Latest news with #VladimirNabokov
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
What Ghislaine told US officials about the REAL links between Clinton and Epstein - and why she now thinks it could secure her release: by TOM LEONARD
Of all the weird decorations – from a stuffed black poodle to a framed collection of fake eyeballs – that Jeffrey Epstein acquired for his New York mansion, possibly no item invited quite so many questions as a painting of President Clinton sprawled suggestively on an Oval Office chair, wearing a blue dress and heels. It wasn't as immediately disturbing as the first-edition copy of Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov's notorious 1955 novel in which a man develops a sexual obsession with a 12-year-old girl – which Epstein kept displayed in his office. Or the paintings of naked women, and large silver ball and chain he kept in the massage room where he allegedly raped local schoolgirls.
Sydney Morning Herald
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Instead of doomscrolling, have a laugh at these Black Mirror-esque stories
SATIRE Playing Nice Was Getting Me NowhereAlex Cothren Pink Shorts Press, $32.99 In his novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Vladimir Nabokov spoke of 'parody as a kind of springboard for leaping into the highest regions of serious emotion'. When a writer takes a worn-out or dead style and reanimates it through the fun of formal play and subversion, they combine their instinct for mockery with pathos (Nabokov described this approach as a 'clown developing wings'). My ideal parodist charms with a spirited voice and funny representations, before gradually revealing the seriousness behind their burlesques. What separates the satirist from the comedian is the texture of the laughter invoked, found not in just punchlines and observational digs, but in the equally amusing and horrifying lens through the world is portrayed. Australian writer Alex Cothren's short-story collection Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere arises from the American satirical tradition, whose most visible practitioners are George Saunders and Thomas Pynchon. Like Cothren, these writers combine jaunty, sparkling surfaces with a darkly ironic commentary. They render injustice and suffering through cartoonish exaggerations and flights of fancy. And although the satirist wields the grotesque and the unreal, these distortions have the strange effect of making their critique more acutely felt. Cothren's satirical sketches use the springboard of parody to better understand the follies of vice. In this collection, Cothren contorts various aspects of contemporary Australia so that they are both recognisable and monstrous. They often synergise their subjects — environmental decline, Kafkaesque bureaucracy, the paranoid imagination — with form by adopting false documents to explore these absurdist premises. In The Royal Commission into the Koala Repopulation Scheme, a transcript documents a hilarious back-and-forth between a policy adviser and commissioner regarding an abusive proposal, worthy of Jonathan Swift, to avoid the imminent extinction of koalas. Similarly, the titular Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere cannibalises the language and structure of an academic essay to report how several deaths at an unnamed Australian university affect its casual workforce and symbolises the 'toxic work conditions created by the neoliberalist turn in tertiary education'. By drawing from legitimate research alongside the uncomfortable admission that the casual staff members jostling for a full-time job saw the deaths 'not as tragedies but instead welcome opportunities for advancement:, Cothren imbues the story with a sense of sociopolitical engagement beyond the surface-level frivolity. When it was first published in Overland, Cothren's takedown of Melbourne pokies rooms, Ocean Paradise was accompanied by an image of a supposedly real gaming staff report from which the story adopts its opening. In Cothren's hands, this gaming report becomes a haunting, in which the forsaken victims of greedy managers and crooked machines return to avenge themselves.
The Age
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Instead of doomscrolling, have a laugh at these Black Mirror-esque stories
SATIRE Playing Nice Was Getting Me NowhereAlex Cothren Pink Shorts Press, $32.99 In his novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Vladimir Nabokov spoke of 'parody as a kind of springboard for leaping into the highest regions of serious emotion'. When a writer takes a worn-out or dead style and reanimates it through the fun of formal play and subversion, they combine their instinct for mockery with pathos (Nabokov described this approach as a 'clown developing wings'). My ideal parodist charms with a spirited voice and funny representations, before gradually revealing the seriousness behind their burlesques. What separates the satirist from the comedian is the texture of the laughter invoked, found not in just punchlines and observational digs, but in the equally amusing and horrifying lens through the world is portrayed. Australian writer Alex Cothren's short-story collection Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere arises from the American satirical tradition, whose most visible practitioners are George Saunders and Thomas Pynchon. Like Cothren, these writers combine jaunty, sparkling surfaces with a darkly ironic commentary. They render injustice and suffering through cartoonish exaggerations and flights of fancy. And although the satirist wields the grotesque and the unreal, these distortions have the strange effect of making their critique more acutely felt. Cothren's satirical sketches use the springboard of parody to better understand the follies of vice. In this collection, Cothren contorts various aspects of contemporary Australia so that they are both recognisable and monstrous. They often synergise their subjects — environmental decline, Kafkaesque bureaucracy, the paranoid imagination — with form by adopting false documents to explore these absurdist premises. In The Royal Commission into the Koala Repopulation Scheme, a transcript documents a hilarious back-and-forth between a policy adviser and commissioner regarding an abusive proposal, worthy of Jonathan Swift, to avoid the imminent extinction of koalas. Similarly, the titular Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere cannibalises the language and structure of an academic essay to report how several deaths at an unnamed Australian university affect its casual workforce and symbolises the 'toxic work conditions created by the neoliberalist turn in tertiary education'. By drawing from legitimate research alongside the uncomfortable admission that the casual staff members jostling for a full-time job saw the deaths 'not as tragedies but instead welcome opportunities for advancement:, Cothren imbues the story with a sense of sociopolitical engagement beyond the surface-level frivolity. When it was first published in Overland, Cothren's takedown of Melbourne pokies rooms, Ocean Paradise was accompanied by an image of a supposedly real gaming staff report from which the story adopts its opening. In Cothren's hands, this gaming report becomes a haunting, in which the forsaken victims of greedy managers and crooked machines return to avenge themselves.
