Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Just so you don't miss it ...
... here's a link from Rus Bowden that sadly adds to the subject of literary fakery: The Gazebo: Karen's Pub: Plagiarism.
A pair of lists ...
Maxine at Petrona links to American Book Review's 100 Best First Lines from Novels. Some good choices here and some maybe not so good. The most notable absence is the opening line of Anthony Burgess's Earthly Powers:
It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.
Maxine also has a post about 10 books to read while at school. She gives her list, which has inspired me to give mine -- just 10 off the top of my head that I remember liking during my own school days (random order):
The Black Arrow, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Le grand Meaulnes, by Alain-Fournier
The Moon and Sixpence, by W. Somerset Maugham
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
The Three Musketeers, by Alenadre Dumas
Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton
Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe
Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope
The Sketch Book, by Washington Irving
Keats's poems
It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.
Maxine also has a post about 10 books to read while at school. She gives her list, which has inspired me to give mine -- just 10 off the top of my head that I remember liking during my own school days (random order):
The Black Arrow, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Le grand Meaulnes, by Alain-Fournier
The Moon and Sixpence, by W. Somerset Maugham
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
The Three Musketeers, by Alenadre Dumas
Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton
Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe
Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope
The Sketch Book, by Washington Irving
Keats's poems
Can publishing clean up its act?
Pertinent observations at Booksquare. (Hat tip, Maxine at Petrona.)
Surviving your parents ...
Novelist Linn Ullmann, daughter of actress Liv Ullmann and director Ingmar Bergman, has certainly done that: Whose life is it anyway?
The sting of fakery ...
Dave Lull sends along a link to Sherman Alexie's comments in Time on Nasdijj: When the Story Stolen Is Your Own.
An Inquirer trifecta ...
... of sorts. Book critic Carlin Romano, who is also critic-at-large for the Chronicle of Higher Education (in which role he was a finalist last year for a Pulitzer in criticism), takes a look at that dubious aphorist, E.M. Cioran.
Speaking of Inquirer columnists ...
... economics columnist Andrew Cassel brings uncommonly good common sense to the subject of Big Oil's big profits. If newspapers were filled with pieces like this, they wouldn't be in trouble at all.
Preemptive strike ...
Inquirer columnist John Grogan, author of the top-selling Marley & Me, fesses up that he may have exaggerated the late Marley's faults.
Monday, January 30, 2006
In this corner ...
... Amazon.com. And in this corner, your local bookstore. Richard Charkin does some explaining. (Hat tip, Maxine at Petrona.)
Since you ask ...
... I will try to answer.
Bonnie Calhoun, commenting on my post yesterday about why I do not subscribe to intelligent design theory, asks: "If you believe God made everything, how can you not believe in intelligent design?"
Well, first, I think it's important to note that its theorists do not advance ID as an argument for the existence of God. Theoretically, the designer could be super-intelligent aliens from a far galaxy who visited Earth eons ago.
More to the point, though, is the leap in logic that ID proposes. To demonstrate that a given biological entity -- whether cell, flagellum, or eye -- could not come to be incrementally, as posited by Darwin, is one thing. To say that said entity must therefore have been intelligently designed is another. Perhaps there is another, perfectly natural explanation besides the Darwinian one that would work better. In other words, it seems to me something of a stretch to say that the only two possibilities are natural selection and intelligent design.
Atheist Richard Dawkins and theist Michael Behe both believe that biology, in Dawkins's words, is "the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." Only Dawkins thinks the appearance is deceiving. On the face of it, I think Behe has the edge here, since Dawkins is left having to prove a negative, well-known as a fool's errand. Moreover, appearance counts for a lot. Nothing real doesn't in some way appear to be and every appearance is to some extent real. And indeed, both Dawkins and Behe should be engaged in the study of those complicated things, rather than debating their ontology.
But I digress. The reason I do not subscribe to ID theory is simply that I find it logically flawed.
I also think that the notion of God implicit in ID is inadequate. Hence, my quip about the Everlasting Edison. I think that God has more in common with poets and composers than with engineers and mechanics. Moreover, God did not create the world so many billions of years ago. He is creating it right now. His act of creation is an eternal act. Finally, the Living God that I and millions more believe in is not a grand abstract idea or the conclusion of a syllogism. He is a Presence. As the Psalmist put it, "O taste and see how the good the Lord is."
Bonnie Calhoun, commenting on my post yesterday about why I do not subscribe to intelligent design theory, asks: "If you believe God made everything, how can you not believe in intelligent design?"
Well, first, I think it's important to note that its theorists do not advance ID as an argument for the existence of God. Theoretically, the designer could be super-intelligent aliens from a far galaxy who visited Earth eons ago.
More to the point, though, is the leap in logic that ID proposes. To demonstrate that a given biological entity -- whether cell, flagellum, or eye -- could not come to be incrementally, as posited by Darwin, is one thing. To say that said entity must therefore have been intelligently designed is another. Perhaps there is another, perfectly natural explanation besides the Darwinian one that would work better. In other words, it seems to me something of a stretch to say that the only two possibilities are natural selection and intelligent design.
Atheist Richard Dawkins and theist Michael Behe both believe that biology, in Dawkins's words, is "the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." Only Dawkins thinks the appearance is deceiving. On the face of it, I think Behe has the edge here, since Dawkins is left having to prove a negative, well-known as a fool's errand. Moreover, appearance counts for a lot. Nothing real doesn't in some way appear to be and every appearance is to some extent real. And indeed, both Dawkins and Behe should be engaged in the study of those complicated things, rather than debating their ontology.
But I digress. The reason I do not subscribe to ID theory is simply that I find it logically flawed.
I also think that the notion of God implicit in ID is inadequate. Hence, my quip about the Everlasting Edison. I think that God has more in common with poets and composers than with engineers and mechanics. Moreover, God did not create the world so many billions of years ago. He is creating it right now. His act of creation is an eternal act. Finally, the Living God that I and millions more believe in is not a grand abstract idea or the conclusion of a syllogism. He is a Presence. As the Psalmist put it, "O taste and see how the good the Lord is."
He's back ....
"Given how T.S. Eliot's high intellectual pitch became anathema for many poets in the 1960s and beyond, it's fascinating how palpably his ghost ... wanders through these pages." Alan M. Jalon's review of Legitimate Dangers : American Poets of the New Century . (Hat tip -- who else? -- Dave Lull.)
Sunday, January 29, 2006
As its film debut nears ...
... Martin Rowson takes a distinctly Shandean look at Tristram Shandy: Mission impossible.
Come to order, class ...
Louise Doughty's latest novel-writing column is up: Week four: Your greatest asset is passion.
Truth or dare ...
... or what have you. Augusten Burroughs is another given to embellishing his life down.
Speaking of Petrona ...
... Maxine links to and comments on a very worthwhile piece on what we might call WebEtiquette (or the lack of same).
Lest there be any misunderstanding ...
... I think I should explain why I do not subscribe to so-called intelligent design theory, and something Michael Behe said -- not in the interview I linked to yesterday, but in the one I had with him eight years ago -- provides the perfect opportunity. Here is a quote from the article I wrote:
Behe emphasizes that the notion of design doesn't necessarily imply that God intervened at key moments in the natural process. ``Such changes could have been programmed from the beginning, becoming operative when all the factors were ready to work in coordination. ''
To my way of thinking, science has to do precisely with finding out how such changes came about based on the evidence of their having come about. I think Behe's irreducible complexity argument has some merit (the proffered refutations of it that I have read have all been theoretical, not evidential; this is a problem with much writing about evolution -- it often tends to serve up only speculation about how something could have happened, without providing any evidence that it did in fact happen that way).
Nevertheless, even granting -- if only for the sake of argument -- that Behe's position has merit, his inference that intelligent design is the only possible explanation of irreducible complexity seems unwarranted. Even if you could conclusively demonstrate that such complexity could not have come about "by numerous, successive, slight modifications" -- to use Darwin's own phrase -- you would still have to consider that there might be other perfectly natural ways for it to have happened. In other words, if it didn't happen the way Darwin said it would, it necessarily follows that it must have happened some other way, but it does not necessarily follow that it was made to happen that way by an intelligent designer.
I suspect that in time natural selection will be shown to be one pf several key factors in evolution and I have recommended that people take a look at such books as Evolution in Four Dimensions : Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, by Eva Jablonka and Marion C. Lamb or Lamarck's Signature : How Retrogenes Are Changing Darwin's Natural Selection Paradigm by Edward Steele, Robyn A. Lindley, and Robert V. Blanden.
The great biologist of the 19th century wasn't Darwin, who may have devised a grand, grand theory, but whose contribution to practical biology seems to have been negligible. The really great 19th-century biologist was Gregor Mendel, who spent his time patiently and persistently gathering evidence and drawing sound inferences therefrom.
Two final notes: First, thanks to Maxine for the kind words at Petrona.
And second, I should point that, while I do not subscribe to ID theory, as a practicing Catholic I do subscribe to the Nicene Creed, which affirms God as "the maker of all things visible and invisible." That said, I still don't see the Ground of All Being as a kind of Everlasting Edison.
Behe emphasizes that the notion of design doesn't necessarily imply that God intervened at key moments in the natural process. ``Such changes could have been programmed from the beginning, becoming operative when all the factors were ready to work in coordination. ''
To my way of thinking, science has to do precisely with finding out how such changes came about based on the evidence of their having come about. I think Behe's irreducible complexity argument has some merit (the proffered refutations of it that I have read have all been theoretical, not evidential; this is a problem with much writing about evolution -- it often tends to serve up only speculation about how something could have happened, without providing any evidence that it did in fact happen that way).
Nevertheless, even granting -- if only for the sake of argument -- that Behe's position has merit, his inference that intelligent design is the only possible explanation of irreducible complexity seems unwarranted. Even if you could conclusively demonstrate that such complexity could not have come about "by numerous, successive, slight modifications" -- to use Darwin's own phrase -- you would still have to consider that there might be other perfectly natural ways for it to have happened. In other words, if it didn't happen the way Darwin said it would, it necessarily follows that it must have happened some other way, but it does not necessarily follow that it was made to happen that way by an intelligent designer.
I suspect that in time natural selection will be shown to be one pf several key factors in evolution and I have recommended that people take a look at such books as Evolution in Four Dimensions : Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, by Eva Jablonka and Marion C. Lamb or Lamarck's Signature : How Retrogenes Are Changing Darwin's Natural Selection Paradigm by Edward Steele, Robyn A. Lindley, and Robert V. Blanden.
The great biologist of the 19th century wasn't Darwin, who may have devised a grand, grand theory, but whose contribution to practical biology seems to have been negligible. The really great 19th-century biologist was Gregor Mendel, who spent his time patiently and persistently gathering evidence and drawing sound inferences therefrom.
Two final notes: First, thanks to Maxine for the kind words at Petrona.
And second, I should point that, while I do not subscribe to ID theory, as a practicing Catholic I do subscribe to the Nicene Creed, which affirms God as "the maker of all things visible and invisible." That said, I still don't see the Ground of All Being as a kind of Everlasting Edison.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Truth and consequences ...
Dave Lull sends along a piece in the Columbia Journalism Review: The Secret Life of a Letter to the Editor . Am I alone in finding the outcome disturbing?
Not so fanatical after all ...
