Lock diligently researched the place, discovering that the 120 species of lichens growing on the west-facing slopes draw moisture from the sea fogs. His camerawork ignites with a passion to find marks of life, those old scars and character, even in a place that may seem, from the ground at least, unsustainable.

Over the few days spent flying over the Namib Sand Sea, this photojournalist accomplished his goal: “I wanted to show the rough and raw beautiful terrain that will constantly change over time.” He hopes to make these photographs part of a larger body of aerial work. An adrenaline-filled flight between two layers of sunset hues and a shared experience with his wife ― the venture allowed Lock to lift his lens to familiar, but still thrilling heights and capture the character of the land.

See more photos by Jeremy Lock on Viewfind.com

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‘Grace And Frankie’ Actress Writing A Book To Help Women Run For Office

The Nov. 8 election has already inspired a tsunami-sized wave of aspiring women politicians. An upcoming book from “Grace and Frankie” actress June Diane Raphael and Emily’s List Chief of Staff Kate Black aims to help them run ― and win.

The friends will collaborate on The Badass Woman’s Guide to Running for Office and Changing the World, People reported Wednesday, a sort of “workbook/planner.” The finished product, set for a 2019 debut, will “reveal the basics of what a woman needs to know to run for office, whether it’s on the local, state, or federal level,” according to a statement from publisher Workman.

“We can’t look at another photo of a bunch of older white dudes making decisions about women,” Raphael told People, explaining her inspiration for the project with Emily’s List, an organization that helps pro-choice Democratic women candidates run for office.

Perhaps the actress was thinking of this moment in recent history, when President Donald Trump gathered a room full of men to discuss maternity coverage in the planned American Health Care Act:

Viral moments aside, Raphael cited a basic statistic about American government that she called “haunting”: Women make up less than 20 percent of Congress (19.4 percent, to be precise) and less than 25 percent of state legislatures (24.8 percent, at the moment).

As HuffPost’s Emma Gray reported in December, women and men have a roughly equal shot at winning an election. The trouble is that fewer women actually run for office ― an issue Raphael and Black aim to help solve.

The Badass Women’s Guide comes as support for women’s campaigns for office has increased amid seemingly unprecedented numbers of women activists participating in marches across the U.S. One art exhibit, “She Inspires,” currently on view at New York’s Untitled Space gallery, is donating 10 percent of its proceeds to She Should Run, a nonpartisan organization that supports women running for office.

The need for funding is real: An Emily’s List representative told The Washington Post last month that the organization had spoken with 11,000 women about running for office throughout all 50 states, including some prospective House candidates.

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Richard Ford On His New Memoir And The Challenge Of Writing About The South

The preteens and teenagers in Richard Ford’s fiction are captivated ― if perplexed ― by their parents’ choices. A 15-year-old drifts around in search of his twin after his parents are arrested for robbing a bank. An even younger boy witnesses a domestic spat just before his mother flees from his life.

Like his protagonists, Ford is taken with the task of understanding his parents. His most recent book, Between Them, is not a fictional exploration of that particular family dynamic, but a pair of memoirs, one dedicated to his father, who died when Ford was 16, and one to his mother.

“Hardly an hour goes by on any day that I do not think something about my father,” he writes of Parker Ford, a hardworking traveling salesman forced to stay still after a major heart attack. Of his mother, Edna Akin, he writes, “The act of considering my mother’s life is an act of love.” 

Of the pair and his relationship with them: “Our parents intimately link us, closeted as we are in our own lives, to a thing we’re not, forging a joined separateness and a useful mystery, so that even together with them we are also alone.”

This sort of matter-of-fact observation is what Ford has come to be known for, and accounts for his categorization as a writer of “dirty realism,” alongside Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff and Cormac McCarthy. The style lends itself well to memoiristic writing, where analysis of one’s own life runs the risk of slipping into sentimentality. That’s not the case for Ford; by describing the details of his parents’ lives, and describing what he failed to ever learn about them, he gracefully pays them tribute.

