The Netflix deal means the narrative can be serialized. But there are bigger storytelling challenges inherent to the project. One of the those is that the book doesn’t actually have much dialogue, said Álvaro Santana-Acuña, an assistant professor of sociology at Whitman College and scholar of García Márquez’s work. The dialogue, as well as the plot and the characters’ development, are funneled through the book’s omnipresent narrator. Santana-Acuña added that the beauty of the story is also García Márquez’s use of magical realism, as well as how sensorial the novel is.
“The story contains a lot of smells, sounds and even touch. How do you capture something as simplistic but important to Mr. García Márquez’s work like heat? How do you capture emotions like solitude?” Santana-Acuña said.
“They would kill us… if we ventured to go on shore,” wrote Byron, who attempted one more landing in a longboat before giving up. “[They] set up one of the most hideous yells I had ever heard, pointing at the same time to their spears, and poising in their hands large stones which they took up from the beach.” The British made a go at frantic diplomacy by throwing old bread at the islanders, who refused to touch the stale food but instead waded into the water and tried to swamp the longboat.
Byron backed off and instead set sail towards the larger neighbouring island, but he again failed to anchor along the ringed coral atoll. Meanwhile, natives armed with spears and clubs followed the longboat in the surf, using “threatening gestures to prevent their landing”. Byron only convinced the islanders to back off when he shot a 9lb cannonball over their heads. Less than 20 hours after arriving, Byron sailed away, marking his frustration onto a new map of the world by naming these atolls the ‘Islands of Disappointment’. The map was published following his round-the-world journey, and the moniker has stuck ever since.
For every article celebrating Singapore’s “blossoming art scene”, there is one cutting it down at its root. The latter often points to the fact that, while there are some great art-focused initiatives, such as Arts in Your Neighbourhood, Art Reach, and Silver Art, which focus on bringing the arts to Singaporeans of all ages in different forms, it’s an approach which is oppositional to that of the world’s most artistically renowned cities. In creative hubs such as London and New York, contemporary art has been born in the underground and, eventually, syphoned from the top. “Singapore’s art scene is not organic,” criticised Lorenzo Rudolf, founder and president of Art Stage Singapore in an interview with Southeast Asia Globe. “A successfully sustainable, functioning art scene can only grow from the bottom up. Never in history have you seen an art scene which has been built from the top down functioning.”
We dine out to feel connected, to be cared for, to be heard, or seen. Many of us still want what we used to look forward to on a Friday night, tugging on our parents’ hands while the family snakes through a dining room. Dining out is like navigating a maze of humanity. When we successfully find our way through it, it’s one of the best feelings, and it’s no wonder a wide-eyed girl with a big appetite would aspire to spend her days there.
Seeking to pierce that practiced facade, reporter Joan Biskupic has written a biography called The Chief: The Life and Turbulent Times of Chief Justice John Roberts. It is the fourth biography she has written about a sitting justice, and in some ways, the most enlightening. But she says Roberts was her "toughest subject, start to finish."