My daily tipster, Dave Lull, passes along this interview with Michael Behe, star witness on behalf of ID during the Dover school board trial. I interviewed Behe in 1998 and found him to be a perfectly reasonable fellow. I think that comes through in this interview as well. Here's a characteristic quote:
If science came up with a natural explanation for irreducible complexity, or one that fit with random mutation and natural selection, what would that do to ID?
In my mind, that would prove it wrong. At that point I could happily join some other Catholic scientists and believe that God set up the universe to unfold the way it does through apparently material means. If you propose a scientific argument, which is what ID is, it's always possible for it to be wrong. C'est la vie.
If science came up with a natural explanation for irreducible complexity, or one that fit with random mutation and natural selection, what would that do to ID?
In my mind, that would prove it wrong. At that point I could happily join some other Catholic scientists and believe that God set up the universe to unfold the way it does through apparently material means. If you propose a scientific argument, which is what ID is, it's always possible for it to be wrong. C'est la vie.
Experience trumps all theory ...
I say that because I have had a couple of expereicences sufficiently strange to convince me that Hamlet was right and that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in any philosophy. I am likewise convinced that the decisive factor in any religious outlook is some experience of transcendence. So Naomi Wolf's Damascene Moment does not exactly surprise me.
It's not a blog ...
... but CliveJames.com is certainly worth a visit -- and a place among your favorites. Brendan Bernhard talks about it with James in the New York Sun: Interfacing with Clive James. (Via Arts & Letters Daily.)
Friday, January 27, 2006
A sterling suggestion ...
... from Steve Clackson at Sand Storm: Talk up your blog favorites. Actually, Steve is on a roll, linking to Falling out of print is a book's natural fate at Boing Boing, and alerting us to the Grumpy Old Bookman in paperback.
Postscript: In 1997, I wrote a piece about how the internet was revolutionizing the used-book business. In it I cited a figure from Interloc -- the predecessor, I believe, of Alibris -- indicating that 99 percent of all the books in the world are out of print.
That says something, obviously, about the economics of publishing. But the publishing industry is to a large extent its own worst enemy -- as is the newspaper industry. The preoccupation of both with the legendary bottom line reminds one of nothing so much as a couple of bespectacled wimps trying to show the world how tough they are. "We're hard-nosed business guys, out to make a profit just like everybody else," they growl to all and sundry. Well, I have news for them:They're not in the business of making money. I read something once -- I don't remember what or where -- to the effect that money is only a by-product of business. It's what comes of manufacturing a product or providing a service that people want badly enough to pay for in sufficient quantity to make said manufacture or production a going venture. If the publishing industry and the newspaper business devoted their energies to putting out first-class products, they'd have plenty of customers and would make plenty of money.
Postscript: In 1997, I wrote a piece about how the internet was revolutionizing the used-book business. In it I cited a figure from Interloc -- the predecessor, I believe, of Alibris -- indicating that 99 percent of all the books in the world are out of print.
That says something, obviously, about the economics of publishing. But the publishing industry is to a large extent its own worst enemy -- as is the newspaper industry. The preoccupation of both with the legendary bottom line reminds one of nothing so much as a couple of bespectacled wimps trying to show the world how tough they are. "We're hard-nosed business guys, out to make a profit just like everybody else," they growl to all and sundry. Well, I have news for them:They're not in the business of making money. I read something once -- I don't remember what or where -- to the effect that money is only a by-product of business. It's what comes of manufacturing a product or providing a service that people want badly enough to pay for in sufficient quantity to make said manufacture or production a going venture. If the publishing industry and the newspaper business devoted their energies to putting out first-class products, they'd have plenty of customers and would make plenty of money.
Biblical romance ...
Bradford Pilcher weighs in the balance recent novelized versions of Biblical history and finds them wanting: Princess Diaries. (Via Brandywine Books.)
Take two dactyls ...
... and call me in the morning: Is poetry the new Prozac? I agree with Eliot, who wrote, in Tradition and the Individual Talent, that "poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things."
"Truth is the conformity ...
... of the mind to reality." Thus spake Thomas Aquinas. Arnold Kling expatiates.
Literary dishonesty ...
... is much in the news. Valuable perspective is provided by Scott McLemee: Stolen Words. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Let us now praise ...
... someone truly great -- Mozart, born on this date 250 years ago. Arts & Letter Daily has a pretty comprehensive roundup of appreciation, but I found Bill Kristol's especially interesting.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
A borrower and a lender ...
... you may be. Dave Lull brings to our attention this piece about Christopher Logue and notes that The Page has extracted from it this quote:
"Without plagiarism, there would be no literature. I'm a complete rewrite man, like our Willy Shakespeare."
Well, back then -- and for a good long time thereafter -- little importance was attached to originality. Bach borrowed liberally from other composers (of course, he invariably improved on them).
Dave also sends along this link to Eliot's essay on Philip Massinger.
"Without plagiarism, there would be no literature. I'm a complete rewrite man, like our Willy Shakespeare."
Well, back then -- and for a good long time thereafter -- little importance was attached to originality. Bach borrowed liberally from other composers (of course, he invariably improved on them).
Dave also sends along this link to Eliot's essay on Philip Massinger.
The art of recounting a life ...
Hilary Spurling, this year's overall Whitbread winner, talks about what it takes to write a biography.
Poetry and policy ...
Peter Stothard looks at a couple poems -- rather good ones, actually -- commissioned by the British government: Going, gone.
Forget Andre ...
... how about dinner with Proust, Joyce, Picasso, Stravinsky and Diaghilev? The dinner party of a lifetime.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
If anyone doubts ...
... the utility of blogs, they should look at the comments appended to yesterday's post about the dwindling number of book sections.
I was heartened by this comment from Booksquare, for instance, about the need for book review sections to reach the widest possible audience: "The lack of serious coverage of genre fiction, for example, creates a sense of exclusion." There is a hell of lot less phoniness in genre fiction, I find.
I was dismayed to learn fro Jaycurrie that the problem is not confined to this country. But what he says about reviews is right on the money: "There is a certain craft to reviewing which is divorced from expertise. To write a readable 700 word review is tough. "
Reviewers with "credentials" can often be disappointing. What I want in a reviewer is an enthusastic reader who can write those difficult-to-do 700-word readable reviews. And I want to know about the book under consideration; I don't want to be reminded about how smart or well-read the reviewer is. Over the past few years, I have managed to gather a small repertory company of reliable rveiwers. And if I had more space and more money, I would enlarge that company.
Maxine's review reading habits pretty much explains how I got into this business in the first place. And Arthur's observation is precisely what has struck me: A lot of people, obviously, are "passionately concerned about not only books, but how they get reviewed and otherwise 'covered' by the various media." (I also appreciate his having noticed the "wild garden of plants both familiar and exotic" that is The Inquirer's book pages. If every paper in the country did something similar a lot more books would get noticed that deserve to be.)
Will newspaper managers hear it and get it? We shall see.
What ought to be obvious is the contribution blogging can make to helping solve the problem.
I was heartened by this comment from Booksquare, for instance, about the need for book review sections to reach the widest possible audience: "The lack of serious coverage of genre fiction, for example, creates a sense of exclusion." There is a hell of lot less phoniness in genre fiction, I find.
I was dismayed to learn fro Jaycurrie that the problem is not confined to this country. But what he says about reviews is right on the money: "There is a certain craft to reviewing which is divorced from expertise. To write a readable 700 word review is tough. "
Reviewers with "credentials" can often be disappointing. What I want in a reviewer is an enthusastic reader who can write those difficult-to-do 700-word readable reviews. And I want to know about the book under consideration; I don't want to be reminded about how smart or well-read the reviewer is. Over the past few years, I have managed to gather a small repertory company of reliable rveiwers. And if I had more space and more money, I would enlarge that company.
Maxine's review reading habits pretty much explains how I got into this business in the first place. And Arthur's observation is precisely what has struck me: A lot of people, obviously, are "passionately concerned about not only books, but how they get reviewed and otherwise 'covered' by the various media." (I also appreciate his having noticed the "wild garden of plants both familiar and exotic" that is The Inquirer's book pages. If every paper in the country did something similar a lot more books would get noticed that deserve to be.)
Will newspaper managers hear it and get it? We shall see.
What ought to be obvious is the contribution blogging can make to helping solve the problem.
Don't forget ...
Lisa Coutant reminds that Ron Hogan and John Scalzi are in Philly tomorrow nigth at 7. Wish I could be there, but I'm going to the orchestra.
Every now and then ...
... you come upon an article that explains something you've been trying to get across better than you ever really could. Such, for me, is Adam Wolfosn's Survival of the Evolution Debate:
"... if the point of Darwinism is to refute the existence of God, as these popularizers tend to claim, then it too would have to be excluded from the science curriculum. The Supreme Court, after all, has ruled that the state must remain neutral between religion and irreligion. In their more heated polemics, Darwin's popularizers paint themselves into this intellectual corner."
"... if the point of Darwinism is to refute the existence of God, as these popularizers tend to claim, then it too would have to be excluded from the science curriculum. The Supreme Court, after all, has ruled that the state must remain neutral between religion and irreligion. In their more heated polemics, Darwin's popularizers paint themselves into this intellectual corner."
Hisses and boos ...
... for John Banville's BBC play Todtnauberg at Splinters, at The Sharp Side, and at This Space. (Hat tip, Dave Lull, who notes in an email that Celan was puzzlingly pronounced throughout as Che-lan and sends this useful link.
More literary fraud ...
The Los Angeles Weekly's Matthew Fleischer reports that Nasdijj, author of Geronimo's Bones (which I ran a very favorable wire review of a couple of years ago), and other books, is not Navajo at all, but rather one Timothy Patrick Barrus -- who boasts a fine Anglo pedigree. Read Navahoax
We stand corrected ...
Email correspondent Larry Faria informs me that the San Diego Union-Tribune Books section is "eight pages, and it's in tabloid form, but it's a separate section, contains reviews, the NYT best
seller list, upcoming book releases, and even lists local locations of book signings. It may not be a GREAT book section, or large enough for some peoples' taste, but it's a real book section."
Sounds like a pretty good section to me and it's nice to know there's more than five such sections. Anybody knows of anymore, please let me know.
seller list, upcoming book releases, and even lists local locations of book signings. It may not be a GREAT book section, or large enough for some peoples' taste, but it's a real book section."
Sounds like a pretty good section to me and it's nice to know there's more than five such sections. Anybody knows of anymore, please let me know.
It isn't just newspapers ...
... being threatened by the internet. According to Eric Raymond, academe is next: Rising From the Stalinist Ashes Like the University of Phoenix. (Via Instapundit.)
Money quote:
The open-source movement wasn't possible when programming required a million-dollar mainframe. Million-dollar mainframes require big capital concentrations, which require lots of managers to run 'em. When the PC and the Internet arrived, computation and communication costs plummeted towards zero. The need for big capital concentrations to support software development almost (though not entirely) vanished. An increase in the relative power of programmers followed as the night the day.
University campuses, school buildings, laboratories—these are academia's equivalent of the million-dollar mainframe. We probably can't disaggregate campuses entirely (time-shares in a cyclotron, anyone?) but to the extent the Internet helps us break apart these institutional lumps and make a more fluid market, the actual human producers will regain power over their craft.
Money quote:
The open-source movement wasn't possible when programming required a million-dollar mainframe. Million-dollar mainframes require big capital concentrations, which require lots of managers to run 'em. When the PC and the Internet arrived, computation and communication costs plummeted towards zero. The need for big capital concentrations to support software development almost (though not entirely) vanished. An increase in the relative power of programmers followed as the night the day.