Below, the author discusses the challenges of memoir-writing and his own Southern upbringing:

Is this your story, your parent’s story, or something of both?

Their story. It’s their story. It’s not my story at all. I mean, I get to tell it because I’m the only one who knows it. I’m the only person left alive who knew my parents. And so it’s inescapable if I want to testify to their experience that I be the person who tells it. I wasn’t obsessively trying to keep myself out of it, but I never imagined it as being my story, or that their importance as two people owed itself to me in any way.

How did the writing process differ for you, between writing fiction and writing these short memoirs?

Well, it was sort of a sensate difference, in that it seems starker to write about my parents because it all depended on the factual rudiments of their lives. So it seemed a little grainier, whereas writing fiction for me, which I’ve done for most of my life, has kind of a plushness to it, as if underneath the surface there’s a volume. And with any kind of nonfiction writing that depends on facts entirely, there is not that plushness. Even when I was provisionally commenting on things that [my parents] did ― supposing this or supposing that ― it still seemed fastened to the mast of the book’s factual underpinning.

You’ve talked about writing and word choice as a mode of discovery ― the meaning of a sentence may change based on a desired tone or sound. How did this function for you when writing about true things rather than made-up ones?

That’s a good question, because you still do ― one still does ― write a sentence, and you come to a point at which you need a verb, or you need even an adjective. In a piece of fiction, you can choose a word without any investment in its content. Only an investment in its effect, or where it might lead the sentence. With a piece of nonfiction you still have a choice. But you have to say about the word and its use, “Is this accurate?” Accuracy is not a phenomenon in writing fiction in the same way that it is a phenomenon in writing memoir or writing nonfiction.

There are some kinds of accuracies in fiction that obtain. If you’re writing about Great Falls, Montana, you can’t say the Missouri River runs south there. There is that sort of geographical accuracy, but even that can be subject to all kinds of fantastical whims. But still, I think, that the Missouri River runs north there is kind of inescapable.

I remember one time I wrote a story for The New Yorker, and I put the address of the YWCA, and let’s say that I said that the YWCA was at 613 2nd Street NW. And the fact checker for The New Yorker called me and said, you know, the YWCA is actually at 132 2nd Street S, and I said, “That’s fine, but it doesn’t have enough syllables.” And they said, “Well, no, this is where it is.” I said, “No, just go away.”

I was raised by two people, and they each had a view of things and a view of me, and I had a view of them which was not always consonant. I felt like if I tried to make everything completely add up, it would renounce something true about the book.
Richard Ford

These two memoirs have some redundancies and also some contradictions. Why did you choose to include them?

I was raised by two people, and they each had a view of things and a view of me, and I had a view of them which was not always consonant. I felt like if I tried to make everything completely add up, it would renounce something true about the book.

Books are written by human beings. I knew that I was leaving some things inconsistent, and I was willing to do that for the sake of a certain kind of accuracy. But also, I wasn’t there. I was there after 1944, but I wasn’t there before that.

Entire paragraphs of this book are composed of strings of questions, without answers. Why did you choose to do this?

Regarding my father, since his absence was predominant in my life, it was to try to penetrate those absences, rather than just saying, “I don’t know,” which wouldn’t make much of a story. I thought that the questioning strategy for the narrator ― me ― was in and of itself interesting.

It reminds me of some of your stories.

And in Canada also. I think it’s just something that ― in the end of “Rock Springs,” when the narrator says, “Would you think he was anybody like you?” you want to give that question over to the reader in an almost conversational way.

I do it because there are certain stories in my past, that I didn’t write, but Frank O’Connor did, that seem to me to be touching and alluring, because they represent, in their first-person interrogative style, a certain kind of human impulse to understand what is otherwise not understandable. There’s a way, when you answer the questions that you pose, of gaining dominion over your life, and demonstrating that dominion. I guess that’s why.

How has your Southern upbringing influenced your approach to writing?

