Cactus Kate is unwell.

UPDATE:
She is feeling better.

Mark pointed me to a lively interview here by Robert Birnbaum with Anthony Lane, the New Yorker film critic. Excellent stuff, but for this:

RB: (laughs) Whose wonderful quote was it about throwing a book across the room?
AL: Oh yes. Something like, “This book should not be set aside lightly but hurled across the room with great force.”
RB: Who said it? Dorothy Parker?
AL: It may have been Thurber. Though it sounds more like her, doesn’t it? But it isn’t her. Most of the things we think are funny turn out not to be her.

It so was her. If Anthony Lane of all people doesn’t know his Parker, we are all doomed.

Fun fact: she said it of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged.

Ms. Brown and Mr. Friedman — who of course were thrilled to have a child, like all the later-in-life parents interviewed for this article — were also determined not to let Harrison “take control of the house,” Ms. Brown said. They went ahead with putting in flat-front lacquered maple cabinets in the kitchen, even though they soon had to watch a professional babyproofer drill 300 holes in them for safety latches. (Ms. Brown still cringes.) They put up silk Shantung draperies in Harrison’s bedroom, knowing that they might well end up stained, as they soon did — with yogurt. And they held onto the molded-wood chairs, which were not an easy transition from the highchair. “They have a very sleek bottom,” Ms. Brown explained. “He slides off it.”

The full article is here. No sympathy.

No, it’s not Owen Glenn (see here for a great Cactus Kate post on what he’s really like – he sounds like fun) or Mike Williams. It’s Kirstie Kirk, wife of English idiot Maurice Kirk who last weekend ditched his Piper Cub in the Caribbean, thus ending his attempt to fly round the world in it. A Piper Cub is pretty small, as you can see here – in World War II it was a spotter plane.

And the quote? When she was told that he had discharged himself after being treated for head and neck injuries, Mrs Kirk said: “He usually does.”

As seen on Tim Blair’s blog. The Noel Pearson he quotes as saying, “One of my misgivings about the apology has been my belief that nothing good will come from viewing ourselves, and making our case on the basis of our status, as victims,” is an Aboriginal lawyer and land rights activist from the Cape York peninsula in northern Queensland. Here’s Pearson’s full article in the Australian on the apology (video of Rudd delivering it here) – you could call it a mixed review – in which he compares the positions of John Howard and Kevin Rudd: “Which is more sincere: to say ‘we will not apologise to the Stolen Generations and we won’t pay compensation’ or ‘we will apologise but we won’t pay compensation’?” It’s a fascinating read from this side of the Tasman.

The righties claim there never was any stolen generation; the lefties think that a form of words will do instead of cash. As in, “Look, we’re a bit sorry, mate, but not that sorry.” As Nino Culotta said, they’re a weird mob.

This is terrible news. There won’t be anyone left in Parliament to even mildly fancy.

If only all rich businesspeople were as pleasant as Liz Calder. The world would be a happy place, instead of one filled with boy-wizard apprentices. Calder’s reputation as a publisher is without equal. Not only did she launch the Harry Potter series in 1997 (after becoming co-founder of Bloomsbury in 1986), she also launched the careers of Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje, Julian Barnes and Anita Brookner. She was the first UK publisher to offer John Irving serious support and has also helped to nurture writers as diverse as John Berger, Angela Carter, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Russell Hoban, Anne Michaels, Brian Moore, Ahdaf Soueif, Rupert Thomson, Joanna Trollope and Jeanette Winterson. Now semi-retired, Calder has not given up her love of books. She co-founded the much praised Festa Literária Internacional de Parati in Brazil with her husband, children’s author and editor Louis Baum. Calder was in New Zealand recently to celebrate her 70th birthday with family members and to take part in a British Council event. NZBC caught up with book publishing’s far friendlier equivalent of Minerva McGonagall for a virtual caipirinha, to wish her happy birthday and ask whether books have any kind of future. Read on…

I’ve been reading and enjoying Michael King’s The Penguin History of New Zealand for some time. And about time, too—I’ve had the book for years but it didn’t quite make it to the top of my reading pile until last November. It contains much that is thought-provoking, and (to me, at least) an unexpectedly high percentage that is entertaining and funny. I particularly enjoyed this passage:

“When I left her I spun out into the North End Road where the street lamps glowed like fire balloons. A 28 bus trundled by as shiny and sweetly red as a toffee apple. Scatterings of Saturday-night shouted and screamed in random decibels that spiralled into the darkness above the illuminations of Ryman, Fish and Chips, and Cancer Research UK. Brightness pervaded the North End Road all the way to the night lights in Waitrose. At the roundabout I crossed to the Fulham Road which was awash with buses, cars, taxis, litter and louts of all classes. Turned into Barclay Road at Domino’s Pizza and made my way to the west side of Eel Brook Common, Basuto Road and home, descending through levels of unlight and quiet to ordinary reality where I was uncertain of her kiss that still lingered on my tongue.’” Russell Hoban, My Tango With Barbara Strozzi, Chapter One: ‘Phil Ockermann’, page 27 (published by Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007)

Happy 83rd birthday, Russell Hoban: Monday, 4 February 2008.