University campuses, school buildings, laboratories—these are academia's equivalent of the million-dollar mainframe. We probably can't disaggregate campuses entirely (time-shares in a cyclotron, anyone?) but to the extent the Internet helps us break apart these institutional lumps and make a more fluid market, the actual human producers will regain power over their craft.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Pain for profit ...
... aided and abetted by publishers. Michael Prodger is sick of The Pain Game. Me too.
And the winner is ...
Hilary Spurling, whose biography of Matisse has won the overall Whitbread award: 15-year labour of love wins ultimate reward.
And then there were five ...
Apparently, there are now only five stand-alone newspaper book sections in this country. Booksquare offers some pertinent commentary. Naturally, I happen to believe that book coverage offers newspapers the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the internet. I also pretty much agree that "book sections will continue to feel the pain ... But that doesn’t mean that book coverage will die." Here at The Inquirer, despite having no stand-alone section, we continue to review at least as many books as ever. They're just scattered through the paper.
Nevertheless, I have long been of the opinion that the decline in circulation is directly related to the de-emphasis on book coverage (we are not perceived as reviewing as many books as ever). The connection is that book coverage has value for newspapers not by attracting advertising but by attracting people who like to read. Take away what they're interested in and they'll take their eyes elsewhere.
Nevertheless, I have long been of the opinion that the decline in circulation is directly related to the de-emphasis on book coverage (we are not perceived as reviewing as many books as ever). The connection is that book coverage has value for newspapers not by attracting advertising but by attracting people who like to read. Take away what they're interested in and they'll take their eyes elsewhere.
Impaling an author ...
Well, not exactly. Grumpy Old Bookman links to a post highly critical of Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian. Here it is: Thomas's demolition job on The Historian . Thomas says the writing is "more noticeably bad than Dan Brown's writing." That may be true of the writing, but Brown's Dick and Jane style is the least of the problems with The Da Vinci Code. Brown's is, after all, the book that has a character declaring that what makes English such a pure language is the relative paucity in it of words derived from Latin.
Maybe they should use this ...
... as a textbook in journalism school: Kevin at Collected Miscellany on Canoeing with the Cree by Eric Sevareid.
"Bad faith worrying ...
... about real faith." Today's must read is Frank Furedi's The curious rise of anti-religious hysteria. "In previous times, such contempt for people was the trademark of the authoritarian right. In today's 'inclusive' society, it is okay to denigrate sections of the electorate as simpletons if they are still gripped by the power of faith."
A good measure of vincible ignorance figures in this. Take, for instance, Alsion Lurie's commentary on Narnia in the New York Review of Books: The Passion of C.S. Lewis.
Lurie shows how well-informed she is theologically by referring to "the death and rebirth of Christ." Christians call it the Resurrection. Toward the end, she opines: "It is no surprise that conservative Christians admire these books. They teach us to accept authority.... This is, of course, the kind of mindset ... that makes people vote against their own economic and social interests ..." This latter assertion, of course, is based on unacknowledged acceptance of the authority of Thomas Frank and his book What's the Matter With Kansas?
What Lurie's rather pedestrian essay demonstrates is that she hasn't a clue as to what actually takes place in the minds of intelligent and informed believers. She probably doesn't believe that such creatures actually exist.
A good measure of vincible ignorance figures in this. Take, for instance, Alsion Lurie's commentary on Narnia in the New York Review of Books: The Passion of C.S. Lewis.
Lurie shows how well-informed she is theologically by referring to "the death and rebirth of Christ." Christians call it the Resurrection. Toward the end, she opines: "It is no surprise that conservative Christians admire these books. They teach us to accept authority.... This is, of course, the kind of mindset ... that makes people vote against their own economic and social interests ..." This latter assertion, of course, is based on unacknowledged acceptance of the authority of Thomas Frank and his book What's the Matter With Kansas?
What Lurie's rather pedestrian essay demonstrates is that she hasn't a clue as to what actually takes place in the minds of intelligent and informed believers. She probably doesn't believe that such creatures actually exist.
Monday, January 23, 2006
A Da Vinci snag ...
An action being brought against Random House, alleging breach of copyright, in Britain's High Court, could lead to postponement of the film based Dan Brown's novel
Still writing ...
... after all these years. Tim Martin talks to Philly-born author Russell Hoban, author of Riddley Walker, soon to turn 81: Odd, and getting odder.
What's this got to do with books?
A lot, actually. If boys get short-changed at school, it will obviously have an adverse effect on their reading skills. Dr. Helen wonders if Boys are Just "Defective Girls"
The 13th angry man ...
Duane Swierczynski finds more than one crime novelist doing jury duty: Juror #13 . (Hat tip, Bill Peschel.)
Move over, Google ...
Another piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education looks at the Open Content Alliance, which "plans to take carefully selected collections of out-of-copyright books from libraries around the world and turn them into e-books that will be available free to scholars and anyone else who wants to view them, print them, or even download them to their own computers." Read Jeffrey R. Young's Scribes of the Digital Era.
The Smithsonian goes commercial ...
... with (probably) predictable results, as David Glenn reports in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
"We were losing half a million to a million dollars per year out of our trust fund," said Linda St. Thomas, a spokesperson for the Smithsonian Institution. Better, more careful, possibly fewer choices regarding what they published -- and better PR -- might have prevented that, I think.
"We were losing half a million to a million dollars per year out of our trust fund," said Linda St. Thomas, a spokesperson for the Smithsonian Institution. Better, more careful, possibly fewer choices regarding what they published -- and better PR -- might have prevented that, I think.
Check your source ...
A look at the book Steven Spielberg used as the basis for Munich: Spielberg's facts and fiction.
Land ho!
On this date in 1790, Fletcher Christian and his fellow Bounty mutineers landed on Pitcairn's Island.
Let's start the day ...
... with some good news: Turkey reportedly will drop charges against Orhan Pamuk.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
That's it ...
... for blogging tonight. I'm going back to War and Peace. Then, at 9, I'm tuning in Bleak House on PBS.
Zadie vs. Claire ...
... Maxine at Petrona links to an intriguing post at Contemporary Nomad (and ponders trackbacking).
An editor's prerogative ...
I scheduled my review of Anthony Briggs's new translation of War and Peace for next Sunday. That means the review would have be done by Thursday morning at the latest. I could probably meet that deadline. But I'm not going to, because to do so I'd have to read the book faster than I would like. It's not just that it's a very long book (there's 1,358 pages of text in not very large type). More than that, the book has a certain tempo to it. Reading a book just to get it over with never is a good idea and in this case it would seriously spoil the fun. So I'm going to just keep at it at my usual pace and finish it when I do. (I'm not a fast reader and have no desire to be one.) So the review will run on Feb. 5.
Welcome to the blogosphere ...
Bud Parr has responded (as have a few others) to Bob Hoover's column about blogging. (Sorry, Bob. This is the sort of thing that happens in the blogosphere.)
Speaking of which (the blogosphere, that is), thanks to the aforementioned post by Bud Parr, I was led to Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant, which in turn led me to this great post over at Golden Rule Jones, as well as to a blog I didn't know -- Collected Miscellany, which I will now be visiting regularly. That's the fun of blogging. (It's also why this post took me longer to do -- I got sidetracked reading.)
Speaking of which (the blogosphere, that is), thanks to the aforementioned post by Bud Parr, I was led to Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant, which in turn led me to this great post over at Golden Rule Jones, as well as to a blog I didn't know -- Collected Miscellany, which I will now be visiting regularly. That's the fun of blogging. (It's also why this post took me longer to do -- I got sidetracked reading.)
A ringing endorsement ...
... of poetry in general and Keats's poetry in particular from F. Scott Fitzgerald (thanks goes to email correspondent Tony Derago):
Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you… or else it is nothing, an empty journalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations. The Grecian Urn is unbearably beautiful with every syllable as inevitable as the notes in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or it is something you just don't understand. It is what it is because an extraordinary genius passed at that point in history and touched it. I suppose I read it a hundred times. About the tenth time I knew I began to know what it was about, and caught the chime in it and the exquisite inner mechanics. Likewise with the Nightingale which I can never read without tears in my eyes; and The Eve of St. Agnes which is the richest most sensuous in English, not excepting Shakespeare. And finally his three or four great sonnets….
Knowing those things young and granted an ear, one can scarcely ever afterwards be unable to distinguish between gold and dross in what one reads. In themselves those poems are a scale of workmanship for anybody who wants to know about words, their most utter value of evocation, persuasion or charm. For a while after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.
Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you… or else it is nothing, an empty journalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations. The Grecian Urn is unbearably beautiful with every syllable as inevitable as the notes in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or it is something you just don't understand. It is what it is because an extraordinary genius passed at that point in history and touched it. I suppose I read it a hundred times. About the tenth time I knew I began to know what it was about, and caught the chime in it and the exquisite inner mechanics. Likewise with the Nightingale which I can never read without tears in my eyes; and The Eve of St. Agnes which is the richest most sensuous in English, not excepting Shakespeare. And finally his three or four great sonnets….
Knowing those things young and granted an ear, one can scarcely ever afterwards be unable to distinguish between gold and dross in what one reads. In themselves those poems are a scale of workmanship for anybody who wants to know about words, their most utter value of evocation, persuasion or charm. For a while after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.
The hall of mirrors ...
... that is (maybe) post-modernism. Glenn Reynolds links to between a Reich and hard place.
Finally went to see ...
... Brokeback Mountain, about which my friend and colleague Jeff Weinstein wrote a deeply moving column. My wife and I thought the film was pretty good, but not worth a four-star rating. I thought the actors were far better than the material they had to work with. Heath Ledger's performance in particular is an extraordinary demonstration of the actor's art.
That said, the film struck both Debbie and me as maybe too long and definitely too slow. I've argues for years that short stories and novellas make the best films, but this one mounted a powerful rebuttal.
I think the problem may lie with the Annie Proulx story. I've never been able to get into Proulx's stuff myself, and this tale seemed contrived. Take away the gay dimension and you have the same problem you have with a lot of illicit romance tales: It's easy to stay in love with someone you see only from time to time and under favorable circumstances. Things are a good deal different when you share a life with someone day in and day out. Then, if it works out, you come to love the other person, not in spite of their foibles, but actually because of them (as well as for a good many other reasons).
The film has some great moments, notably when Jack tells off his overbearing father-in-law and the wonderful scene toward the end between Ennis and his daughter. But I thought having Jack looking surreptiously at Ennis in the rearview mirror of his pickup right at the beginning was one of the more ham-handed telegraphings I've seen. And I thought that in real live these guys would have been more circumspect when Jack comes for his first visit to the married Ennis.
Sunday Bloody Sunday remains for me the best film yet about gay love.
That said, the film struck both Debbie and me as maybe too long and definitely too slow. I've argues for years that short stories and novellas make the best films, but this one mounted a powerful rebuttal.
I think the problem may lie with the Annie Proulx story. I've never been able to get into Proulx's stuff myself, and this tale seemed contrived. Take away the gay dimension and you have the same problem you have with a lot of illicit romance tales: It's easy to stay in love with someone you see only from time to time and under favorable circumstances. Things are a good deal different when you share a life with someone day in and day out. Then, if it works out, you come to love the other person, not in spite of their foibles, but actually because of them (as well as for a good many other reasons).
