What the world is reading

The results of the recently held Italian elections indicate that Europe has given a thumbs-down to the austerity policies forced on it,Joseph E. Stiglitz says. The European project,as idealistic as it was,was always a top-down endeavour. But it is another matter altogether to encourage technocrats to run countries,seemingly circumventing democratic processes,and foist upon them policies that lead to widespread public misery, Joseph writes. The continents leaders have turned their backs to the fact that without growth,debts too will grow,making austerity an anti-growth strategy,he says.

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

Diary

I became an addict when I was 14. But it wasnt drugs,or booze. I didnt drop out of school or run away from home; in fact I stayed in. When you are addicted to fan fiction,you dont need to leave the house to escape, writes Katharine Arcement,about her tryst with the world of fan-fiction-fiction written by the reader rather than the author. On what draws scores to create an alternative universe based on fiction itself,she comments,If the lure of reading fan fiction is clear,the lure of writing it is less obvious. On the surface,writing fan fiction is pointless: there is no hope of getting paid and very limited glory. So why do people do it? Vera Rozalsky,a prolific writer of Harry Potter fanfic,isnt too sure: The first answer is that I cant rightly say. And I really feel a bit silly about the whole thing … The second answer is that I was faced with the even more daunting task of writing drama based on history … I was still struggling with the notion of dramatic conflict.

HIMAL SOUTHASIAN

A poets letters

Since being Faiz Ahmed Faizs daughter has given me privileged access to the family archives,I have become an accidental archivist,says Salima Hashmi,sharing letters that the Pakistani Marxist poet wrote to his wife Alys while in prison,in the early 1950s. From his jail cell,on 15 August 1952,Faiz wrote to Alys: It is more like spring than summer. The mornings are vaguely cool and disturbing like the first breath of love and the sun in the early hours brings more colour than heat. In the evening the breeze seems to bring the breath of the sea and the skies seem to close not on drab prison walls but on distant palm-fringed beaches … And it is said like all beauty that is within your sight and beyond your grasp like all beauty you know to be an illusion.

THE NEW YORKER

Beauties vs Gonzo girls

Weve come a long way from what Simone de Beauvoir once found in Anglo-European entertainments: In song and story the young man is seen departing adventurously in search of a woman; he slays dragons and giants; she is locked in a tower,a palace,a garden,a cave,she is chained to a rock,a captive,sound asleep: she waits. Have we kissed Sleeping Beauty goodbye at last,as feminists advised us to do not so long ago? Her younger and more energetic rival in todays cultural productions has been working hard to depose her,but archetypes die hard and can find their way back to us in unexpected ways,writes Maria Tatar about female tricksters in popular culture. Sleeping Beauty and Briar Rose,magnetically beautiful and mute,invite riskless voyeurism in both their cinematic and their fictional incarnations. Perhaps this is why the trope of the sleeping woman persists,despite efforts to shut it out, says Maria.