Reporter | Ye Qing
Edit | Yellow Moon
Every Saturday, the "Culture Weekly" summarizes and presents to you the major events and small events worth knowing in the foreign literary and art circles, publishing circles and bookstore industry in the recent week. This week, we focus on the attack on Salman Rushi, the accelerating warming of the Arctic, the sequel to the "Line of Fire" novel, and the death of Raymond Briggs, author of "The Yeti".
The Arctic is warming at nearly four times faster than elsewhere
Not long ago, "wearing short sleeves in the Arctic" was on the hot search, and in the related video, scientists in the Arctic said that the local temperature was as high as 32.5 degrees Celsius, and some people also put on shorts and short sleeves and played ice volleyball.
Why are the arctic temperatures so high? Jonathan Bamber, a professor of physical geography at the University of Bristol, wrote on The Conversation that the new study shows that since 1979, the Arctic is warming at nearly four times the rate of anywhere else in the world, and the average temperature of the Arctic has risen by nearly 3 degrees Celsius today compared to 1980. If you have no idea of how severe this temperature increase is, consider the rate at which global temperatures are rising: since the Industrial Revolution, the global average temperature has risen by about 1.1 degrees Celsius.
The Arctic is heating up rapidly, and a large part of the problem is sea ice. Sea ice (usually between 1-5 meters thick) forms in the winter and melts in part in the summer, with a snow-covered surface that reflects 85% of the solar radiation. In contrast, seawater without any covering can absorb 90% of solar radiation. So when the Arctic Ocean, where the Arctic is located, is covered with sea ice, it acts like a huge reflective blanket that reduces the absorption of solar radiation. When global warming causes sea ice to melt, the absorption rate of solar radiation in the Arctic Ocean increases, and the sea temperature also rises, which in turn increases the melting rate of sea ice. This constant back-and-forth, the temperature rises, a phenomenon known as the Arctic amplification effect, which is why the Arctic is warming faster than other regions.
What are the hidden dangers behind the accelerated warming of the Arctic? Bambo mentioned two points. One is permafrost. The Arctic region has a large amount of permafrost, which stores carbon dioxide levels that can raise global temperatures by 3 degrees Celsius. As arctic temperatures get hotter, the layers of permafrost that "loosen" in the summer will also get deeper and deeper, releasing more carbon dioxide. The second is the Greenland ice sheet. The Greenland ice sheet, the largest ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere, will raise global sea level by 7.4 meters when completely melted, which will be a fatal blow to many coastal areas. Bambo cautioned that while temperature variations in the Arctic vary, the overall temperature rise is already severe, and once a dangerous number is crossed, it can cause global harm.
The classic crime film "The Line of Fire" published a sequel to the novel
Written and directed by Michael Mann and starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, the classic crime film "The Line of Thieves" tells the story of Los Angeles Detective Inspector Vincent Hanner and bandit Neil Macaulay, and after its release in 1995, it grossed $187 million (about 1.26 billion yuan) worldwide — an R-rated film that's a pretty good result. In addition to the box office success, "Thief of Fire" was well received by industry insiders and audiences for its superb performance and clever arrangement of the story, and to this day, many people still think that the film is Mann's best work and look forward to his sequel.
After a long wait of 27 years, the sequel to "The Thread of Fire" has finally arrived, but not a movie, but a novel. Co-written by Mann and thriller writer Meg Gardiner (the masterpiece "Memory Catcher" and "The Lewd Secret Club"), Heat 2 is both a prequel and a sequel to the film, set on the day after the bloodshed in the 1995 film, but immediately flashes back to 1998, when the protagonist Macaulay was "resurrected from the dead".
The Washington Post's book review article believes that the repeated passage of time, although to a certain extent, makes the image of the character more full, but it disrupts the rhythm and tension of the entire work, and these two are the most praiseworthy places of "The Line of Fire". In the film, Mann spends 170 minutes, bouncing the story like a bullet toward that inevitable and exciting climax; In the book, Mann and Gardena spend 470 pages of ink and ink to let the characters wander around, but at the end of the climax, it is quite frustrating to read. The article pointed out that the difference in the rhythm between the sequel novel and the original film is unforgivable, and the writing is sometimes concise and sometimes complicated, which is not enough to cover up the plot delay, and it is really difficult to call it a qualified sequel.
Raymond Briggs, author of "The Snowman," dies
According to the British "Independent" news, after the penguin Random House confirmed, writer and illustrator Raymond Briggs died on the morning of August 9, local time, at the age of 88. Briggs wrote more than 20 works during his lifetime, the most famous of which was The Snowman, published in 1978, which sold more than 5.5 million copies worldwide.
Briggs was born in London in 1934 to a working-class family to a milkman father and a former maid. At the age of 15, Briggs had shown an amazing talent for painting at grammar school, but he thought the school's education was outdated and quit school despite his parents' objections to study oil painting instead of Wimbledon Art School — although he initially wanted to study cartoon painting, and at the entrance interview, he was told that drawing cartoons did not have any future.
In 1958, Briggs met Mabel George, editor of Bó Lè University Press. With his help, Briggs signed his first book deal to illustrate the fairy tale collection Peter and the Piskies. In the years that followed, Briggs worked as an illustrator, and soon discovered in his work that the text quality of many picture books was not up to par. "Some picture books were so badly written that I knew I could write better," Briggs recalled in a 2004 interview with The Guardian, "so I wrote a story and asked an editorial friend to give me some advice, and he wanted to publish the story." This shows how low the standard was, and a newcomer with no writing experience could publish his first story. ”
In 1966, Briggs won the Kate Greenaway Award, britain's highest award for children's book illustration, for his picture book Briggs Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes. In 1973, Briggs' "Santa Daddy" won the award again, and he became one of britain's most popular children's picture book authors, and the subsequent "Checkeria" and "Snowman" were also well received, which told a tragic story that is not common in children's picture books: the snowman of the boy James Pile came alive at 12 midnight, and they became good friends, but the next day James woke up to find that the new friend had melted, leaving only his hat and scarf on the ground.
"There's no happy ending [in my story]," Briggs said in a 2012 conversation with The Radio Times, "and I create stories that are natural and inevitable." The snowman will melt, my parents will die, the critters will die, and the flowers will always wither. Everything will eventually pass away, there is no particular sad emotion in it, this is real life. ”
"Briggs likes to pretend to be very professional and has a bad temper, but we will remember him with his love and loss," Hilary Delamere, a literary agent at Briggs, recalled in a report in The Guardian. Until the last moment of his life, he remained curious. ”