What have I learnt today? Blogging about books, media, words, Singapore and the world today. The blog that was Blowin' in the Wind.
Here's September 1 one day late: September 1, 1939, written by WH Auden in New York when Germany invaded Poland, starting the Second World War.
The war produced epic novels and movies. Casablanca was made in 1942, the year America joined the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Brief Encounter was made in 1945, From Here to Eternity in 1953.
Jospeh Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, attributes the success of Singapore and other East Asian economies to government intervention. In his book, Freefall, he writes:
Government has played an especially large role in the highly successful economies of East Asia. The increases in per capita incomes there during the past three to four decades have been historically unprecedented. In almost all of these countries, government took an active role in promoting development through market mechanisms. China has grown at an average of 9.7 per cent per year for more than thirty years and has succeeded in bringing hundreds of millions out of poverty. Japan's government-led growth spurt was earlier, but Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, and a host of other countries followed and adapted Japan's strategy and saw per capita incomes increase eightfold in a quarter century.
Of course, governments, like markets and humans, are fallible. But in East Asia, and elsewhere, the success far outweighed the failures.
Country music legend Hank Williams has been awarded a special citation in this year's Pulitzer Prizes more than 50 years after his death.
The Pulitzer Prize Board pays tribute to his "craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life".
The Board, which chose the prize winners, included New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and Politico executive editor and co-founder Jim VandeHei.
This video is grainy but it's the best I could find.
Williams was only 29 when he died in 1953. Yet his legend lives on because of the enduring appeal of his songs. They include classics such as Hey Good Lookin', Your Cheatin' Heart, Jambalaya and Cold, Cold Heart.
Here's the full list of Pulitzer Prize winners announced by Columbia University on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board with links to the winning entries for journalism.
"I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.
"Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.
"The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is ‘What have you done with the scissors?’ The first line of Old Times is ‘Dark.’
"In each case I had no further information…"
Those are the words with which playwright Harold Pinter (above) begins his speech accepting the Nobel prize for literature this year.
Forbidden by doctors from going to Stockholm to receive the 10 million crown ($1.2 million) literature prize, 75-year-old Pinter, who has been battling cancer for years, sent a video recording showing him in a wheelchair with his legs under a red blanket, reports Reuters.
His frailty and hoarse voice added to the drama of a speech peppered with the potent silences of his plays like The Birthday Party and The Caretaker, which gave rise to the term "Pinteresque", it adds.
It turns into a savage attack on the US, and I don’t like that at all, but the early parts are interesting where he talks about his writings. Anyone interested can read the complete text on the Guardian web site.
My favourite speech by a Nobel literature prize winner was delivered by VS Naipaul in Stockholm on Dec 7, 2001. In his speech, titled Two Worlds, he spoke about growing up in Trinidad, his Indian ancestry, and his moving to Britain and his writer’s life. It will be appreciated by anyone interested in writers or the colonial influence.
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