May | 2014 | ZETEO

Auteur or not

May 30, 2014 by Jennifer Dean

This week I am reading On Filmmaking: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director, a book of collected essays and lectures by Alexander Mackendrick. In the introduction Paul Cronin writes: For Mackendrick, the very word ‘director’ implied being in control of other people’s skills just as much, if not more, than the exercise of one’s own craftsmanship. As he explained, ‘The true role of a director involves more than having practical experience in various technical skills – it means functioning […]

Categories: Jennifer Dean, ZiR • Tags: film

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This book is a record of a pleasure trip – Part 1 of 3

May 29, 2014 by William Eaton

Part 1 of 3 of Mark Twain’s, classic travelogue. This one discusses pilgrims, humor and innocence. Mark Twain’s first book, The Innocents Abroad or, The New Pilgrims’ Progress is one of the best-selling travelogues of all time. Twain’s “record of a pleasure trip shows readers how they would likely see Europe and the East with their own eyes instead of the eyes of those who traveled” before them. Describing, discussing, pontificating, and observing his and fellow pilgrims’ 134–day cruise on the […]

Categories: Tucker Cox, ZiR

Where Men are Mended

May 27, 2014 by William Eaton

In her poem, “The Stones,” Sylvia Plath opens: “This is the city where men are mended.” She was speaking about hospitals, where people are in fact reconstructed. The eerie way in which the poet described the process of healing makes it clear that she is not nearly as well as she would like. Below is the full extent of the poem and Plath’s dark descent. Please click here to hear her read the poem herself. The city in the picture that […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: literature, poetry, Sylvia Plath, women, writing

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Playful children, miniature adults

May 26, 2014 by Alexia Raynal

Childhood as a Modern Invention The Metropolitan Museum of Art is featuring an exhibition of Goya’s four portraits of members of the Altamira family. In walking through the exhibition’s small room last Friday, Goya’s paintings of the children and their accompanying labels reminded me of a book I read last year. In The Erosion of Childhood, Valerie Polakow examines the evolving meaning of childhood through time, using text and imagery to explore its changing value. In her early chapters, Polakow asks: Is childhood itself a social invention or is […]

Categories: Alexia Raynal, ZiR • Tags: art, childhood, children, gender, Goya, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The beginner sees the whole ox

May 25, 2014 by William Eaton

A nice story from the ancient Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu, which will also allow me to call attention to an aspect of know-how and of awareness that interests me particularly. We might call this a non-Eastern idea of connectedness. My adaptation here is based on Jean François Billeter’s French translation of Chuang Tzu’s chapter on “nourishing the life in yourself” and on Burton Watson’s English one: Ting, a cook, was cutting up an ox for the prince Wen-hui. The […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Chuang Tzu, philosophy, Zen

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Financial benefits of feminism

May 23, 2014 by Jennifer Dean

I read an article by Colin Brown in Slate which focused on the financing of film – Fighting Gender Bias with Data. Opening with a reference to Cannes and Jane Campion (the only woman director to get the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the first woman director to serve as the festival’s Jury President) – the picture is quickly painted that women do not get to play the game the same way that men do: “You’d have to say there’s […]

Categories: Jennifer Dean, ZiR • Tags: film, gender, women

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Wildlife and bird songs, trees and eternal fires – Part II of II

May 22, 2014 by William Eaton

Part II reviews Bryson’s writing about conservation and ecology in his travelogue, A Walk in the Woods. Part I discuses Bryson’s masterful use of humor: click here. In a Walk in the Woods, the account of his hike along the Appalachian Trail, Bill Bryson balances his gift for making readers laugh out loud with his concern for the environment. He writes of the population decline in song birds and wildlife in the eastern United States, by 50% at least, […]

Categories: Tucker Cox, ZiR • Tags: Bill Bryson, travel

Welcome to the Spring 2014 Issue

May 21, 2014 by Alexia Raynal

In Zeteo‘s New York home, this year’s spring was delayed by a long, biting winter. Low temperatures forced us to walk through spring, as Joseph Conrad suggested, “with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts.” But earth is finally emerging from under the blankets of hibernation and so too does Zeteo, with a vibrant and warming Spring Issue. Walter Cummins uses S. Lochlain Jain’s critique of the U.S. medical system to explore different narratives about cancer. His personal encounter with malignancy reveals some similarities but also striking differences from Jain’s […]

Categories: Issue Welcomes, Spring 2014 Issue • Tags: James Baldwin

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Cancer and Culpability

May 21, 2014 by Walter Cummins

Malignancy in an Imperfect World By Walter Cummins Click here for PDF version. When the Stanford anthropologist S. Lochlain Jain received a diagnosis of breast cancer in her mid thirties, she did what many educated cancer victims do: she wrote a book, Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us (University of California Press, 2013). In Jain’s case, her work was written after medical intervention resulted in apparent remission, when she could consider the experience in retrospect and examine it in the […]

Categories: Essay, Spring 2014 Issue • Tags: cancer, carcinogens, health, mortality, pharmaceuticals

ZETEO

Zeteo (ζητέω): to challenge, question, dispute, explore the forgotten and ignored

Monthly Archives: May 2014

Auteur or not

This book is a record of a pleasure trip – Part 1 of 3

Where Men are Mended

Playful children, miniature adults

The beginner sees the whole ox

Financial benefits of feminism

Wildlife and bird songs, trees and eternal fires – Part II of II

Welcome to the Spring 2014 Issue

Cancer and Culpability