Year / 2007
Coming Soon to The Bat Segundo Show
Correspondent: In this title essay, you write, “Observation is my weakness.” And in the second essay, while you openly confess to stalking many of the…
Pollitt: Oh, you know! I’m sorry.
Correspondent: Oh, well…
Pollitt: I didn’t mean to interrupt you.
Correspondent: Well, go for it. Go for it. I’ll jump in.
Pollitt: I was just going to say, I was wondering, if I had called that story, instead of calling it “Webstalker,” if I had called it “Googling my Ex-Boyfriend,” would people have been so horrified by it? I really don’t understand this. Maybe you can explain this.
Correspondent: Well…
Pollitt: This is something everybody does. And yet somehow, it’s, you know, I have been called in reviews — maybe she’s insane, why would she reveal such a terrible thing about herself, maybe she needed the money. I mean, I can’t believe it! I thought I was sort of like, well, here we all are and, in fact, in the story — in the story, I have a young friend who introduces me to this word, which I had never heard before. And she was surprised I didn’t have a whole file on my boyfriend, which she had on hers, with a social security number and everything like this. I get the feeling that there are a lot of people that are very suspicious of their mates.
Correspondent: Yeah?
Pollitt: Which I never was. All I did was I sat at my computer and I Googled. And for this, I am being pilloried as if I was a crazy person. I just don’t understand it.
Correspondent: I would think that people are possibly objecting to the fact — they seem to pinpoint precisely, like you guessing the password and wondering what it might be. And hacking someone’s email. Maybe it comes from doing casual Googling, which everybody sort of accepts. But even your friend having the social security number, well there, we get into invasion of privacy issues. So maybe that’s probably the touchy thorn that’s caused…
Pollitt: Well, you know, I hope that that story and the other ones are written in a humorous way. I not only did not manage to get into my boyfriend’s email system. It was really basically a joke. I would be the last person in the world to be figure out how to do that.
[RELATED: In today’s Salon, Rebecca Traister offers a lengthy article about the hostile reception that has greeted Katha Pollitt’s Learning to Drive. (via Bookslut)]
Maybe It Was the Overwhelming Red-Orange Motif That Infuriated Him More Than the Newspaper
Roundup
- I’m not dead. / ‘Ere, he says he’s not dead. / Yes, he is. / I’m not. (via Jeff, who also finds this news quite startling)
- Brief speculation on why Paul Muldoon’s appointment as New Yorker editor received barely a trickle outside of poets. (via Ron Silliman)
- The excellent Western blog Saddlebums reports that the next “big Western release is upon us.” Alas, it’s receiving a limited release.
- It seems a no brainer, but girlie covers are putting some boys off books. Personally, I’d like to see a few “girly” books with macho covers thrown into the marketplace as an experiment. Imagine a Jennifer Weiner book with Vin Diesel and an exploding tower on the cover. Maybe this is what it might take to change some perceptions.
- More court fighting over Winnie the Pooh, with Disney prevailing. (via Persona Non Data)
- How Jane Jacobs became famous for the wrong reasons.
- I’m sorry, New York Magazine, but this is truly an infograph for wussy Park Slopers frightened of dipping more than one toe into the Atlantic. Grow a pair, why don’t you?
- How to fellate Michael Krasny.
- Some interesting thoughts on what blogging now means.
- A few real-life plot twists of famous authors.
- Why not to steal images.
- Length Errol Morris post about two different versions of a Roger Fenton photo. (via Jenny D)
- Lose weight now!
- Josh Getlin reports on what the NYT trade paperbacks list means.
- Roger Ebert has been named the nation’s most influential pundit.
- 14 Down: Propose by newspaper crossword?
- How far would you go for the right book title?
- Last night, I attended a very important meeting and will write about it very soon.
But Petty Opportunism is the Bedrock of Politics!
BBC: “Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has been criticised over a fundraising party at which participants are being urged to donate $9.11. The International Association of Fire Fighters accuses him of exploiting the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks.”