Mia Couto’s first fictional work
Paris Review: I wanted to ask about the origins of your name. I’ve read that it comes from your love of cats, as the Portuguese for meow is “miar.” Is this true?
Mia Couto: Yes, that really is true. When I was two years old, all sorts of cats came to our veranda, where my mother fed them. My parents used to say that I didn’t just love cats, I thought I was one of them. So one day I proclaimed that my name was no longer Antonio but Mia. They took me seriously, and that opportunity to choose my own name was the beginning of my first fictional work. I had a character, and I am still working on the narrative for that him.
12:33 am ❦
7 May 2013
Cover an issue of Cryptolog, a recently declassified NSA publication.
9:16 pm ❦
27 March 2013
The purposes of puns seem to be as diverse as the circumstances in which they appear.
But regardless of its rationale, punning is clearly more than a mere linguistic fillip. And there may be reason to hope that the internet will restore its reputation. The efflorescence of punnery on social networking sites like Twitter, Tumblr and Reddit, which bulge with the fruits of meme generators, suggests that puns have become acceptable as part of the online conversation.
(The Pun Conundrum)
5:43 pm ❦
25 January 2013
shameless self-promotion
Here are some things I published around the web this year:
- Numerous short posts for The Immanent Frame, including Eagleton against reluctant nonbelief, After the secular age, Globalization and secularization, The NYPD’s religious profiling, #OccupyLSX and the church, Imagining radical refusal, Muhammad Asad and the concept of an Islamic politics, Islamophobia and antisemitism in Europe
- A few short posts for Possible Futures, including But is it a General Strike? and Social Science’s New Occupation
- A longish two-part interview, also for The Immanent Frame: The view from Berlin: An interview with Hubert Knoblauch and Subjects, spirituality, and smoking: An interview with Hubert Knoblauch
- The Bible as Floral Pattern (Standplaats Wereld)
- Provincializing the European Religious Landscape (Perspectives on Europe)
That’s it! Slow year.
10:46 am ❦
22 December 2012
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2012 Link Dump
Here are some of the best things I read online this past year, mostly published in 2012, mostly #longreads, all paywall-free.
While we’re on the subject of worthwhile reading, may I suggest that you subscribe to Jacobin and The New Inquiry in the new year?
3:50 pm ❦
21 December 2012
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thegreatrefusal:
Alle reden vom Wetter. Wir nicht.
Everybody talks about the weather. We don’t.
(via spitzenprodukte)
10:41 am ❦
13 December 2012
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