This Week’s Reading, 5.8.12
What the world thought of Danny Boyle’s Olympic ceremony, Jack Kerouac’s sexy correspondence, and Brian Catling at The Royal Albert Hall.
- Leader image: Detail from Zena Assi’s Cities series. Full version here.
- “Because Great Britain has self-confidence, it doesn’t need a monumental Olympics. But for China that was the only imaginable kind…” – Ai Weiwei reviews the London 2012 opening ceremony.
- A US perspective: Was London Olympics Opening Ceremony A ‘Socialist’ Spectacle?
- France in the year 2000, as imagined by illustrators in 1900.
- Sexy letter between Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac.
- One year on from the London riots, ‘Riot City Fallout’ by Michael Keenaghan takes us back.
- A rare Nabokov story about boxing published for first time in English.
- The real Olympics: The Twelfth Man Project – photos of everyday Londoners in their best sporting gear.
- Stewart Lee on Harry Potter.
- How a convicted murderer found his true calling as a jail house reporter and magazine co-founder.
- And finally, Brian Catling‘s mesmerising performance at The Royal Albert Hall in 1993.
Tags: Ai Weiwei, brian catling, Bukowski, Danny Boyle, Harry Potter, Jack Kerouac, London riots, Neal Cassady, Penn, Stewart Lee, Twelfth Man Project, Zena Assi