Books · Observations · Humour

Putnam's cover cites Nabokov's “Pnin” to draw on the success of “Lolita”

On 18 August 1958 Nabokov's "Lolita" was first published in the USA and for the second time in English. The cover of the New York: Putnam's edition bore the legend "by the author of Pnin". What sort of Pnin was that? It

Geography · Maps · Books · Observations · Humour

Map of Britain in a 1961 Soviet book and the wrong placement of Nottinghamshire

The authors of a curious little book, "Atomic Energy in Aviation and Rocket Technology" (1961), seem to be asking us: what, exactly, matters most in a map? Fidelity of scale, beauty of line, the number of dragons and sea monsters in the margins, the power to frighten, or,

Art · Observations · Humour

Elizaveta Likhacheva comments on the controversy over sculptor Urs Fischer's work

Elizaveta Likhacheva has spoken, as usual, pithily and to the point. In the general hullabaloo over Urs Fischer's work one can put a full stop. As for the sculptor himself, his career is in any case on the up, and along that road one may stumble upon deposits

Faith · Art · Humour

Andrea Mantegna, 1480-1490

Andrea Mantegna, 1480-1490. The Virgin and Child with Saints. Beside them stand Joseph, the righteous Elizabeth, in all likelihood with Joachim, and the little John the Baptist, two teeth freshly cut, the only one who has allowed himself to stick his tongue out at the Saviour. That very friend

Art · Observations · Humour

Are You Quite Sure You're an Art Theorist?

A good thought, actually, but I would widen it: in reality no 'anything whatsoever' exists at all, and what we take to be the practices of perceiving this non-existent 'anything whatsoever', that is, our thinking, is likewise hypothetical and is merely a fact of the

NB! · Humour

A Keepsake for the Crush ✔️

Monarchies · Observations · Mores · Humour

Five lots of British royal wedding cake sold by Julien's Auctions in 2018

Selling slices of royal wedding cake is nothing new. Naturally, any guest may ask for a piece of the wedding cake to take home, and many keep this relic, some from mercenary motives, and others, presumably, wishing to bring their nearest and dearest into contact with the sacred body of

Archive · Art · People · Humour

Frida Kahlo in the 1933 press as Diego Rivera's wife and amateur artist

The muralist's wife amuses herself with works of art. Can you imagine that this might have been written about Frida Kahlo? An unexpected mention of Frida in the press of 1933, in the column "Visiting Interesting People", and visiting not her at all, but her husband,

NB! · Archive · Books · Observations · Humour

An insert in the collected works of Stalin asking that the book bearing this personal label be returned should any defect be found in it

An insert in the collected works of Stalin asking that the book bearing this personal label be returned should any defect be found in it. One does not, of course, envy the inspector after whose check a flaw or error turns up in a book by Stalin. Oh, one does

NB! · Observations · Humour

Oh, if only Karl Marx really were nothing more than the name of a luxury brand

Observations · Society · Humour

If we are to speak seriously of the meme "in the USSR bread was bread, the crusts were tasty and the crumb heavenly, that's what Canadian wheat does for you", then the Soviet Union began buying wheat from Western countries as early as 1963, a year that wa

Nature sent a drought, and the government, as luck would have it, chose that very moment for another piece of folly. Instead of wheat they sowed maize and fodder crops, to feed the livestock that had been taken from private households since 1959; the cultivation of the virgin lands faltered;

NB! · Cinema · Mores · Humour

An Entertaining History of Culinary Masterpieces

An entertaining history of culinary masterpieces. The tale of the Kyiv Cake, worthy of Leonid Kanevsky