Time of India
19-06-2025
- Time of India
What's ‘Lolita's Line'? Ontario bus driver's outfit might be a hidden risk to your child's safety
Live Events What does Lolita's Line mean? (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel A Toronto school bus driver has been removed from service after a video showed them wearing a pink, frilly schoolgirl outfit and displaying a sign reading 'Lolita's Line' on the vehicle. A video was recorded on June 8 and went viral. It shows the driver wearing knee-high stockings and a short schoolgirl video was filmed outside St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Elementary School in Vaughan, Ontario, north of questioned the driver over the outfit and the provocative sign. The driver allegedly replied, 'Yep,' and drove off when asked about the bus term 'Lolita', derived from Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel about an adult man who sexually abuses a 12-year-old girl, has deeply troubling implications. While some associate the term with Japanese fashion subculture, many believe invoking it on a school transport vehicle is highly person commented in the viral video, 'Hide your children! Look up the meaning of Lolita, and you will understand soon enough!' Normalizing pe d0 ph: Lia here in Woodbridge disguised as inclusivity!'A Reddit commenter said the outfit was 'not just fetish wear… but unprofessional for a bus driver to identify with a subculture that romanticizes the sexual victimization of children.' Others praised the authorities' fast action in removing the driver from York Catholic District School Board (YCDSB) confirmed that the driver was employed through a third-party contractor. After the video came to light, the board removed the driver from all routes serving its said that the company 'swiftly addressed the situation,' and assured families that such conduct would not be YCDSB said that all school bus drivers in Ontario must complete a Vulnerable Sector Check to work with children. The board also confirmed that all child safety protocols were followed when responding to the reaction was swift and critical. Some social media users likened the driver's attire to fetishized representations of children and condemned the behaviour as 'gross' and 'highly unprofessional.' Many parents expressed concern about the message sent to elementary school bus driver is not technically fired, as the contractor, not the school board, oversees employment. However, they have been removed from all YCDSB routes and are not expected to return to any school services in the district.
Axios
19-06-2025
- General
- Axios
Time to go back to class
Lifelong learning is booming, with informal lectures, classes and discussion series quickly gaining popularity. Whether it's literature, film or the history of plastic surgery, the topics are abundant and the in-person attendance is strong, The Cut reports this week. Online learners are turning to Substack communities, Zoom classes or even AI chatbots that can generate personalized syllabi. The big picture: We're seeing the rise of AI doing the critical thinking for us, despite its often generic output. Plus, we know learning new things is one of the most effective tools we have to stave off dementia in an aging population. Spending an evening marking up a syllabus, going deep on a topic or discussing Vladimir Nabokov's "Speak, Memory" might be the ultimate antidote for the perpetually online condition of brain rot, Hope Corrigan notes in The Cut. Zoom in: Lectures on Tap, based in New York, presents 45-minute talks from academics on topics like "Why People Cheat?" and "Summer Solstice and the Science of the Sun." Profs and Pints, which started in D.C., hosts lectures in bars on "The Great American Road Trip" and "The Physics of Baseball." Both are expanding. Lectures on Tap is coming soon to Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, while Profs and Pints has expanded to multiple cities, including Dallas, Detroit, Nashville, Philadelphia and Richmond, according to its website. Bookstores can also double as sites for classes: I took a Details & Dialogue class earlier this year at D.C.'s Politics & Prose, which offers courses on history, writing, classics, poetry and more. You might even try a brewery: Common Roots Brewing Company in upstate New York has hosted lectures on topics like "Ticks and the Diseases They Carry" and "Wood Identification & Old House Myths." Washington Post journalist Karen Attiah's class at Columbia University on race and media was canceled last year. She has since created an independent version of the class and sought potential students via her newsletter and a Google Form with a sliding-scale payment system. "I hope that this can be a model for people to say, 'We can think outside of these structures, these institutions, that trade on prestige and are asking us to believe in their prestige, even as they're caving in on their own values that they use to market themselves," Attiah told Corrigan. Within 48 hours of posting, 500 people had reportedly signed up — with more than 2,000 on the waitlist.