The film has some great moments, notably when Jack tells off his overbearing father-in-law and the wonderful scene toward the end between Ennis and his daughter. But I thought having Jack looking surreptiously at Ennis in the rearview mirror of his pickup right at the beginning was one of the more ham-handed telegraphings I've seen. And I thought that in real live these guys would have been more circumspect when Jack comes for his first visit to the married Ennis.
Sunday Bloody Sunday remains for me the best film yet about gay love.
Well, if you insist ...
Stephen King may not like or use cell phones. But, as Brandywine Books notes, he's not going to let that get in the way of marketing his latest novel. And while you're at Brandywine Books, take a look at this, too.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
It's Greek to him ...
... well, sort of. Peter Stothard finds a resemblance between the lyrics on the latest Stones album and ancient Greek: Rolling boustrophedons.
Doubting Frey ...
Ron Hogan wonders if James Frey's website really was taken down by system administators, as Frey claims. Get caught fibbing and nobody believes anything else you say.
Dichtung und Wahrheit ...
... is German for poetry and truth. It's also the title of Goethe's autobiography. And it seems an appropriate way of introducing this link to The Elegant Variation about a play by John Banville inspired by a meeting between philosopher Martin Heidegger and poet Paul Celan: Todtnauberg. The play was commisioned by the BBC and there is a link to it.
A clutch of poems ...
... found fit to print -- and write about. Helen Farrish comments on poems submitted to the Guardian poetry workshop.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Settle down, students ...
... Louise Doughty's latest column is up: Why do you want to write a novel?
It ain't heavy ...
... in fact, it's lite. Steven Clackson links to Lit Lite. The implication that John Banville's The Sea is misleading. I found it to be quite a smooth and easy read.
A night to remember ...
Today in Literature reminds us that tonight is The Eve of St. Agnes, on which virgins may be granted a vision of their future lovers, and the subject of one of Keats's greatest poems.
Update: Compliments of Shandygaff, a BBC broadcast of Keats's poem.
Update: Compliments of Shandygaff, a BBC broadcast of Keats's poem.
It's never too early ...
... for a list, right? So here's the long-list for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
There's a new blog ...
... on the block. It called Blood & Treasure. You can download the first chapter of the authors' book, Institutionalized. How can you resist something with blurbs like "I hated it," "worst piece of junk," or "the writers should be taken out and shot"?
You'll want to turn on the TV ...
... Sunday night to watch Bleak House on PBS. Maxine at Petrona has already seen it and calls the production and adapation excellent and fantastic, respectively. I don't watch a lot of TV myself, but I'm going to make an exception in this case -- it'll be a nice break from War and Peace.
Since I've been asked ...
... by Bonnie Calhoun about what I said to the seniors I gave a talk to yesterday, I suppose it won't hurt to provide a synopsis. So here goes:
We hear all the time about how important it is for young people to develop the habit of reading. But it's just as important to remind grown-ups to maintain the habit. For one thing, our readings skills, I think, get better as we grow older, because we only get out of a book as much as we bring to it. So the more experience we have under our belt the better able are we to connect to the text. I recalled how, when I was maybe 17, John P. Marquand's last novel, Women and Thomas Harrow, arrived at our house by way of the Literary Guild. I tried reading it and couldn't get into it. But decades later I saw the book in a hotel room and decided to check it out. It was terrific. And I knew rioght away why it hadn't grabbed me years before: because I was simply too young and inexperienced. I hadn't held down a real job, paid a mortgage, been married, tried to support a family, etc., etc.
I also talked a bit yesterday about War and Peace and, in connection with my theme, quoted this from it: "... to love life is to love God. The hardest and most blessed thing is to love this life in one's suffereings ..." I pointed out that to read that when you're 20 is one thing. To read it when you're past 60 is quite another.
We hear all the time about how important it is for young people to develop the habit of reading. But it's just as important to remind grown-ups to maintain the habit. For one thing, our readings skills, I think, get better as we grow older, because we only get out of a book as much as we bring to it. So the more experience we have under our belt the better able are we to connect to the text. I recalled how, when I was maybe 17, John P. Marquand's last novel, Women and Thomas Harrow, arrived at our house by way of the Literary Guild. I tried reading it and couldn't get into it. But decades later I saw the book in a hotel room and decided to check it out. It was terrific. And I knew rioght away why it hadn't grabbed me years before: because I was simply too young and inexperienced. I hadn't held down a real job, paid a mortgage, been married, tried to support a family, etc., etc.
I also talked a bit yesterday about War and Peace and, in connection with my theme, quoted this from it: "... to love life is to love God. The hardest and most blessed thing is to love this life in one's suffereings ..." I pointed out that to read that when you're 20 is one thing. To read it when you're past 60 is quite another.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Tolstoy beckons ...
It's been a long, but pleasant day. I spoke this morning at the JCC Klein Branch in Northeast Philadelphia. Talked to a group of senior citizens. Boy, were they sharp. But I must resume reading War and Peace.
A literary oddity
On Jan. 20, 1926, Charle Montagu Doughty died at age 82. His Travels in Arabia Deserta is one of the stranger masterpieces of English prose. Here's an excerpt.
If Jimmy only knew ...
James Joyce was miffed to learn that the manuscript of Ulysses sold for less than the manuscript of Joseph Conrad's Victory. Imagine how annoyed he would be know how much first editions of his book are going for: Rarely read, but much valued.
I hope it's really not so rarely read. It's worth the effort of getting to know.
I hope it's really not so rarely read. It's worth the effort of getting to know.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Finally ...
... an anniversary I can latch on to: The centenary of Ibsen's death. (Hat tip, Steve Clackson.)
Personally, he was no sweetie pie, but I think he was among the more honest of writers. The depth of his psychology seems to have derived from an unflinching examination of his own conscience.
Personally, he was no sweetie pie, but I think he was among the more honest of writers. The depth of his psychology seems to have derived from an unflinching examination of his own conscience.
Last week, boys and girls ...
... novelist Louise Doughty gave readers of her creative fiction column the first 10 words of a novel, which they were to use as a starting point of their own. She has received, so far, 610 responses.
It's nice to know ...
... that 14 years after her death Angela Carter is being read more than ever: Beauty and the beasts.
This may be the only post ...
... you'll ever have to read. Well, I hope not. But Grumpy Old Bookman has a fantastic post about self-help and writers. Money quote:
... no one in this world is going to be interested if you 'express yourself'. Even your own mother won't care, and your milkman and your dentist certainly won't. On the other hand, if you forget all about yourself, and concentrate on entertaining the reader, there is at least a remote chance that you might actually produce something which might interest an agent, publisher, or reviewer. Which might, in turn, get you into print and in front of a few readers, even if it doesn't make you rich and famous.
... no one in this world is going to be interested if you 'express yourself'. Even your own mother won't care, and your milkman and your dentist certainly won't. On the other hand, if you forget all about yourself, and concentrate on entertaining the reader, there is at least a remote chance that you might actually produce something which might interest an agent, publisher, or reviewer. Which might, in turn, get you into print and in front of a few readers, even if it doesn't make you rich and famous.
Group narrative ...
Ron Hogan at GalleyCat ponders Glypho: Choose Your Own (or Somebody Else's) Adventure.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Employment lines ...
Nicholas Blincoe notes that it can be hard finding work for your fictional characters: Alter egos.
An online serial ...
Sarah Weinman alerts us to Like Plastic, Kevin Wignall's serial novel set in Japan. It's updated daily.
More hardwiring ...
Denis Dutton thinks we're Hardwired to seek beauty. I think so too, I guess, though I'm bothered by the term hardwired. It's a metaphor, of course, but it presumes that one of the essential notes of actual hardwiring -- someone to do it -- is absent. I am likewise bothered when someone compares the world to a machine -- but on the assumption that there's no mechanic to go with it. An actual machine without an actual mechanic is something we have no experience of.
And the winner ...
... of the Eliot prize is Carol Ann Duffy. Note the lead, which say that Duffy's "new collection Rapture is one of the top-selling poetry collections in the UK." What are the top-selling poetry collections in the U.S., I wonder?
Update: Not everyone is pleased with the choice: Where have all the poets gone? (Hat tip, Tus Bowden at Poetry & Poets in Rags.)
Update: Not everyone is pleased with the choice: Where have all the poets gone? (Hat tip, Tus Bowden at Poetry & Poets in Rags.)
It's time for yet another anniversary ...
No, not Ben Franklin's (Deo gratias!). Someone much more interesting: Mozart. His 250th takes place a week from Friday. Can anything more be said about him? Well, Richard Morrison thinks so. Read Play it again, Wolfgang.
BTW, I haven't read David Cairns's Mozart and His Operas, but I reviewed Cairns's splendid biography of Berlioz. So this new book is something to look forward to.
BTW, I haven't read David Cairns's Mozart and His Operas, but I reviewed Cairns's splendid biography of Berlioz. So this new book is something to look forward to.
The care and feeding of journalists ...
Peter Stothard is reminded of Juvenal and a lamentable luncheon repast: I'll have what he's having.
Monday, January 16, 2006
And that must be it ...
... for blogging tonight. I must resume reading War and Peace. But before I do, since this blog purports to be a behind-the-scenes look at my job, let me tell you something about my day. The acting deputy pop arts editor was off today, the pop arts editor himself wasn't scheduled to come in until late in the day -- in order to handle Golden Globes coverage -- and the fine arts editor was off. Since I am also interim religion editor, I had quite a full plate today. Nonetheless, I did manage to finally get through several piles of snail mail that have been awating my attention. I mention all this in the hope that anyone who may have sent me a letter will understand that I am woefully behind in the clerical aspects of my job and that a reply, while eventual, is unlikely to be immediate (but they have probably figured that out already, I suppose, since it's been weeks in many cases since they wrote).
The future of books ...
Grumpy Old Bookman considers Robert McCrum on the future of the book . One of the links there contains this fine observation:
Of course there will always be printed books -- at any rate during the lifetime of anyone likely to be reading this. And I think we shall increasingly see an emphasis on the book as object -- as a beautiful piece of design -- in addition to the continuing and inevitable emphasis on content. However, I expect that, within ten years, and probably a whole lot sooner, we shall have a hand-held electronic device which is easier to read than the average mass-market paperback, some of which are exceedingly cheap and nasty.
I like that phrase "cheap and nasty." It was the title of great punk rock tune by the Piranhas.
Of course there will always be printed books -- at any rate during the lifetime of anyone likely to be reading this. And I think we shall increasingly see an emphasis on the book as object -- as a beautiful piece of design -- in addition to the continuing and inevitable emphasis on content. However, I expect that, within ten years, and probably a whole lot sooner, we shall have a hand-held electronic device which is easier to read than the average mass-market paperback, some of which are exceedingly cheap and nasty.
I like that phrase "cheap and nasty." It was the title of great punk rock tune by the Piranhas.
As catchphrases go ...
... it's hard to top "the eschaton must not be immanentized," but "ontology is overrated" has a certain charm and maybe even a point. (Hat tip, Maxine at Petrona.)
I should have linked to this ...
... yesterday: Sarah Weinman's fine review of Gypsy Rose Lee's The G-String Murders.
Do it, Bob!
The Literary Saloon notes that Bob Hoover, my counterpart at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is debating with himself over whether to blog: Literary editors blogging. Bob should do it. He has an immense amount of knowledge and experience to share.
