Cultural Capital

Rachel Cooke in the Observer celebrates the fact that Hustvedt's account of her "medical mystery" -- sudden convulsions and emotional hypersensitivity -- eschews the "foetid claustrophobia of the misery memoir",. Hustvedt remains coolly intellectual in her approach to an illness whose symptoms have been treated with scepticism: "She is, by trade, a storyteller but she knows that narratives, of the kind that Freud so ... read more

Rich, vigorous and inventive swearing on film is hard to come by now -- either that or I'm inured to it -- but there's a foul-mouthed feast for the ears in 44 Inch Chest. This Pinteresque British film, released last month, is about a group of splenetic thugs who kidnap a young waiter who has cuckolded one of their number. While not especially distinguished, the picture has three things ... read more

The arts website IFC has a rare interview with Chris Morris. The comedian behind the cult television shows Brass Eye and The Day Today usually avoids talking to the press, but was giving interviews at this year's Sundance festival to promote his directorial debut, Four Lions. The film, a "jihadist comedy", will inevitably be compared to Armando Iannucci's Oscar-nominated political satire In the Loop (the two films even share ... read more

In Martin Amis's memoir Experience (to my mind, his finest book), there is an account of an altercation with Salman Rushdie over the merits of the prose of Samuel Beckett. Amis writes:

I really do hate Beckett's prose: every sentence is an assault on my ear. . . . Feeling my father in me now, (as well as the couple of hundred glasses of wine consumed at the party we had ... read more

The news today that the record label EMI lost £1.75bn in the last tax year is mildly depressing -- although not surprising. This will inevitably be blamed by the company on the rise of illegal file-sharing, rather than the fact that it was bought in 2007 by a "karakoke-loving" financier interested in flogging off parts of the company's back catalogue.

The music industry may indeed be changing, but just ... read more

My interview with Sir Frank Kermode, which appears in this week's New Statesman, is now available to read online. I didn't get the chance to talk to Sir Frank about his recent book on E M Forster, which Leo Robson reviewed for the NS last month. Instead, we spoke about the lost prestige of literary criticism (Kermode talked, with a certain wistfulness, about a time when "there ... read more

1. Baroque in Hackney: Salinger -- another part of his downfall

The forthright American expatriate writer Katy Evans-Bush, who brought us Prufrock in pirate-speak, on the legacy of the suddenly late J D Salinger.

2. The Carpetbagger: Credit haggling, Oscar-style

New York Times blog on Kathryn Bigelow's talent and her Oscar hopes.

3. La république des livres: Comment Karen Blixen fut privée de prix Nobel

Le Monde's Pierre Assouline reveals why the ... read more

My Art of Listening column this week is on the Simon Cowell-produced single for Haiti, "Everybody Hurts". The charity single, especially in Britain, is one of those things that we supposedly love to hate, an attitude summed up by the Guardian's Esther Addley in a piece about the enjoyable awfulness of such things: "You can't knock the sentiment -- so I won't even try."

But this time, there does ... read more

On today's culture pages, we have not one but two fantastic pieces on J D Salinger. Elsewhere, John Gray finds fault with the apocalyptic theories of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen.

You'll also find Ryan Gilbey's review of Invictus, Clint Eastwood's ode to Nelson Mandela, and -- take cover -- Daniel Trilling unpicks the new Simon Cowell charity single.

Plus, there's more to follow over the coming days, including ... read more

"Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!" So runs the socialist truism taken from James Oppenheim's poem.

Employment and sustenance may be vital human rights, but so are culture, art and beauty. The people of Teesside today received the biggest bunch of roses in the world -- at a time when their bread is in shorter supply than ever.

Temenos is the world's biggest public ... read more

The New Statesman is working with the BFI Southbank to offer an exclusive screening of Danis Tanovic's 2001 film No Man's Land, set in Bosnia during the war there in the early 1990s. The film will be followed by a panel discussion on the topic "How the media influence conflicts", using Bosnia as a case study.

Saturday 13 February, BFI Southbank, London SE1

No Man's Land will be shown at 12.45pm, ... read more

As we reported at the time, Maurice Hindle's previously unpublished interview with John Lennon, which appeared in the Christmas issue of the New Statesman, attracted a good deal of media attention -- not least in the Guardian, where Maev Kennedy concentrated on Lennon's remarks about a letter critical of him that had appeared in Tariq Ali's far-left journal Black Dwarf. (Lennon had railed against the revolutionary posturing of ... read more