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Mafra Palace Library in Mafra, Portugal, built in 1771.

The Library: A World History, by James Campbell.
Review by Sarah Bakewell in the Financial Times

In 1338, the library of the Sorbonne in Paris had 1,728 manuscripts in its register, 300 of them marked lost. In 2013, the British Library has almost 100,000 times as many: around 170m items, with 3m more streaming in every year. The explosion of demands made on libraries is dizzying yet some elements remain constant: acquire good stuff, keep it safe, make it findable, and give readers a pleasant environment in which to consult it. Sounds simple.

The Library: A World History puts such creations into long perspective, showing how book technology, readers’ needs and architectural solutions have co-evolved (or, occasionally, been at loggerheads). In medieval European libraries, for example, bound manuscripts were precious and often unwieldy, so they were chained to desks. If you wanted to read a different book, you moved to the desk that went with it. Such a library survives, with collection intact, in the 1452 Biblioteca Malatestiana in Cesena in Italy.

Continue reading in the FT.

From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, doorstop-size trade paper edition from Top Shelf, Php1548 at the recent National Bookstore Cut-Price Sale, Php1935 regular price.

We’d call it the greatest graphic novel in the history of the world, but we haven’t read everything.

We saw the movie adaptation starring Johnny Depp and Ian Holm many years ago and found it quite entertaining. Having read the book, and even in the knowledge that cinematic adaptations require some futzing with the source material, we now feel horrendously cheated. Whatever it was the Hughes Brothers made, it was not From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell.

There are many theories as to the identity of Jack the Ripper, the brutal murderer of at least five women in London in 1888. Suspects have included a member of the British royal family, the author of Alice in Wonderland, and, oddly enough, our national hero Jose Rizal (who was also rumored to be the father of Adolf Hitler). From Hell is based on a particularly fascinating conspiracy theory involving the British royals and the Freemasons.

This is not a simple whodunnit—it does not rely on the unmasking of the killer for its thrills. We already know what is going to happen; it is what we discover along the way that is truly unsettling. From Hell is ambitious, massive, and so densely-layered it demands several re-readings to process its ideas about how ancient history, the Female and Male principles, Masonic rituals and other esoterica are encoded in the architecture and geography of London.

Moore and Campbell have created nothing less than a socio-political history of Victorian London—a dark, filthy place where to be poor and especially a woman was to be in hell—and a prelude to a new century bathed in blood. In some of the novel’s most amazing sequences, the killer has visions of the 20th century, and he recognizes it as his spawn.

Alan Moore’s prose is majestic, his research meticulous, his insights staggering. Eddie Campbell brings it all to life with his gritty, evocative pen-and-ink drawings. This graphic novel is not for the weak of heart or stomach. For sheer ambition, it makes other comics with mythological-historical associations look twee.

Compelling, harrowing, a work of genius, From Hell should be required reading in literature courses.

What is the greatest graphic novel you’ve ever read? Tell us so we can look it up.

P.S. Watchmen isn’t small potatoes, either.

Thanks to Kevin for the link.

Sorry we don’t have a proper picture, but here’s a jar of marbles.

Somewhere, someone is already writing a pitch for an indie movie.

The Strange Sexual Quirk of Filipino Seafarers
by Ryan Jacobs

When Norwegian anthropologist Gunnar Lamvik first began living in Iloilo city, a seafaring haven in the southern Philippines, he sensed he wasn’t getting the richest and most detailed information about the shipping experience from interviews with his neighbors, who were home on two-month vacations from 10 months at sea. To crack the cultural mystery of any total institution, you have to go inside, he reasoned. “If you [want] a feeling of a seafarer’s life, you have to be at sea with them when they are open,” said Lamvik, who now studies how cultural differences affect occupational safety at a Norway-based think-tank called SINTEF. “It’s important to be on board for some time, and build trust. That’s the crucial thing to do.”

