Susan Sontag, photographed by Peter Hujar By all accounts, Susan Sontag found being alone intolerable. In Sigrid Nunez’s 2011 memoir, Sempre Susan, Sontag didn’t even want to drink her morning coffee or read the newspaper without someone else around. When she was alone and unoccupied by books, she tells Nunez, her “mind went blank” like “static on the screen when a channel stops broadcasting.” Without others to respond to her ideas, or a book to provoke them, the ideas vanished. Sontag herself substantiates Nunez’s impression in the second volume of her journals, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh. The tension visible here between the demands (and solace) of relationships and the appeal (and terror) of solitude may be a basic human circumstance. But women, in ... Continue reading →

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By Annika Breidthardt BERLIN | Thu May 24, 2012 9:02am EDT BERLIN (Reuters) - German business sentiment collapsed in May and the manufacturing sector shrank as turmoil in the euro zone unsettled firms, threatening to end the immunity of Europe's largest economy to the troubles surrounding it. Germany's "Teflon economy" has so far avoided the fate of its European peers thanks to strong exports to other parts of the world and healthy domestic demand, and data confirmed on Thursday it grew 0.5 percent in the first quarter.But its prospects have begun to look less rosy as the euro zone crisis escalates and a potential Greek exit from the single currency is openly discussed."German businesses have woken up to reality: islands of happiness might exist, economic ... Continue reading →

The Fitzgeralds in Hollywood Anne Margaret Daniel Zelda’s sketches of Scott: Recently published and revealing Published: 16 May 2012 A s the New Year’s Eve hangovers began to subside in Manhattan in January 1927, at the end of what F. Scott Fitzgerald had dubbed the Jazz Age, James E. Quirk, editor of Photoplay magazine, sent a letter-length telegram from his office in New York to Fitzgerald in Hollywood. If it couldn’t be delivered to Fitzgerald at United Artists Studios, where he was working on the screenplay of a flapper movie called “Lipstick” (never made), Quirk directed Western Union to send the message on to the Ambassador Hotel, where Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda had ensconced themselves a week or two earlier. Fitzgerald was drawn to ... Continue reading →

By Lauren Young NEW YORK | Tue May 22, 2012 6:33pm EDT NEW YORK May 22 (Reuters) - It's no surprise to anyone that big investors get preferential treatment on Wall Street. Investors expressed disappointment, skepticism and even shock on Tuesday after learning that an analyst at lead underwriter Morgan Stanley cut his Facebook revenue forecasts in the days before the company's initial public offering - information that apparently did not reach small investors before the stock went public and subsequently tumbled.The divide between the research and retail arms of big Wall Street firms has always been deep. A former Morgan Stanley broker described the relationship as being "like Venus and Mars," an allusion to a best-selling book about the inherent differences between men and ... Continue reading →

By Alexandra Hudson BEELITZ, Germany | Tue May 22, 2012 11:33am EDT BEELITZ, Germany (Reuters) - Present a spear of finger-thick white asparagus to a German and watch her eyes light up. Come spring-time each year Germans shed their typically sober attitude towards food to swoon over the freshness, the flavour and the girth of their asparagus.This enthusiasm, fanned by a rising consumer appreciation of local, seasonal food, has transformed whole regions of the former East Germany in recent decades as farmers re-introduce a vegetable once viewed by the Communist authorities as a pretentious, expensive delicacy and a waste of labour and land.Ernst-August Winkelmann grabs a handful of soil at his asparagus farm in Beelitz, 50 km (30 miles) southwest of Berlin, and allows its ... Continue reading →