BTW, my thanks for the encouraging words.
BTW, my thanks for the encouraging words.
In search of thrills ...
Paul Watkins, author of The Ice Soldier and other literary thrillers, looks far and wide for his material: On a Precipice with the Devil.
A Nobel discovery ...
Sigrid Undset was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1928. Katherine A. Powers says a new translation reveals the strength and beauty of Undset's masterpiece Kristin Lavransdatter. Read No longer lost in translation .
Beautiful vs. dutiful ...
Michael Barone has some pointed observations about the academy and the intelligentsia in The Beautiful People vs. The Dutiful People:
Our universities today have become our most intellectually corrupt institutions. University administrators must lie and deny that they use racial quotas and preferences in admissions, when they devote much of their energy to doing just that. They must pledge allegiance to diversity, when their campuses are among the least politically diverse parts of our society, with speech codes that penalize dissent and sometimes violent suppression of conservative opinion. You can go door-to-door in Hamilton Township [N.J.] and find people feeling free to voice every opinion across the political spectrum. At Princeton, you will not find many feeling free to dissent from the Bush-equals-Hitler orthodoxy.
Our universities today have become our most intellectually corrupt institutions. University administrators must lie and deny that they use racial quotas and preferences in admissions, when they devote much of their energy to doing just that. They must pledge allegiance to diversity, when their campuses are among the least politically diverse parts of our society, with speech codes that penalize dissent and sometimes violent suppression of conservative opinion. You can go door-to-door in Hamilton Township [N.J.] and find people feeling free to voice every opinion across the political spectrum. At Princeton, you will not find many feeling free to dissent from the Bush-equals-Hitler orthodoxy.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
The future -- of books, that is ...
... may already be here, claims The Guardian: E-read all about it. I suspect that the impact of this will not be that current book readers will switch, but rather that many who are not inclined to read books now will find this way of reading them attractive. Upshot: more readers.
If you're interested in genre fiction ...
... you'll want to read Fall From Grace.
Academic critics of the Western should try to look at it through the prism of myth -- they usually like to do that, don't they? The Western is the American counterpart to the sagas and epics of long ago.
Academic critics of the Western should try to look at it through the prism of myth -- they usually like to do that, don't they? The Western is the American counterpart to the sagas and epics of long ago.
What makes for a great book ...
... as opposed to a merely good one?
Blogging will continue to be light today as I continue reading War and Peace. But Tolstoy's masterpiece has got me to wondering: What exactly is it that makes it so great?
It is a world on paper, for one thing. You pick it up, start reading, and all of a sudden you're not in the 21st century anymore. Tolstoy has a unfailing knack for choosing the right details and arranging them in just the right way to bring a scene or a person to life. I guess it comes down to his preternatural power of imagining what he is writing about so vividly:
... there was no one between the squadron and the enemy, but there was that dreadful dividing line of uncertainty and fear, so similar to the line between the living and the dead. All of them sensed this, and one question worried them all: would they cross it or not, and if yes, how would they cross it?
I'm only about a sixth of the way through, but already the contrast between the war as talked about in the drawing rooms and the war as experienced on the fields of battle seems to offer a lesson our chattering classes could well use.
Blogging will continue to be light today as I continue reading War and Peace. But Tolstoy's masterpiece has got me to wondering: What exactly is it that makes it so great?
It is a world on paper, for one thing. You pick it up, start reading, and all of a sudden you're not in the 21st century anymore. Tolstoy has a unfailing knack for choosing the right details and arranging them in just the right way to bring a scene or a person to life. I guess it comes down to his preternatural power of imagining what he is writing about so vividly:
... there was no one between the squadron and the enemy, but there was that dreadful dividing line of uncertainty and fear, so similar to the line between the living and the dead. All of them sensed this, and one question worried them all: would they cross it or not, and if yes, how would they cross it?
I'm only about a sixth of the way through, but already the contrast between the war as talked about in the drawing rooms and the war as experienced on the fields of battle seems to offer a lesson our chattering classes could well use.
My review ...
... of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania is here. Also, since he was a runner-up for the NBCC's Nona Balakian Award for criticism, I recommend for your delectation my colleague Carlin Romano's refreshing piece on this year's anniversary boy.
And the nominees are ...
… well, see for yourself: The finalists for this year’s National Book Critics Circle Awards are:
Fiction
E.L. Doctorow, The March (Random House)
Mary Gaitskill, Veronica (Pantheon)
Andrea Levy, Small Island (Picador)
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (Alfred A. Knopf)
William Vollman, Europe Central (Viking)
General Nonfiction
Svetlana Alexievich, Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History ofa Nuclear Disaster (Dalkey Archive Press)
Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of theMiddle East (Alfred A. Knopf)
Ellen Meloy, Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild(Pantheon)
Caroline Moorehead, Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees (HenryHolt/Metropolitan Books)
Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War (Henry Holt)
Biography
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumphand Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Alfred A. Knopf)
Carolyn Burke, Lee Miller: A Life (Alfred A. Knopf)
Jonathan Coe, Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson(Continuum International)
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius ofAbraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster)
Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life (Free Press)
Autobiography
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (Alfred A. Knopf)
Francine du Plessix Gray, Them: A Memoir of Parents (PenguinPress)
Judith Moore, Fat Girl: A True Story (Gotham Books)
Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City (Alfred A. Knopf)
Vikram Seth, Two Lives (HarperCollins)
Criticism
Hal Crowther, Gather at the River: Notes from the Post-millennial South (Louisiana State Univ. Press)
Arthur Danto, Unnatural Wonders (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
William Logan, The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin (Columbia University Press)
John Updike, Still Looking: Essays on American Art (Alfred A.Knopf)
Eliot Weinberger, What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles (NewDirections)
Poetry
Simon Armitage, The Shout (Harcourt)
Manuel Blas de Luna, Bent to Earth (Carnegie Mellon Univ. Press)
Jack Gilbert, Refusing Heaven (Alfred A. Knopf)
Richard Siken, Crush (Yale University Press)
Ron Slate, The Incentive of the Maggot (Houghton Mifflin/MarinerBooks)
The winners will be announced on March 3 at the organization’s 32d annual awards ceremony.
At the ceremony, the NBCC will also present the Ivan SandrofLifetime Achievement Award to Bill Henderson, founder of the PushcartPress in Wainscot, NY and editor of the annual Pushcart Prize anthology.
In addition, the NBCC will award its Nona Balakian Citation forExcellence in Reviewing to Wyatt Mason, a contributor to Harper'sMagazine, The New Yorker and The New Republic. The award, named after a longtime supporter of the organization and an editor at the New YorkTimes Book Review, is presented annually to a member who has demonstrated the highest critical standards in his or her work. The other finalists were Allen Barra, Katherine A. Powers and Carlin Romano.
The awards ceremony will be held on Friday, March 3, in theTishman Auditorium at the New School, 66 West 12th Street, New York, NY,at 6:00 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. A gala receptionfollows directly at the New School and costs $40.
Nominees will participate in a reading from their works onThursday, March 2, at the Tishman Auditorium, at 6:00 p.m. This is also free and open to the public.
Fiction
E.L. Doctorow, The March (Random House)
Mary Gaitskill, Veronica (Pantheon)
Andrea Levy, Small Island (Picador)
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (Alfred A. Knopf)
William Vollman, Europe Central (Viking)
General Nonfiction
Svetlana Alexievich, Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History ofa Nuclear Disaster (Dalkey Archive Press)
Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of theMiddle East (Alfred A. Knopf)
Ellen Meloy, Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild(Pantheon)
Caroline Moorehead, Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees (HenryHolt/Metropolitan Books)
Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War (Henry Holt)
Biography
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumphand Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Alfred A. Knopf)
Carolyn Burke, Lee Miller: A Life (Alfred A. Knopf)
Jonathan Coe, Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson(Continuum International)
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius ofAbraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster)
Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life (Free Press)
Autobiography
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (Alfred A. Knopf)
Francine du Plessix Gray, Them: A Memoir of Parents (PenguinPress)
Judith Moore, Fat Girl: A True Story (Gotham Books)
Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City (Alfred A. Knopf)
Vikram Seth, Two Lives (HarperCollins)
Criticism
Hal Crowther, Gather at the River: Notes from the Post-millennial South (Louisiana State Univ. Press)
Arthur Danto, Unnatural Wonders (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
William Logan, The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin (Columbia University Press)
John Updike, Still Looking: Essays on American Art (Alfred A.Knopf)
Eliot Weinberger, What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles (NewDirections)
Poetry
Simon Armitage, The Shout (Harcourt)
Manuel Blas de Luna, Bent to Earth (Carnegie Mellon Univ. Press)
Jack Gilbert, Refusing Heaven (Alfred A. Knopf)
Richard Siken, Crush (Yale University Press)
Ron Slate, The Incentive of the Maggot (Houghton Mifflin/MarinerBooks)
The winners will be announced on March 3 at the organization’s 32d annual awards ceremony.
At the ceremony, the NBCC will also present the Ivan SandrofLifetime Achievement Award to Bill Henderson, founder of the PushcartPress in Wainscot, NY and editor of the annual Pushcart Prize anthology.
In addition, the NBCC will award its Nona Balakian Citation forExcellence in Reviewing to Wyatt Mason, a contributor to Harper'sMagazine, The New Yorker and The New Republic. The award, named after a longtime supporter of the organization and an editor at the New YorkTimes Book Review, is presented annually to a member who has demonstrated the highest critical standards in his or her work. The other finalists were Allen Barra, Katherine A. Powers and Carlin Romano.
The awards ceremony will be held on Friday, March 3, in theTishman Auditorium at the New School, 66 West 12th Street, New York, NY,at 6:00 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. A gala receptionfollows directly at the New School and costs $40.
Nominees will participate in a reading from their works onThursday, March 2, at the Tishman Auditorium, at 6:00 p.m. This is also free and open to the public.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Blogging will be light ...
... for the remainder of today. I am reading Anthony Briggs's new translation of War and Peace. It's great, but also more than 1,300 pages long. Then tonight, my lovely wife (proof at left) and I will be out at dinner celebrating our anniversary.
The future of newspapers (cont'd) ...
Joel Kotkin, writing in the Wall Street Journal (The War Against Suburbia -- which may be restricted to subsribers), after pointing out that "despite widespread media exposure about a massive 'return to the city,' demographic data suggest that the tide continues to go out toward suburbia, which now accounts for two-thirds of the population in our large metropolitan areas," goes on to note:
These facts do not seem to penetrate the consciousness of the great metropolitan newspapers anymore than the minds of their favored interlocutors in the planning profession and academia. Newspapers from Boston and San Francisco to Los Angeles are routinely filled with anecdotal accounts of former suburbanites streaking into hip lofts and high-rises in the central core. Typical was a risible story that ran in last Sunday's New York Times, titled "Goodbye, Suburbia." The piece tracked the hegira back to the city by sophisticated urbanites who left their McMansions to return to Tribeca (rhymes with "Mecca"). Suburbia, one returnee sniffed, is "just a giant echoing space."