Well, I grew up down the street from Eudora Welty. I started off with the assumption that one could be a writer. You could be from where I was from and be a writer. It was something that was supported in the community.

I think also, because I grew up in a racist society, in which we were constantly being told that what wasn’t true was true, that I had a natural and have a natural skepticism about what I receive, and what I’m told. And that causes me to try to provide explanations for things that I don’t believe, and that’s a way in which fiction can operate. Fiction can be a kind of imaginative explanation of something, when the discrepancy between apparent fact and truth is too wide to believe.

Fiction can be a kind of imaginative explanation of something, when the discrepancy between apparent fact and truth is too wide to believe.
Richard Ford

Even though you’re from the South, you tend to set your stories elsewhere.

Well, because everybody had written about everything I knew before I got there, and had done it better than I was going to be able to do it. If I had just let myself become a writer of the South, about Southern topics, for Southern readers, I wasn’t ever going to be a great writer, and that’s what I wanted to be. And I still do. And I had to be able to have a subject over which I was the world’s greatest expert. I was not going to be the world’s greatest expert about the South. First of all, I didn’t like the South very much, and second of all, I liked the literature that I knew about the South immoderately. Faulkner, Welty, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy. I thought that stuff was just great. Why did there need to be another one of them, which was all I was going to be able to be?

How has your parents’ life on the road impacted you as a writer?

I know in the book I call them transients. And in a sense they were people who didn’t, until I was born, stay in one place very long. And so I’m on a constant quest for some new experience that I could come to know and maybe use. I just never have been comfortable feeling, “This is my home and, by god, I have to stay here.”

And my parents ― my parents were both in their own way fleeing certain circumstances that obviously didn’t make them very happy. Without being miserable and malcontents, and they weren’t because they found each other at a very early age and immediately started making each other wildly happy. So when I think about where I reside, I think I reside wherever my wife is.

Do you think you’ll write more memoirs in the future, or are you more likely to return to fiction for now?

I don’t think I have anything else to write in a memoiristic way. I’ve written a few essays that are kind of memoiristic. My agent, who was very taken by the character of my grandfather really would like me to write a book about him, but I don’t know what I would write. He was a force of nature sort of guy, and did as best he could to ― he was a rakish guy, a real-chaser-after women.

And I’m certainly not going to write any autobiographies. As close as this memoir comes to autobiography, that’s close enough for me.

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Young New Yorkers, Street Artists, and Keeping Teens Out of Jail

The Street Art community donates time and art to a program that keeps teens out of jail in New York. An annual auction overflows with work by today’s Street Artists.

With the precision indicative of her architect training Rachel Barnard describes the art/criminal justice project for youth that she founded five years ago – which keeps growing thanks to artists’ help, community involvement, and an evermore engaged criminal justice system.

“Alternative Diversion,” she calls it, this court-mandated art program that prosecutors can offer to New York teens as a sentencing option instead of incarceration or doing community service.

“What we’re talking about here are 16 and 17 year-olds in Brooklyn who have been arrested for things like jumping the (subway) turnstyle or having a small amount of marijuana on them or petty larceny,” Barnard explains in a new video for YNY.

“Say you get a misdemeanor record at 16,” she says, “What that means is that you’re less likely to get employment, even though you are more likely to be poor and need employment more than most other 16 year-olds.”

Each year the programs called Young New Yorkers (YNY), which Barnard founded, work directly with these youth to redirect their route in life, to provide guidance, foster self-analyzation and to set productive goals for the future.

To some observers it may sound ironic that Street Artists, many of whom have done illegal artworks on walls throughout New York City, are the principal artists pool who are donating their time and talent here to the fundraising auction in lower Manhattan.

With high profile names like Shepard Fairey, Daze, Dan Witz, the Guerrilla Girls and Kara Walker on this years list of artists donating to the auction, the program boasts a cross section of established and emerging Street Artists, graffiti artists, culture jammers and truth tellers who heartily support this program that since 2012 has given more than 400 city youth a second chance.

