New on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion: Status Syndrome by Michael Marmot

Health and Social Gradient:
Status Syndrome by Michael Marmot

It’s a generally known fact that poverty makes sick, but in our modern Western world people usually don’t fight for mere survival every day and poverty doesn’t equal penury any longer. In Austria, for instance, the net of social security is so densely-knit that everybody can get health care – unless for one reason or another, a person prefers to go underground and therefore doesn’t appear in the system. Nonetheless, data show that those with by comparison fewer material resources, less high education and lower standing have poorer health than those who are better off in these aspects. In his book The Status Syndrome. How Your Place on the Social Gradient Directly Affects Your Health first published in 2004 epidemiologist and public health expert Michael Marmot summarises the results of over thirty years of research and draws his conclusions with regard to what is needed to close the health gap.

Read more » (external link to Lagraziana’s Kalliopeion)

New on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion: The Novels of Ōe Kenzaburō by Yasuko Claremont

An Author’s Fictionalised Experiences:
The Novels of Ōe Kenzaburō by Yasuko Claremont

All his life Gustave Flaubert claimed that only the story counted and that its author should disappear without trace behind it, but however passionately a writer may assure that her or his work has nothing whatsoever to do with her or his life, such complete objectivity is an illusion. It’s impossible to achieve because nobody’s soul is an empty slate. Every word that a person jots down, be it on the spur of the moment or after long thought, be it in fiction or non-fiction, inevitably mirrors past experiences, education and views. To truly understand a literary work it can therefore be helpful to know the biography of its author, notably when the writings are complex or full of symbolism. In her critical study The Novels of Ōe Kenzaburō Yasuko Claremont from the University of Sydney analyses the literary oeuvre that the recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize in literature produced between 1957 through 2006 and links it with important events in the Japanese author’s private life beginning in his childhood. 

Read more » (external link to Lagraziana's Kalliopeion)

New on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion: The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee

A History of the Book Trade:
The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee 

However much we love reading, we seldom think about the book trade in general or about bookshops in particular. We take both for granted until something unexpected happens: the one-man bookshop around the corner that has been there ever since you can think closes because sales have constantly gone down and costs up; a small local publishing house files bankruptcy because it can no longer compete with transnational media companies swamping the market with cheap books; the middle-aged writer whose career you’ve been following with interest and something bordering on awe for many years sells hot dogs in the street because literary magazines don’t pay for short stories and revenues from her books are low thanks to pirated copies multiplying like rabbits on the internet. But none of this is new. The book trade has always been tough for everybody involved as shows The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee.

Read more » (external link to Lagraziana's Kalliopeion)

New on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion: Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict

The Variety of Standards of Human Behaviour:
Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict

Confronted with other cultures or just life-styles we all tend to be rather judgemental classifying the one as primitive, the other as aggressive, yet another (usually our own) as civilised, and so forth. Moreover, we use to think in the categories of good and evil like we who were born into an environment marked by Christian-European customs and values have been taught from early childhood. However, what seems perfectly normal behaviour to us may look completely absurd or even immoral in the eyes of a person socialised in a different culture... and vice versa. For many centuries Westerners – almost as a rule – looked down on other cultures. Not even scientists exploring all corners of the world were free of this arrogance. It is thanks to anthropologists like Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) and her likes that today we seek a wider and less biased picture. In her 1934 book Patterns of Culture she brought the then relatively new approach to the attention of the public.

Read more » (external link to Lagraziana's Kalliopeion)

New on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion: Bombay Anna by Susan Morgan

Nobody will deny that Anna Harriette Leonowens (1831-1915) was an impressive woman who led an extraordinary life for a woman in the Victorian Age. Nonetheless, nobody would still remember her, hadn’t her memoirs gotten into the hands of a Presbyterian missionary called Margaret Landon who wrote the biography of the English governess at the Royal Court of Siam in the 1860s. Anna and the King of Siam (»»» read my review on Edith’s Miscellany) quickly became a best-seller in 1944 and has been adapted for the stage as well as for the screen many times since. But how much of this story is true? In her biography Bombay Anna released in 2008 American scholar Susan Morgan ventures at telling The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of The King and I Governess.

Read more (external link) »