Such reports confirm the cognoscente's notion that the cure for the single-family house lies in the requisite lifting of consciousness, not to mention a couple of spare million in the bank. Yet demographic data suggest the vast majority of all growth in greater New York comes not from migration from the suburbs, but from abroad. Among domestic migrants, far more leave for the "giant echoing spaces" than come back to the city. As a whole, greater New York -- easily the most alluring traditional urban center -- is steadily becoming more, not less, suburban. Since 2000, notes analyst Wendell Cox, New York City has gained less than 95,000 people while the suburban rings have added over 270,000. Growth in "deathlike" places like Suffolk County, in Long Island, Orange County, N.Y., and Morris County, N.J., has been well over three times faster than the city.
No comment.
These facts do not seem to penetrate the consciousness of the great metropolitan newspapers anymore than the minds of their favored interlocutors in the planning profession and academia. Newspapers from Boston and San Francisco to Los Angeles are routinely filled with anecdotal accounts of former suburbanites streaking into hip lofts and high-rises in the central core. Typical was a risible story that ran in last Sunday's New York Times, titled "Goodbye, Suburbia." The piece tracked the hegira back to the city by sophisticated urbanites who left their McMansions to return to Tribeca (rhymes with "Mecca"). Suburbia, one returnee sniffed, is "just a giant echoing space."
Such reports confirm the cognoscente's notion that the cure for the single-family house lies in the requisite lifting of consciousness, not to mention a couple of spare million in the bank. Yet demographic data suggest the vast majority of all growth in greater New York comes not from migration from the suburbs, but from abroad. Among domestic migrants, far more leave for the "giant echoing spaces" than come back to the city. As a whole, greater New York -- easily the most alluring traditional urban center -- is steadily becoming more, not less, suburban. Since 2000, notes analyst Wendell Cox, New York City has gained less than 95,000 people while the suburban rings have added over 270,000. Growth in "deathlike" places like Suffolk County, in Long Island, Orange County, N.Y., and Morris County, N.J., has been well over three times faster than the city.
No comment.
Eureka!
Thanks to a Bill Peschel post yesterday -- The Decline Of The West(ern), which I didn't read until this morning -- I have discovered Richard Wheeler's Observations. As Bill says, just start at the top and read.
Conrad on screen ...
Joseph Conrad hasn't been served well by film. Whatever else one may think of Apocalypse Now -- and I think very little of it -- it hardly does justice to Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The film version of Lord Jim was described by Time magazine as being based "on the title by Joseph Conrad." And John Huston -- who might well have pulled it off -- never succeeded in getting Nostromo to the screen (though it has been made into a TV mini-series, about which I know nothing). At any rate, Patrice Chereau has made a film out of Conrad's story "The Return" (which I am also unfamiliar with). I don't think it's debuted in the U.S. yet, but Chereau has some interesting things to say about adapting Conrad in Fearing feelings more than fire at Sign and Sight.
Curtains for poets ...
Anna Mantzaris looks at poets taking their lines to the boards: From Page to Stage.
Decades ago, one Sunday night, one of the TV networks presented a show of actors peformaing poetry. Among the most memorable was Hurd Hatfield, who starred in the classic film version of The Piction of Dorian Gray, did Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." It was unforgettable and has always made me think that more of this could do wonders for poetry. A lot of poets, especially American ones, aren't very good at reading their poems, lacking either an attractive voice or a skillful technique of reading or both. Actors can usually do a better job.
Decades ago, one Sunday night, one of the TV networks presented a show of actors peformaing poetry. Among the most memorable was Hurd Hatfield, who starred in the classic film version of The Piction of Dorian Gray, did Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." It was unforgettable and has always made me think that more of this could do wonders for poetry. A lot of poets, especially American ones, aren't very good at reading their poems, lacking either an attractive voice or a skillful technique of reading or both. Actors can usually do a better job.
What are we to make of this?
Sharon Osbourne's Extreme has become Britain's best-selling autobiography ever. Apparently, it has the X-factor. At least it didn't start out as a novel.
Friday, January 13, 2006
Meter and crime ...
Under the names Jack Curtis and David Lawrence, David Harsent is a succesful author of crime fiction. He is also a poet. Christina Patterson talks to him in David Harsent: The pity, and poetry, of war. Here's Harsent's poem "At the Bedside."
Plus ca change ...
But in Moscow? Apparently. In Everyday Moscow: Scenes of City Life From the Beginning of the 20th Century, authors Vladimir Ruga and Andrei Kokorev present evidence that not all that much has changed in the Russian city: The Circle of Time.
Vanity boogie ...
The Gothamist observes: "Dave Eggers and Paul Auster start a band...it sounds like the beginning of a joke. For better or worse, it's not." Read The Author Project. Bad enough that real rockers go on Geritol tours. Who the hell wants to hear a bunch of bookish amateurs jam?
(Via Conversational Reading.)
(Via Conversational Reading.)
Reviewing the reviewers ...
The Elegant Variation does just that in Compare and Contrast. I liked The Sea a lot, so naturally I'm inclined to agree with Rafferty in this. But I have to say I try myself, when reviewing a book, not to compare it to an author's other works, because I think each work should be judged on its own terms. It's not a hard and fast tule, though, just a rule of thumb. Rafferty certainly is a close and perceptive reader, which makes his review especially pleasurable to read.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Reasons to celebrate ...
Today is the 150th anniversary of the birth of John Singer Sargent, in my view America's greatest painter.
It is also the 130th anniversary of the birth of Jack London, one of its greatest writers. (Don't think so? Read "Building a Fire" again. Or Martin Eden.)
"There is an ecstasy," London wrote, "that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive." Yes.
Updated to correct typo indicating it was Jack London's 100th birthday. He was born in 1876, as reader Arthur Gadfly has noted in the comments.
Speaking of counting the ways ...
David Montgomery totes up his reading and reviewing. With record-keeping skills like this, he should always be able to come up with a good alibi.
How might a pro edit your book?
Ray Rhamey counts the ways: What this editor does. (Hat tip, Bill Peschel.)
Turn the key deftly ...
Scott McLemee, in Beyond Consolation, talks with Sandra M. Gilbert, author of Death’s Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve.
Refreshing candor ...
Grumpy Old Bookman explains why he gave up on a couple of books: Abandoned novels.
Well, I guess I ought to ...
... say something myself about the Frey business. But I haven't read his book. I have, however, done a spell in rehab -- honest! So I can say that one of the things that is impressed upon you in rehab is the importance of honesty -- with others and with yourself. What Michelle at It's Just My Day Job says in A million little lies is right on the money. But Frey's dishonesty would seem to be compounded by a fundamental betrayal of a key principle underpinning the recovery process. This is about more than a book.
Speaking of lying ...
Lisa Coutant has some thoughts on James Frey that are well worth considering: On the Frey. Money quote:
I think it will be interesting to see how this impacts American society in general because believe me, it will. And I’m not just referencing the fact that as of this morning both of Frey’s books are in the top five on Amazon.
Read the whole thing.
I think it will be interesting to see how this impacts American society in general because believe me, it will. And I’m not just referencing the fact that as of this morning both of Frey’s books are in the top five on Amazon.
Read the whole thing.
The question of trust ...
Paperback Writer wonders, in Perception: "how can you tell when someone on the internet is lying to you?"
Really good liars are hard to detect even when you're sitting face to face with them, actually. I know this from having had a number of friends in low places.
As for those who may be lying on the internet, I have grown suspicious of people who preface their criticism of the Bush administration by saying that they are lifelong Republicans or conservatives. This is supposed to give added weight to their views, I gather.
Really good liars are hard to detect even when you're sitting face to face with them, actually. I know this from having had a number of friends in low places.
As for those who may be lying on the internet, I have grown suspicious of people who preface their criticism of the Bush administration by saying that they are lifelong Republicans or conservatives. This is supposed to give added weight to their views, I gather.
I probably shouldn't do this ...
... but one so rarely encounters anything rational being written about Ann Coulter that I just can't resist linking to Dr. Helen's splendidly measured review of Is It True What They Say About Ann?
I agree with Glenn Reynolds (Dr. Helen's InstaHusband) is "rather over-the-top," but some were Juvenal and Swift.
I agree with Glenn Reynolds (Dr. Helen's InstaHusband) is "rather over-the-top," but some were Juvenal and Swift.
Where would I be ...
... without Dave Lull? Dave sends me a link to Jeff Bryant's Larry King Freyed over at the Syntax of Things, as well as one to this piece in which Richard Rodriguez tells of his Disappointment.
"Though John Steinbeck was not, in my opinion," Rodriguez begins, "the best California writer of the last century, The Grapes of Wrath remains California’s greatest novel." Well. Steinbeck is awfully good, judged solely on the quality of his writing. Open any one of his books and just observe how skillful the prose is. I'll be interested to see who Rodriguez thinks is California's greatest writer -- judged solely in terms of the quality of the writing.
"Though John Steinbeck was not, in my opinion," Rodriguez begins, "the best California writer of the last century, The Grapes of Wrath remains California’s greatest novel." Well. Steinbeck is awfully good, judged solely on the quality of his writing. Open any one of his books and just observe how skillful the prose is. I'll be interested to see who Rodriguez thinks is California's greatest writer -- judged solely in terms of the quality of the writing.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
The sky is still falling ...
Down with catastrophism, Joe Kaplinsky's review of James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency, is a must read.
The book, Kalpinsky notes, "has received a warm welcome, featuring on the front covers of both the leftish British publication the New Statesman and Pat Buchanan's old-right American Conservative." And why not? The extremes of right and left have found common ground in pessimism, isolationism, opposition to technological progress, authoritarianism, and even anti-semitism.
The book, Kalpinsky notes, "has received a warm welcome, featuring on the front covers of both the leftish British publication the New Statesman and Pat Buchanan's old-right American Conservative." And why not? The extremes of right and left have found common ground in pessimism, isolationism, opposition to technological progress, authoritarianism, and even anti-semitism.
Want your kids to read more?
Well, maybe you should have them watch you logon to Target's Book Club. As Bookdwarf notes, it's a really cool site.
Perhaps what the future holds ...
... for newspapers is something on the order of The Muckdog Gazette. Hat tip once again to Dave Lull.
Think reading is in decline?
Maybe you're looking in the wrong place. Mark Schurmann has some thoughts and observations in Who Reads in America? (Hat tip: Dave Lull, who mentions Eric Hoffer in connection with it. Here are some key Hoffer quotes.)
Come one, come all ...
... the Culture Vulture World Literature Tour is soon to embark. First stop is Finland. Time, obviously, for a Mika Waltari revival.
UPDATE: More on Finnish lit at Literary Saloon. Is Finland conquering the literary world ? (Via Sand Storm.)
UPDATE: More on Finnish lit at Literary Saloon. Is Finland conquering the literary world ? (Via Sand Storm.)
The future of newspapers (cont'd) ...
Glenn Reynolds links to a couple of examples of dubious reportage that may have some bearing on this topic.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
The future of newspapers (cont'd) ...
Michael Kinsley weighs in with Extra! Extra! (Hat tip: Dave Lull.)
One more time ...
... with James Frey, because Maud Newton makes some very interesting points in Memoir, "reality," and condescending pep-talks.
An ex cathedra pronouncement ...
... two, actually, from Miss Snark on l'affaire Frey here and, most of all, here. Money quote:
It's beyond stupid as a business practice to not verify facts. Contracts have clauses that authors can't libel someone, can't infringe copyright, and god forbid publish anything detrimental to the work in the contract, but "make it all up cause it sounds better" isn't mentioned.
Read the whole thing.
