- The sleeping schedule has gone to hell. So here goes.
- Scott McLemee and Peniel E. Joseph discussed Harold Cruse’s The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, which in turn spawned a debate here. Jump in if you feel obliged. (via A Different Stripe)
- Liv Ullmann is taking a leading role for the first time in 38 years.
- So if you’re a newspaper and you’re contemplating this whole “How do I make money in the digital age?” question, a new consortium with Yahoo might yield surprising results — assuming that the good folks at Editor & Publisher aren’t drinking the Kool-Aid here. A Deutsche Bank analyst suggests that this deal could generate positive revenue for newspapers. If this is true, are newspapers dead? Or are the times (and, of course, the format) a-changing?
- When I’m not so busy, remind me to dredge up some experiential data sometime to support the fact that Garth Hallberg is not a nice man and has been known to chow down on leftover human kidneys from time to time.
- Joe Sacco on journalism. (via FLOG)
- To the four people who sent me the article, hoping that I’d get riled up: Nope, ain’t going to link to it. Bigger fish to fry.
- Richard Russo’s reading recommendations create films!
- Audible has launched its first crime serial. The series, entitled The Purloined Podcast, involves the murder of a Web 2.0 company executive by an angry listener who gets a bill for audio files he expected to download for free.
- I haven’t yet seen Ken Burns’s The War, in part because I was extremely bothered by the jingoistic tone of this alleged “regular folks” narrative. It turns out academics had issues with the film too about the inclusive nature of Burns’s story.
- Heaven forfend! Books are too depressing. Middle-school reading lists need to have happier books. Because 14-year-olds simply can’t handle verisimilitude. According to Mary Collins, who is actually an assistant professor of creative writing, Shirley Jackson was “lazy” for writing “The Lottery.” Never mind that this short story is a pitch-perfect example of the use of irony in fiction. Never mind that if you keep pushing the standards about what is offensive further, that it’s a zero sum game. (via The Valve, which has a more measured response to this nonsense than me)
Roundup
– September 27, 2007Posted in: Roundup
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.
Eh, there’s an assistant professor or two at The Valve who doesn’t know about irony either. What gets me about Collins is that she seems never to have heard of Jackson or “The Lottery.”
“The sleeping schedule has gone to hell.”
The longest case of jetlag on record, I presume, new Brooklyn squire?
Nope. Mad crazy deadlines. You’ll find out soon enough.
I haven’t yet seen Ken Burns’s The War, in part because I was extremely bothered by the jingoistic tone of this alleged “regular folks” narrative.
Jingoistic tone? How can you say that if you haven’t watched it?
This is a shame. I think you should watch it. If only for Daniel Inouye.