मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

हत्तिणीचे चित्र काढताना जेन रसेलचे चित्र निघणे हा लेखकाचा पराभव आहे...Jane Russell

June 21 2016 was 95th birth anniversary of  Jane Russell



 Jane Russell in The Outlaw
courtesy: Wikipedia
Wikipedia:

“…The Outlaw (1943) was completed in 1941, but it was not released until 1943 in a limited release. Problems occurred with the censorship of the production code over the way her ample cleavage was displayed. When the movie was finally passed, it had a general release in 1946. During that time, she was kept busy doing publicity and became known nationally. Contrary to countless incorrect reports in the media since the release of The Outlaw, Russell did not wear the specially designed underwire bra that Howard Hughes had designed and made for her to wear during filming. According to Jane's 1985 autobiography, she said that the bra was so uncomfortable that she secretly discarded it and wore her own bra with the cups padded with tissue and the straps pulled up to elevate her breasts.

Russell's measurements were 38D-24-36, and she stood 5 ft 7 in (97-61-91 cm and 1.7 m), making her more statuesque than most of her contemporaries. Her favorite co-star Bob Hope once introduced her as "the two and only Jane Russell". He joked, "Culture is the ability to describe Jane Russell without moving your hands." Howard Hughes said, "There are two good reasons why men go to see her. Those are enough."…”
 
जेन रसेल, अमेरिकन चित्रपट अभिनेत्री आणि हॉलीवूडची १९४० आणि '५०च्या दशकांतील आघाडीची सेक्स सिम्बॉल, जन्म १९२१, मृत्यू २०११

Jane Russell (1921-2011) by George Hurrell

courtesy: current copyright holder of the picture

जी ए कुलकर्णी, July 28 1955:
"…हत्तिणीचे चित्र काढताना जेन रसेलचे चित्र निघणे हा लेखकाचा पराभव आहे…" ('जी.एं. ची निवडक पत्रे, खंड २', 1998, page 14)

The late G A Kulkarni says in a letter: "...Ending up drawing Jane Russell while drawing a female elephant is a defeat of a writer..."...Earlier in the letter he also says you can't really make Jane Russell by planing (रंधून) a female elephant.

Looks like GA was a great admirer of Ms. Russell! But I was wondering why GA thought of female elephant and Jane Russell together. Surely he did NOT see the following picture.

The elephant that forgot... to put her bra on


I have another observation.

GA's book is copiously marked with foot notes by the editors almost on every page. Every time GA refers to something that has not been discussed earlier, there is a footnote for it. For instance, on page 14, 'Grapes of Wrath' is commented upon.

But for some reason, Ms. Russell does not get a footnote.

Was it because editors assumed every reader knew about her? I don't think it's quite true because by 1998, Russell was already history and had not become a legend like Marilyn Monroe among Marathi speaking people at least. Or was it just widely prevalent snobbishness among Marathi literati that perhaps a Hollywood star and sex symbol (for me Ms. Russell was a competent actor too) from the past was not in the same league as John Steinbeck's book and hence not worth a comment?

To compensate for that oversight, I have tried writing that missing footnote as a caption for Ms. Russell's picture that is posted second from the top.

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