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)]
Magic Hours by Tom Bissell: This marvelous collection of essays chronicles everything from film shoots to novelists rescued from oblivion. (The essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, with its portrait of raucous factions, unexpectedly reveals how soft today's literary world has become.) But if you peer between the cracks of these smart pieces, you may very well see how cultural lives are formed from the most unexpected life choices. And as we follow Bissell's development as a writer over the years, that goes for Bissell as well. (
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway: Harkaway's latest novel greatly improves on his previous book, The Gone-Away World, which I'm already on record as praising. Angelmaker adopts genre elements without ever feeling like a genre book, and it leads me to believe that Harkaway is well on his way to a narrative grace close to China Miéville's. Yet inexplicably this very fun book, which includes an eightysomething badass named Edie Banister, a mysterious mechanical object that may destroy the world, farcical scenarios involving lawyers and the police, and some unexpectedly moving moments about fatherhood, doesn't appear to be getting much attention in American newspapers. Nothing from the snobs at The New York Times Book Review, nothing from The Washington Post. And since I can't get Harkaway on Bat Segundo, I hope this Jump Up and Down mention gets you hopping as well.
The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel: Unless you're really pressed for time, forget Jonah Lehrer. If you want to understand creativity and its relationship to neuroscience, then the bowtie-wearing Nobel laureate is your man. In addition to being a physically beautiful book (you will drool over many of the paintings), there are helpful overviews on optical illusions, science, biographical backgrounds, and many vital figures from the Vienna Secession. Kandel's enthusiasm (and his call for greater unity between the humanities and science) is contagious.