But then we think more about the history and psychological/anthropological makeup of the Street Art scene and it makes perfect sense: What segment of the arts community has such a rich history of activism, self-directed industry, challenging the norms of society, using public space for intervention – and a penchant for consciousness-raising?

Even after 50 plus years of youth culture in love with graffiti and Street Art these artists and their practice are seen as outside the proper curriculum of many universities with art programs and museums have arduous internal debates about supporting exhibitions that are dedicated to Street Art and graffiti specifically.

This is precisely the kind of marginalized movement/ subculture that has necessarily thrived often with little encouragement or funding – overcoming the barriers to success that more institutionally recognized art movements don’t encounter. In fact, many have gone to jail for what they do.

Uniquely, Young New Yorkers continues to build its partnerships with artists, teachers, lawyers, volunteers and several agencies within the criminal justice system, including criminal and community courts, the District Attorney’s Office and the Legal Aid Society. The program’s art shows mounted by graduates are frequently attended by members of the justice system as well and art becomes a facilitator of strengthened community ties.

BSA has supported YNY every year since its first auction benefit and this year is no exception. Please go to Paddle 8 to see the items for sale or better yet, go to the auction in person. We stopped by while they were hanging the show yesterday and we were able to take a few shots for you to see what’s up for grabs.

Young New Yorkers Silent Art Auction Honoring Actor and Activist Michael K. Williams

Wednesday, May 10, 2017
548 West 28th Street
New York, NY
6:00 VIP hour with Michael K. Williams (Star and Super Star Tickets)
7:00–10:00 party (Regular tickets)

More information at YoungNewYorkers.org http://ift.tt/1Dcuf7c

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Attention, America: The Mermaids Need Your Help

Just thinking about the state of American politics right now might be enough to send you into a bout of sustained existential despair.

(And we apologize for bringing it up.)

But in the midst of a national crisis, there’s a more localized problem that deserves your attention, too: The Coney Island Mermaid Parade is in trouble.

You don’t have to be a New Yorker to sympathize with the specific plight of the mermaids. Run by the nonprofit arts organization Coney Island USA, the parade has been bringing together people from all places in the name of glitter, tassels and Ariel wigs for nearly 35 years. Each summer, it does exactly what its title suggests: welcomes people who wish to dress as mermaids to whimsically float, march and dance a day away.

The perfect seasonal distraction from a world reeling in chaos, right?

As you might already know, life is tough for typically underfunded arts organizations like it. In the case of Coney Island USA, the budget is so tight after a series of “fairly serious financial crisis events,” Gothamist reports, that the parade runners have been operating at a loss for years.

This year, facing rising permit and insurance costs, not to mention staff layoffs that happened at the end of last year, the mermaids have taken to crowdfunding in order to ensure that the 2017 parade actually happens. They did it once before, after damage from Hurricane Sandy put the organization into debt. This year, Coney Island USA is asking for $50,000 to help cover parade expenses related to logistics and security. 

After all, putting on an event that services 400,000 to 800,000 people isn’t cheap.

“This past season it was just me on payroll ― deferred payroll,” director James Fitzsimmons explained to Gothamist, undermining the seriousness of the organization’s financial problems. “It’s unfortunately the side effect of running an arts institution.”

While Fitzsimmons says the show will potentially go on even if the campaign doesn’t reach its goal ― Debbie Harry is the 2017 parade queen, after all ― he anticipates that the financial hole his organization has found itself in will only grow deeper if the public can’t help.

“As an institution, we will beg, borrow and steal to make sure it happens, but we need the people’s help,” he concluded to amNewYork.

So, we ask you, dear readers: If we can’t save our country, can we at least save the Mermaid Parade?

You can check out the Feed the Mermaids campaign here. In the meantime, some very happy mermaids, because we could all use them:

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Steve Bannon’s Failed ‘Star Wars’-Meets-Shakespeare Movie Script

It sounded kind of smart, at least in the beginning.