It's beyond stupid as a business practice to not verify facts. Contracts have clauses that authors can't libel someone, can't infringe copyright, and god forbid publish anything detrimental to the work in the contract, but "make it all up cause it sounds better" isn't mentioned.
Read the whole thing.
Money for poetry ...
Wesley Yang comments on Ruth Lilly's largesse to the Poetry Foundation: Poets, Inc.
The Page pulls out this quote: "... the Lilly gift may be an experiment relevant to all serious art struggling to subsist in America." I wonder about the adjective "serious."
The Page pulls out this quote: "... the Lilly gift may be an experiment relevant to all serious art struggling to subsist in America." I wonder about the adjective "serious."
And the nominees are ...
Gwenda Bond links to the Philip K. Dick Award finalists and notes that it's equal opportunity.
Want a story rejected?
Well, you can count the ways. Bill Peschel links to some good advice for those entering story contests.
Monday, January 09, 2006
What makes for a good book?
Is the ideas? Or the style? Or some combination of the two? Eric Myer thinks he knows: Ideas vs Words.
My own view? If the writer's subject is palpably real to himself, it will come across as real to the reader. In other words, the more intensely imagined, the more effective. Style is most effective to the degree that it grows out of that intense imagining -- otherwise, it's just a stand-in for substance.
My own view? If the writer's subject is palpably real to himself, it will come across as real to the reader. In other words, the more intensely imagined, the more effective. Style is most effective to the degree that it grows out of that intense imagining -- otherwise, it's just a stand-in for substance.
The future of publishing ...
... is almost as bad as the future of newsapers, according to Grumpy Old Bookman: More on the Sunday Times fiasco.
The heart of the matter: "Modern publishing is concerned first and foremost with making a profit. And the problem with 'literary quality', as generally defined, is that it is not profitable." But "most of the leading newspapers concentrate their reviews on literary fiction ..." And "courses which purport to teach 'creative writing' also tend to concentrate on 'literary quality.'"
Hat tip: Steve Clackson.
The heart of the matter: "Modern publishing is concerned first and foremost with making a profit. And the problem with 'literary quality', as generally defined, is that it is not profitable." But "most of the leading newspapers concentrate their reviews on literary fiction ..." And "courses which purport to teach 'creative writing' also tend to concentrate on 'literary quality.'"
Hat tip: Steve Clackson.
More on Frey ...
... over at GalleyCat: Further to the Frey-up. Something posted earlier here.
And, speaking of GalleyCat and dubious authors, here is The Author Who Wasn't There.
And, speaking of GalleyCat and dubious authors, here is The Author Who Wasn't There.
Everybody's talking about it ...
... so here's The Smoking Gun's The Man Conned Oprah. And here's a somewhat odd take on same.
The future of newspapers ...
... is not bright, according to Joseph Epstein, writing in Commentary: Are Newspapers Doomed? Lots that's good here, but this will do as a sample:
I rarely give the daily Times more than a half-hour, if
that. I begin with the obituaries. Next, I check the
op-ed page, mostly to see if anyone has hit upon a
novel way of denigrating President Bush; the answer
is invariably no, though they seem never to tire of
trying. I glimpse the letters to the editor in hopes of
finding someone after my own heart. I almost never
read the editorials, following the advice of the journalist
Jack Germond who once compared the writing
of a newspaper editorial to wetting oneself in a
dark-blue serge suit: “It gives you a nice warm feeling,
but nobody notices.”
I rarely give the daily Times more than a half-hour, if
that. I begin with the obituaries. Next, I check the
op-ed page, mostly to see if anyone has hit upon a
novel way of denigrating President Bush; the answer
is invariably no, though they seem never to tire of
trying. I glimpse the letters to the editor in hopes of
finding someone after my own heart. I almost never
read the editorials, following the advice of the journalist
Jack Germond who once compared the writing
of a newspaper editorial to wetting oneself in a
dark-blue serge suit: “It gives you a nice warm feeling,
but nobody notices.”
No sooner do I say ...
... in my previous post that "having my posts commented upon and sometimes challenged by [visitors to this blog] has sharpened my thinking" than Jeff McDonald proves it . Jeff comments:
As for, "this is something some of my official colleagues in the news business would do well to ponder." ... I think that IS going on, slowly, but surely. My station is affiliated with the NBC television network, and I have been impressed with how the reporters/anchors there have developed a blog component (through msnbc.msn.com) to complement and develop their broadcast component ...
He is, of course, right. A prime example is my colleague Dan Rubin's blog blinq. But Dan is a top-notch reporter and knows full well that blogging is more than just doing your usual journalism online. I've suggested here before that I think new forms will emerge from the practice of online writing (and that is in fact happening -- see link in previous post to Jill Walker).
I also agree that it is inevitable that a symbiotic relationship will be established between the blogosphere and the MSM, and that it will prove immensely productive.
So thanks, Jeff, for helping me clarify my own thinking.
And while I'm reviewing what I wrote last night, I should add that, while exchanges at this blog have been invariably cordial, I have certainly seen plenty of instances on blogs of inexcusable rudeness. Whatever virtues the Thersites who comments frequently at Ann Althouse may have, common civility is not among them. There are even lit blogs where a certain angry, coarse-languaged MO seems to be the order of the day. As a shrewd Jesuit once explained to me, sarcasm works best when measured carefully and used precisely.
As for, "this is something some of my official colleagues in the news business would do well to ponder." ... I think that IS going on, slowly, but surely. My station is affiliated with the NBC television network, and I have been impressed with how the reporters/anchors there have developed a blog component (through msnbc.msn.com) to complement and develop their broadcast component ...
He is, of course, right. A prime example is my colleague Dan Rubin's blog blinq. But Dan is a top-notch reporter and knows full well that blogging is more than just doing your usual journalism online. I've suggested here before that I think new forms will emerge from the practice of online writing (and that is in fact happening -- see link in previous post to Jill Walker).
I also agree that it is inevitable that a symbiotic relationship will be established between the blogosphere and the MSM, and that it will prove immensely productive.
So thanks, Jeff, for helping me clarify my own thinking.
And while I'm reviewing what I wrote last night, I should add that, while exchanges at this blog have been invariably cordial, I have certainly seen plenty of instances on blogs of inexcusable rudeness. Whatever virtues the Thersites who comments frequently at Ann Althouse may have, common civility is not among them. There are even lit blogs where a certain angry, coarse-languaged MO seems to be the order of the day. As a shrewd Jesuit once explained to me, sarcasm works best when measured carefully and used precisely.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Some thoughts on blogging (cont'd) ...
I started blogging for the same reason I suspect most other people do: There was something I wanted to blog about. In my case, it was books and reading and reviewing.
Henry Miller says somewhere that happiness consists largely in finding a more or less pleasant way of passing the time. Since most of us spend a good chunk of our time earning a living, if you can find a job that you like, you’ll have a leg up on the happiness problem.
I have one of the pleasanter jobs.
But after a year of doing it, my understanding of blogging is different from what it was when I started. Which isn’t all that surprising. Reading something is a lot different from writing something.
Still, there’s more to it than that. Searching online for book-related items, skipping from link to link, has enabled me to cover the book beat better than I was ever able to before. I not only know things now that I didn’t know before. More important, I know things I simply wouldn’t have known otherwise. Distributed narrative, for instance, “telling stories across networks,” in Jill Walker’s phrase. The size, the variety, and the quality of the poetry one encounters online are prodigious — and I’m convinced I’ve only scratched the surface.
But what has most impressed me about blogging — and has been of greatest benefit to me — is its interactivity. The phrase “blogging community” is more than just a metaphor. It’s a reality.
There have been some lively discussions on the blog over the past year. Forceful, but always cordial.
I have never met Bonnie Calhoun, or Rus Bowden, or Dave Lull, or Vikram Johri, or Willis Wayde, or Melville Goodwin, or Lisa Cohen, or Kate Benedict — to name just a few who come immediately to mind — but I have come to regard them not only as friends, but as colleagues. Having my posts commented upon and sometimes challenged by the likes of such people has sharpened my thinking. I thank them all.
This is something some of my official colleagues in the news business would do well to ponder. If the aim is to know more and understand better, then an ongoing dialogue among kindred spirits is likely to prove in the long run more successful than anything we’ve known previously.
Henry Miller says somewhere that happiness consists largely in finding a more or less pleasant way of passing the time. Since most of us spend a good chunk of our time earning a living, if you can find a job that you like, you’ll have a leg up on the happiness problem.
I have one of the pleasanter jobs.
But after a year of doing it, my understanding of blogging is different from what it was when I started. Which isn’t all that surprising. Reading something is a lot different from writing something.
Still, there’s more to it than that. Searching online for book-related items, skipping from link to link, has enabled me to cover the book beat better than I was ever able to before. I not only know things now that I didn’t know before. More important, I know things I simply wouldn’t have known otherwise. Distributed narrative, for instance, “telling stories across networks,” in Jill Walker’s phrase. The size, the variety, and the quality of the poetry one encounters online are prodigious — and I’m convinced I’ve only scratched the surface.
But what has most impressed me about blogging — and has been of greatest benefit to me — is its interactivity. The phrase “blogging community” is more than just a metaphor. It’s a reality.
There have been some lively discussions on the blog over the past year. Forceful, but always cordial.
I have never met Bonnie Calhoun, or Rus Bowden, or Dave Lull, or Vikram Johri, or Willis Wayde, or Melville Goodwin, or Lisa Cohen, or Kate Benedict — to name just a few who come immediately to mind — but I have come to regard them not only as friends, but as colleagues. Having my posts commented upon and sometimes challenged by the likes of such people has sharpened my thinking. I thank them all.
This is something some of my official colleagues in the news business would do well to ponder. If the aim is to know more and understand better, then an ongoing dialogue among kindred spirits is likely to prove in the long run more successful than anything we’ve known previously.
"the Science Museum's resident poet ..."
... that's what poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw is. Read all about it in Testament of middle youth. Here are Three Pieces by Greenlaw.
Art and life: a merger...
... that's sort of what Lisa Coutant is proposing in Lessons from Lost . Sounds like a good idea to me. Might even take on a life of its own.
Oridinarily, I like to stay clear of politics here ...
... but Roger K. Miller -- a frequent Inquirer reviewer -- sends me a link to a piece in the Wisconsin State Journal about poliblogs that's worth a look. What I found particularly noteworthy:
Two surveys last year by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that about one in 20 adults nationwide reported creating a blog and about one in six are blog readers.
Studies by the Pew project also debunk a major criticism of bloggers and the Internet in general - that people use the Web to seek out their preferred brand of politics and shut out opposing arguments. In fact, wired Americans get more points of view from both sides of the political spectrum, a 2004 study found.
Two surveys last year by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that about one in 20 adults nationwide reported creating a blog and about one in six are blog readers.
Studies by the Pew project also debunk a major criticism of bloggers and the Internet in general - that people use the Web to seek out their preferred brand of politics and shut out opposing arguments. In fact, wired Americans get more points of view from both sides of the political spectrum, a 2004 study found.
So you're thinking of creating a villain ...
... then you may want to read I, the villain at Brandywine Books. The reason Macbeth is more interesting than Richard III is that Macbeth doesn't set out to be evil -- and he retains certain redeeming qualities (his tenderness toward his wife, for instance). Which makes his last bold, desperate plunge into combat almost admirable. Richard's character is as grotesque as his physique.
Here's a deal ...
Emerging Writers Network can help you Get Lit Journals! They also explain why you might want to.