Many Filipino sailors make small incisions in their penises and slide tiny plastic or stone balls — the size of M&M’s — underneath the skin in order to enhance sexual pleasure for prostitutes and other women they encounter in port cities, especially in Rio de Janeiro. “This ‘secret weapon of the Filipinos,’ as a second mate phrased it, has therefore obviously something to do,” Lamvik wrote in his thesis, “‘with the fact that ‘the Filipinos are so small, and the Brazilian women are so big’ as another second mate put it.”

Read the article at The Atlantic.

Thanks to Chus for the link.

There’s been a lot of grumbling about how hard it is to get tickets to Cinemalaya—and this is a good thing. The shows are sold-out!

If you don’t buy your tickets well in advance or book seats online, good luck getting into the screenings at Greenbelt. Given the clamor for tickets and the heightened interest in this year’s entries, wouldn’t it be great if the Cinemalaya screenings at Greenbelt, Trinoma, and Alabang Town Center were extended for another week?

Yesterday we didn’t get to Greenbelt till 3pm and all the screenings we wanted to attend were full. Luckily we ran into friends at the coffee shop, merienda turned into a swap meet, and we scored the precious tickets to Amor y Muerte.

Set in the town of Polo, Bulacan in the 16th century, Ces Evangelista’s Amor y Muerte is about the clash of civilizations: the repressive religion of the Spanish colonizers versus the sexual freedom of the indigenous people. Or as Max the French film critic put it: It’s more fun in the Philippines!

The stuck-up colonial regime is represented by Diego (Markki Stroem), a Spanish official. The sexually uninhibited population is represented by Apitong (Adrian Sebastian), a native Tagalog who lives in the forest. Diego is married to a Tagalog woman, Amor (Althea Vega) who used to be Apitong’s lover. Amor is quite voracious, and within hours of Diego’s departure to help quell Lakandula’s rebellion in Manila, she’s throwing off her clothes and jumping under the waterfalls with Apitong.

Suddenly we were seized with nostalgia for the “agribusiness” classics of the 90s: Kangkong, Talong, Itlog, Patikim Ng Pinya, and Kapag Ang Bigas Ay Naging Kanin, May Bumayo Kapag Ang Palay Naging Bigas, May Bumayo. This is a movie in which the culture wars are fought with butts: Diego’s pale Spanish buns against Apitong’s tanned native ass, both of them, uhh, pounding away at the issue.

Apitong would seem to have the advantage because he walks around in a loincloth and carries a very large python. A literal python—among other things he’s an exterminator, specializing in rat infestations. (Every time the word “sawa” was uttered we could not contain our shrieks of laughter.) However, Diego makes up for being fully-dressed by taking off his clothes every ten minutes or so. Markki Stroem’s acting is terrible but no one could take their eyes off him because he’s so naked.

The production design is hilariously slipshod, and the 16th century costumes look like they came from SM five minutes ago. Their “scrolls” have machine-cut edges and plastic rollers and the words are written with chisel-edge marker pens. Someone appears looking like a reject from Huwag Mong Buhayin Ang Bangkay and is asked, “Kumusta na?” Yet, for all its deficiencies, this movie has a daffy vigor that puts many of its high-minded competitors to shame.

Entonces, an peliqulan ito ay naqaqathira nan ulo! Huwaq qaliqtaan!

What the production gets right: Althea Vega looks like the Chinese-Filipino mestiza in this 19th century photo by Francisco Van Camp.

Fox News laid a trap for Reza Aslan, author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. But he came prepared, armored in erudition (“I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament, and fluency in biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades, who also just happens to be a Muslim.”) and calm, and prepared to point out unreason (“I think the fundamental problem here is that you’re assuming that I have some type of faith-based bias in this work that I write.”). He sidestepped the pit, allowing the interviewer to fall deeper and deeper into it.

Upon seeing this clip, we ran out and bought Zealot at National Bookstore. (The hardcover is Php985.) The history of religion is always a fascinating subject.