“Basically, what we were doing was a cross between Shakespeare and ‘Star Wars.’” Steve Bannon’s former screenwriting partner, Julia Jones, told HuffPost. 

“Unfortunately, it wasn’t a good script, but it was a great idea,” Jones said, of the “Titus Andronicus”-inspired script she worked on with Bannon. “The Andronicii were light beings. They were transparent and they only took human form when they entered the Earth plane. So it had a lot of sort of esoteric ideas.”

Jones, whose political views are liberal, worked with Bannon off and on for over a dozen years. In Jones’ recollection, Bannon was a Republican, but not the far-right conservative he has become today — at least at the beginning of their relationship.

“Before 9/11, it seemed [the politics] wasn’t an issue,” said Jones. “He was a Republican and then I was a Democrat, and back in those days, you know, that happened.”

As she explained to HuffPost, Jones has been talking to press outlets since Steve Bannon’s rise in the Donald Trump administration to make sense of his apparent transformation into a politcal power player who says things like, “Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power.”

Jones recently approved a live-reading of the duo’s rap musical about the Los Angeles riots of 1992, which was read to humorous effect by actors and comedians such as Rob Corddry for NowThis. That play wasn’t exactly a harbinger for Bannon’s brand of conservatism, but was definitely ridiculous.

“You cry against the ‘other’ — crackers, Blood, Crip, popo, Pol, the rich — it don’t matter, n***as; awe keeps you feeding each another,” is just one memorable line. Jones, who now looks back on her earlier writing with the humor of more experience, loved how the live-reading turned out.

As The New Yorker recently detailed in length, Bannon started his attempt at a career in Hollywood as a financier, initially as part of Goldman Sachs. When he decided he wanted to become a screenwriter, he hired Jones after a chance encounter at a busy restaurant in 1991.

“I was kind of trying to get out of the conversation, actually,” Jones said, sort of jokingly. She was trying to return to her own party. But the conversation of what they both did professionally came up, and Jones said she was working on a screenplay relating to the works of Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.

“It sort of didn’t work. His response was, ‘I’m looking for a Shakespearean screenwriter.’ So how often does that happen?” she said.

The two set out to develop the “Star Wars”-meets-Shakespeare idea of adapting “Titus Andronicus” into space. Jones suggested putting pyramids on a planet, an idea that Bannon liked, and which eventually made it into the script.

Jones gave HuffPost the script with the caveat: “Just be advised, it’s probably laughable in parts.”

The original play, in which Roman general Titus returns from war and engages in a cycle of revenge with Tamora, Queen of the Goths, is considered Shakespeare’s most violent work. In Bannon and Jones’ script, the general vibe of extreme darkness is certainly kept. The script is also highly ambitious in calling for alien battle scenes that even James Cameron probably would have struggled to depict.

To get a sense of the plot, this is the opening “mechanical voice” narration:

Long ago when aliens ravaged ancient Earth, the people fled underground, hiding out in caves to escape death and slavery at the hands of the invaders. 

Deep underground they discovered a vortex of energy, spiraling past the earth-plane to freedom in the stars. Aeons passed…

Over this mystical place, those who were left behind, built a city and called it Eridon, gateway to the river in the stars.

While out among the stars, men and women intermarried with the Divine Sparks of other worlds to produce a noble race, the Andronicii – half-
human, half-spirit – lifted beyond the concerns of a gravitational earth.

Sheltered from alien invasions and the corruption of Earth’s dying civilization…

The new Beings drew strength from the pure air of the stars and bred a race, strong in body and pure of heart…

A race of Star Warriors dedicated to defending Earth as the mother of flesh and form, the Blue Grail, the sacred vessel of spirit.

For it was determined by all the hierarchies of light and life, that Earth must be defended – worshiped and defended – as the last place in the universe where the beauties of the physical world can co-exist … side-by-side with its dangers.

In this adaptation, Titus is a “Star Warrior” who is “half-human, half-light.” 

