- A new survey unfurls what we didn’t know before. Most bloggers write about their personal lives. Keep uncovering those shocking conclusions, Pew!
- Jonathan Ames talks Hammett with NPR: “The Continental Op gives me courage. I try to be like him when I have to face the problems in my life.”
- Is Viacom buying the Onion? I sure hope not. Remember MAD Magazine before it was purchased by Time Warner and what happened to it after William Gaines’ death? (And if you can somehow get your hands on Broderbund’s CD-ROM collection, Totally MAD, which sits permanently on my desk, you can compare issues before and after 1992.) It was fresh, edgy, and unapologetically adolescent. Then it became a hollow shell of its former self and it started to pull its punches. Sadly, I suspect we’ll see something similar with The Onion if the Viacom deal goes through.
- Heidi Benson on the end of A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books.
- The tangerine muumuu burns bright again.
- Kinky Friedman: relationship facilitator?
- Marc Weingarten finds Toby Young’s ballsy self-pimping refreshing.
- Brian Eno’s unofficial albums.
- The downside of alt-weekly chains: the same article running on both sides of the Bay.
- Many have expressed surprise over Daniel Kehlmann’s Measuring the World: a book that is doing extremely well in Germany, with Kehlmann being compared to Proust. They are stunned that Kehlmannn’s book evinces “humor and lightness” and that Germans are capable of either of these two human qualities. German humor is certainly quite odd, but this doesn’t mean it’s nonexistent.
- Varieties of left-handed writing. (via Moleskinerie)
- Ruth Franklin on Black Swan Green. The first part of our long promised Mitchell podcast, which includes a discussion on the correct pronunciation of Nabokov and contemplation on American vs. British sandwiches (along with other heady topics), will leave the building very soon.
Roundup
– July 20, 2006Posted in: Roundup
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Can’t read the whole article but to me the first sentence sounds snide with the “echoless” crap. What the hell does TNYT’s staff think people should use blogs for? I think blogs–by definition–have always been more personal tools than other kinds of websites.
It’s for shit sure that I don’t think newspapers should be used for publishing LIES. I’m from NYC originally; I don’t know what the hell has happened to that paper. I barely recognize it today. Or maybe my memory of the past is a too-rosy faulty one. I don’t know.
When people seemingly slam blogs for being “personal,” it really annoys me. My blog’s personal–DEAL WITH IT, WORLD. And, TNYT, can you hear the lack of an echo coming from my end toward your “news”paper?
The Onion tried to sell itself to Comedy Central (owned by Viacom) back in 2000 and it failed under the owners at the time. They moved to NYC not to take in the pizza and the joys of riding the NYC subway. They moved out here to do business. And while they play close to the chest on their internal dealings, anyone thinking they stopped trying to court Viacom is hopped up on goofballs. The Onion wants to be bought out and has wanted to sell itself for years.