Saturday, January 07, 2006
The hunt is on ...
... a new Booker sponsor. I'd like to see Wal-Mart make a bid for it. Or maybe McDonald's.
Not to be outdone ...
... by The Book Standard's list of the 200 bestselling books of 2005, David Montgomery has compiled his own list of the Bestselling Crime Fiction Novels of 2005.
Literary mutation ...
Scott McLemee takes a look at Franco Moretti, author of Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History: Literature to Infinity. A key passage:
Moretti is a cultural Darwinist, or something like one. Anyway, he is offering an alternative to what we might call the “intelligent design” model of literary history, in which various masterpieces are the almost sacramental representatives of some Higher Power. (Call that Power what you will -– individual genius, “the literary imagination,” society, Western Civilization, etc.) Instead, the works and the genres that survive are, in effect, literary mutations that possess qualities that somehow permit them to adapt to changes in the social ecosystem.
Am I the only person who is beginning to think that Darwinism is rapidly morphing into something that, by explaining everything, actually explains nothing at all?
Moretti is a cultural Darwinist, or something like one. Anyway, he is offering an alternative to what we might call the “intelligent design” model of literary history, in which various masterpieces are the almost sacramental representatives of some Higher Power. (Call that Power what you will -– individual genius, “the literary imagination,” society, Western Civilization, etc.) Instead, the works and the genres that survive are, in effect, literary mutations that possess qualities that somehow permit them to adapt to changes in the social ecosystem.
Am I the only person who is beginning to think that Darwinism is rapidly morphing into something that, by explaining everything, actually explains nothing at all?
Art and life ...
... always an odd mix, as Ian Fleming's women, both real and fictional, strongly suggest.
Some literary tech stuff ...
In search of ...
... research geeks at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind. As with everything, research needs to be disciplined, otherwise it can get in the way of writing. I have also found myself annoyed with books -- biographies, for example -- that are less about their purported subject than an account of the author's research of the subject. But I have to admit I like the digging, too, up to a point.
The past in color ...
Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit linked to color photos from the World War II era. Now he has a link to World War I color photos as well. Fascinating.
Friday, January 06, 2006
So you want to write a novel ...
Well, novelist Louise Doughty is offering assistance. Throughout this year, she is going to be writing a column in the Daily Telegraph called Write a Novel in a Year.
You'll also be able to post your writing on the Telegraph's Web site in order to have it commented on by others following the column.
You'll also be able to post your writing on the Telegraph's Web site in order to have it commented on by others following the column.
Words, words, words ...
Ann Althouse links to the etymology game. I got nine out of 10 the first game I played, the only one I played so far. But I was lucky -- some of my choices were just hunches (though I've been a word origin buff all my life, which must count for something).
See, I told you ...
... Joan Houlihan would get a lot of grief for Three Invitations to a Far Reading. (Hat tip: Rus Bowden.)
In cold print ...
An interesting look from Down Under at Truman Capote, both real and celluloid, and his famous nonfiction novel.
A most interesting question ...
... is posed by Steven Clackson at Sand Storm: Do you read when you are writing?
Tracking the Singularity ...
Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near was quite possibly the most important nonfiction book to come out last year. Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds linked to a wide-ranging discussion of it. If you're interested in what Kurzweil has to say for himself -- plenty, as it happens -- here's my interview with him. And here is my review of the book.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Birdwatchers alert ...
Peter Stothard, editor of the TLS, reports on a restaurant in Namibia catering to select members of the avian tribe.
It's good to be a pro ...
Grumpy Old Bookman discusses Reginald Hill:
As usual, the work of an old pro from one of the commercial genres makes the average literary novel look like a very sick puppy indeed.
Read the whole thing.
As usual, the work of an old pro from one of the commercial genres makes the average literary novel look like a very sick puppy indeed.
Read the whole thing.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Dang ...
According to Laura at Altalk Blog, Swedes have a problem with us Anglos when it comes to swearing, Read Swedish Swearing and Translation Travesties.
This has nothing to do with books ...
... but I'm posting it because I think it should be broadcast as widely possible: Deprived of treatment.
Encountering Mr. Eliot ...
... yet again, and more sympathetically than has been the case of late, though the man continues to prove elusive. Read David Barber's excellent The artist as a young mandarin. (Hat tip: Dave Lull.)
A kind word ...
... for U.S News & World Report from Bill Peschel. Bill says the magazine reports "the news as news and not lecture." Imagine that.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Hear, hear ...
The question of audio books, their cost, and more at Booksquare: Synchronicity, Or Close Enough For Government Work.
The man who should have won ...
... this year's Nobel for literature is Orhan Pamuk. Vikram Johri comments on and links to an interview with Pamuk: An Encounter With Pamuk .
If you read nothing else today ...
... read this at the World Question Center (naturally, I found it at the incomparable Arts & Letters daily). Two favorites of mine so far: Freeman Dyson's and Michael Nesmith's (yes, he of the Monkees).
Monday, January 02, 2006
Two good quotes ...
... from the Times Literary supplement.
The first is from a review by Hal Jensen published in the issue of Nov. 18, 2005, of Andrew Biswell's The Real Life of Anthony Burgess:
Biswell not only understands, he enjoys, his subject's evasiveness and inventiveness. Indeed, his central achievement is the way he quietly persuades the reader that the real Anthony Burgess is not to be found in the documents and reminiscences that tug and pull his own version of events into a more accurate, verifiable shape, but in the writer tugging and pulling at reality until it suits his needs. In other words, the real life of a writer is to be found in his works.
The second is from a review by C. Bradley Thompson published in the issue of Dec. 9, 2005 of David McCullough's 1776 and Stanley Weintraub's Iron Tears:
If academic historians are writing the histories of ordinary people doing ordinary things (which, it turns out, ordinary people find tediously ordinary), David McCullough, Stanley Weintraub and the non-professional historians are writing books that examine oridinary (and great) people doing great things -- and that makes all the difference. Maybe it's a good thing that academic historians have abandoned writing books on the American Revolution. In any event, it's no loss.
The first is from a review by Hal Jensen published in the issue of Nov. 18, 2005, of Andrew Biswell's The Real Life of Anthony Burgess:
Biswell not only understands, he enjoys, his subject's evasiveness and inventiveness. Indeed, his central achievement is the way he quietly persuades the reader that the real Anthony Burgess is not to be found in the documents and reminiscences that tug and pull his own version of events into a more accurate, verifiable shape, but in the writer tugging and pulling at reality until it suits his needs. In other words, the real life of a writer is to be found in his works.
The second is from a review by C. Bradley Thompson published in the issue of Dec. 9, 2005 of David McCullough's 1776 and Stanley Weintraub's Iron Tears:
If academic historians are writing the histories of ordinary people doing ordinary things (which, it turns out, ordinary people find tediously ordinary), David McCullough, Stanley Weintraub and the non-professional historians are writing books that examine oridinary (and great) people doing great things -- and that makes all the difference. Maybe it's a good thing that academic historians have abandoned writing books on the American Revolution. In any event, it's no loss.
Some thoughts on blogging ...
I have been blogging for nearly a year. So I thought I’d opine a bit on the subject. First, something general:
Relations between blogs and the MSM remain tense, as these links from Glenn Reynolds and Roger Simon clearly indicate. I have myself heard in the newsroom comments about blogs that actually did sound, in Michelle Malkin’s phrase, “thoroughly unhinged.”
But it really isn’t blogging in general that bothers the MSM. It’s only the political blogs. The MSM doesn’t care about lit blogs or cooking blogs or knitting blogs — or even tech blogs or science blogs (except to the extent they might be useful in advancing some editorial viewpoint).
Blogs have challenged the MSM’s self-designated right to shape political debate by choosing what to cover and how to cover it. The MSM claims it has resources not available to bloggers — and it does. So how explain the disparity between what was reported in the papers and on TV during Hurricane Katrina and what we have since determined was actually the case? This was, after all, the demonstration case for the superiority of the MSM.
Amanda Bennett, editor of The Inquirer, wrote a column that ran on Christmas about surveys of our readers’ likes and dislikes. The finding I thought most interesting was this: “More than half our readers weren't even aware that we had endorsed a presidential candidate!” This really seems remarkable, considering that we had gone to the trouble of endorsing John Kerry for 21 straight days.
But maybe not. Lots of people may go into journalism because they’re interested in politics, but it doesn’t follow from that the people who read newspapers share that interest. A good many do, of course — and they are precisely the ones likely to read blogs as well and to blog themselves.
I suspect that the MSM’s role in shaping political debate is going to steadily decline. There will be plenty for it to cover. But from now on the agenda, increasingly, is going to be set by others. The blogs are here to stay. Political debate now takes place in an electronic agora. Get used to it.
But it’s the rest of the readers that interest me, the people who didn’t even know we had endorsed a candidate for president. Now if you think the be-all and end-all of existence is politics, then you will probably dismiss such people as boobs. I suspect they’re people who have better things to do than be preoccupied day in and day out by matters over which the only control they have involves entering a booth and casting a vote every now and again.
Reporters and editors ought to start visiting the rest of the blogosphere. It might give them some idea of what that large chunk of readers uninterested in the editorial board’s orotund pronouncements really is interested in. Plenty of potential stories there. Plenty of potential readers, too.
Relations between blogs and the MSM remain tense, as these links from Glenn Reynolds and Roger Simon clearly indicate. I have myself heard in the newsroom comments about blogs that actually did sound, in Michelle Malkin’s phrase, “thoroughly unhinged.”
But it really isn’t blogging in general that bothers the MSM. It’s only the political blogs. The MSM doesn’t care about lit blogs or cooking blogs or knitting blogs — or even tech blogs or science blogs (except to the extent they might be useful in advancing some editorial viewpoint).
Blogs have challenged the MSM’s self-designated right to shape political debate by choosing what to cover and how to cover it. The MSM claims it has resources not available to bloggers — and it does. So how explain the disparity between what was reported in the papers and on TV during Hurricane Katrina and what we have since determined was actually the case? This was, after all, the demonstration case for the superiority of the MSM.
Amanda Bennett, editor of The Inquirer, wrote a column that ran on Christmas about surveys of our readers’ likes and dislikes. The finding I thought most interesting was this: “More than half our readers weren't even aware that we had endorsed a presidential candidate!” This really seems remarkable, considering that we had gone to the trouble of endorsing John Kerry for 21 straight days.
But maybe not. Lots of people may go into journalism because they’re interested in politics, but it doesn’t follow from that the people who read newspapers share that interest. A good many do, of course — and they are precisely the ones likely to read blogs as well and to blog themselves.
I suspect that the MSM’s role in shaping political debate is going to steadily decline. There will be plenty for it to cover. But from now on the agenda, increasingly, is going to be set by others. The blogs are here to stay. Political debate now takes place in an electronic agora. Get used to it.
But it’s the rest of the readers that interest me, the people who didn’t even know we had endorsed a candidate for president. Now if you think the be-all and end-all of existence is politics, then you will probably dismiss such people as boobs. I suspect they’re people who have better things to do than be preoccupied day in and day out by matters over which the only control they have involves entering a booth and casting a vote every now and again.
Reporters and editors ought to start visiting the rest of the blogosphere. It might give them some idea of what that large chunk of readers uninterested in the editorial board’s orotund pronouncements really is interested in. Plenty of potential stories there. Plenty of potential readers, too.
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