Missiles point earthward from Mars. The Lincoln monument in Washington D.C. has already been “blackened.” Early on, a hologram game is played that depicts an atom bomb exploding. As a character observes this, another remarks to dramatic effect, “Ah, your holiness … do join us. The game is death.”

Later, a child asks, “What is human kind?” The response is sarcastic chuckling as a character sardonically states, “A contradiction in terms.”

When asked whether she and Bannon thought about the feasibility of making this movie, Jones chuckled and admitted, “I don’t think we thought very realistically at all while we were writing it.”

In a story about this fabled script published in The Paris Review last November, the publication brought to attention an other-worldly sex scene that is hard to imagine could have been filmed at the time. 

The relevant line in the script: “He climbs onto her and their forms dissolve, blend and blur in an erotic scene of ectoplasmic sex.”

“We just thought it was brilliant,” said Jones of their script as a whole. “I think we just assumed the studio would take care of all of that.”

As with the results of his other partnerships with Jones, this Bannon script never became a movie. 

Bannon did kind of, sort of, eventually succeed in getting a “Titus Andronicus” adaptation made years later, though, as he executive produced the 1999 film “Titus.” Anthony Hopkins starred in the titular role.

Over the years, Bannon began to pivot into making explicitly political documentaries, which led to his rise within the far-right community. Jones had a writing credit on the 2004, “In the Face of Evil: Reagan’s War in Word and Deed,” but wanted to make it clear she had no input on that film, except essentially acting as Bannon’s typist. 

As The Washington Post described the documentary, “That film included a coda that warned about the threat of ‘the beast’ during a montage that showed praying Muslims, terrorist camps and people falling to their deaths from the World Trade Center on 9/11.”

Jones and Bannon then parted ways professionally.

“He loves being the bad guy,” Jones explained of Bannon’s personality and his ultimate decision to publicly embrace his controversial politics. “He loves it. The more bad things people say about him, the more he likes it.”

Following the Shakespearean source material, Bannon’s Titus gets killed near the end of his script. The titular character’s dramatic last words in the adaptation are, “Elio, Elio, caraba! Elio mea! Lemnith, lemna meo Elio caraba …”

His words are the nonsense language of Titus’ space race, with which Jones and Bannon never ascribed any definitive meaning.

“I made up those words,” Jones explained over a follow-up email. “No translation. I’m sure [it] meant Unity. It was like Latin but made-up.” 

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Buddhists In Asia Are Throwing Buddha A Big, Beautiful Birthday Celebration

Buddhists around the world are honoring the birth, enlightenment, and death of their spiritual leader with a bright, colorful festival called Vesak Day. 

Vesak Day (also known as Waisak, Wesak, or Buddha Day), is one of the most important dates on the Buddhist calendar. It is believed to be the day in 567 BC that Prince Siddhartha Gautama was born in Nepal.

The prince lived in luxury and opulence behind his father’s palace walls until his late 20s, when he ventured outside and was confronted with the reality of suffering in the world. The prince, overwhelmed after witnessing poverty, disease, and death, decided to leave his life of luxury and become an ascetic.

Unsatisfied with the guidance of various religious teachers he met along his way, the prince decided to sit underneath a Bodhi tree until he discovered the truth that he was seeking about suffering. He sat there for days, facing various challenges and sinking deeper into meditation, until he finally understood the answer ― in that moment becoming the Buddha, or the enlightened one. 

For the rest of his life, the Buddha sought to lead others to the path of enlightenment. He died peacefully at the age of 80. 

Vesak celebrates all three of these important events in the Buddha’s life ― his birth, enlightenment, and death. Buddhist scriptures claim all three happened on the full moon of the Indian lunar month, Vesakha. 

According to the Pew Research Center, Buddhists account for 7 percent of the world’s total population. The overwhelming majority of Buddhists (almost 99 percent) live in the Asia-Pacific region.

