News emBoldened

Yesterday I wrote here that Burning Man should change its name, without explaining what I'd meant, thinking that the meaning of what I'd written was obvious, that the climate change of the word "burning" and the anthropomorphic sexism of the word "man" made the name Burning Man if not inappropriate then obsolete.

The day before yesterday I'd come across the tale of Yann Moix, a French writer and media provacateur whose new novel was rejected for the prestigious, juried Goncourt Prize, though many literary critics had "agreed that the writing was some of Moix's best in years." In a statement released to RTL radio, the head of the jury, a man blessed with the picture-perfect name Bernard Pivot, wrote, "Yann Moix has a lot of talent, he has immense erudition, but unfortunately he has an unrestrained taste for contestation, for provocation."

The Kingdom of Denmark has opened The Consulate General and Innovation Centre in Silicon Valley. The Danish director of the Silicon Valley office said his country "now considers big tech companies as powerful if not more powerful than many governments." The Centre is located at 299 California Ave. su. 200, Palo Alto, CA 94306, (650) 543-3180, according to its Facebook page.

I'm re-reading Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable, that seemingly eternal, airless maze that wanders the corridors of the death of language, and found several passages I'd not underlined before, including the following:

At the centre of this enclosure stood a small rotunda, windowless, but well furnished with loopholes.