The United Nations marks Vesak Day on May 10, but the festivities, and the exact date of Vesak, vary greatly according to culture and region. In many regions, the celebrations center around Buddhist temples, where people gather to meditate and light lanterns.

In Indonesia, thousands of monks and pilgrims will gather at the Borobodur Temple in Java between May 9 and May 11. They will light candles, chant, and circle three times around the ancient temple, then release some 1,000 lanterns into the sky symbolizing enlightenment for the entire universe. 

In South Korea, people celebrate with a month-long Lotus Lantern Festival, which includes parades, performances, and thousands of colorful, glowing lanterns. Many devotees will gather to celebrate at the Jogyesa Temple in Seoul, the center of Korean Buddhism. 

In India, pilgrims flock to Sarnath, a city in Uttar Pradesh, India, where the Buddha is believed to have given his first public sermon after attaining enlightenment. Here, devotees wear white clothes, meditate, and leave offerings for Vesak.

Celebrations also take place in Sri Lanka, Thailand, China, Malaysia, and a number of other Asian countries. 

Scroll down to see images of Buddha Day throughout Asia.

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10 Books To Wake Up Your Book Club

Originally published on Kirkus. For more from Kirkus, click here.

Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century by Chuck Klosterman

“Even those who only dimly remember Royce White, Pavement, or Gnarls Barkley will find the reflections on them engaging.” A collection of journalistic pieces that remain provocative, or at least interesting, even if the subjects that inspired them have faded from memory. Read full book review.

Love and Trouble by Claire Dederer

“Insightful, provocative, and fearlessly frank, Dederer seduces readers with her warmth, wit, and wisdom.” A fierce new memoir from the essayist and longtime New York Times contributor. Read full book review.

Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki

“Always enjoyable if not always believable, this novel succeeds by staying light on its feet. Or, as one character puts it, ‘Please don’t monetize my bunny.’ ” In the Hollywood Hills, a smart, damaged mother of two hires a nanny so she can work on a memoir—but the younger woman is no less a piece of work than she is and intent on an art project of her own. Read full book review.

The Lines We Cross by Randa Abdel-Fattah

“A meditation on a timely subject that never forgets to put its characters and their stories first.(Fiction. 12-17)” An Afghani-Australian teen named Mina earns a scholarship to a prestigious private school and meets Michael, whose family opposes allowing Muslim refugees and immigrants into the country. Read full book review.

Change Agent by Daniel Suarez

“A natural at making future shocks seem perfectly believable, Suarez (Influx, 2014, etc.) delivers his most entertaining high-tech thriller yet.” In the year 2045, Singapore-based Interpol agent Kenneth Durand’s campaign against black-market gene editing is set back when he’s injected with a synthetic “change agent” that transforms him into the spitting image of his evil nemesis. Read full book review.

No One Cares About Crazy People by Ron Powers

“This hybrid narrative, enhanced by the author’s considerable skills as a literary stylist, succeeds on every level.” Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Powers (Mark Twain: A Life, 2005, etc.) presents two searing sagas: an indictment of mental health care in the United States and the story of his two schizophrenic sons. Read full book review.

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

“One of the most bittersweet love stories in modern memory and a book to savor even while despairing of its truths.” Hamid (Discontent and Its Civilizations, 2014, etc.) crafts a richly imaginative tale of love and loss in the ashes of civil war. Read full book review.

A Separation by Katie Kitamura

“A minutely observed novel of infidelity unsettles its characters and readers.” Dread and lassitude twist into a spare and stunning portrait of a marital estrangement. Read full book review.

The Golden Legend by Nadeem Aslam

“Brooding and beautiful: a mature, assured story of the fragility of the world and of ourselves.” “This world is the last thing God will ever tell us”: an aching, lyrical story of schisms and secrets in present-day Pakistan. Read full book review.

Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke

“Powerfully illustrated and incisively written—a subtle dazzler of a debut.” Insights and images combine in a meditation on loss, grief, and the illusions of permanence. Read full book review.

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