My apologies for the absence. I was up in the hills of Virginia, a land rife with deer and bears and wildlife but devoid of high speed InterWebz. Dial-up does not cut it for blogging.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Post Script.
My apologies for the absence. I was up in the hills of Virginia, a land rife with deer and bears and wildlife but devoid of high speed InterWebz. Dial-up does not cut it for blogging.
The Atlantis of the Midwest
I live in New York City, but all around me are people talking all the time about Chicago. Some of these people even claim to have lived there, and I feel terrible for them. It was actually inspired by a raft of exiles who arrived in New York City not long after I did. They were clearly happy to be here, but all they could talk about was how great Chicago was, how affordable—until it started getting gentrified, and now it’s all shit, and so they had to move to New York. Talk about your age-old stories, like the hipster diaspora of people who leave one place because it got gentrified and turned to shit—how you used to be able to get a thousand whiskies for a cent, and all the bands were awesome, and people were nicer.
John Hodgman on Chicago, via the Decider
John Hodgman on Chicago, via the Decider
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Can women write about big ideas?
Blogging about blogging about blogging:
Never one to shy away from controversy, veteran feminist warrior Germaine Greer has kicked off a new controversy in the blogosphere. In writing about Malcolm Gladwell’s new book “The Outliers,” Greer asked why women don’t write “big idea” books.
From the Christian Science Monitor.
Never one to shy away from controversy, veteran feminist warrior Germaine Greer has kicked off a new controversy in the blogosphere. In writing about Malcolm Gladwell’s new book “The Outliers,” Greer asked why women don’t write “big idea” books.
From the Christian Science Monitor.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Fifty years of popular songs condensed into single sentences:
The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand"
I want to do it with you.
Marvin Gaye, "Let's Get It On"
I want to do it with you.
Sir Mix-a-Lot, "Baby Got Back"
I want to do it.
Elvis Presley, "Hound Dog"
You're doing it with everyone.
R. Kelly, "I Believe I Can Fly"
I believe I want to do it with you.
...and so on.
By Marc Haynes in McSweeney's.
I want to do it with you.
Marvin Gaye, "Let's Get It On"
I want to do it with you.
Sir Mix-a-Lot, "Baby Got Back"
I want to do it.
Elvis Presley, "Hound Dog"
You're doing it with everyone.
R. Kelly, "I Believe I Can Fly"
I believe I want to do it with you.
...and so on.
By Marc Haynes in McSweeney's.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
fiction. contest. fictional contest?
Narrative magazine's fall fiction contest accepts submissions through Nov. 30. Details here.
Submission fee, but big bucks for winners.
Submission fee, but big bucks for winners.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Splinter Generation
I, for one, think that Splinter Generation sounds much better than all those other stupid names people have tried to give us: Gen Y, the Pepsi Generation (wait, did Pepsi to dub us that?), the Millennials...
What’s Wrong with Generation Y (or any of those other millions of names we have)?
What does Generation Y even mean? What does the Google Generation even mean? We’ve been called Generation Y, Generation Me, the Google Generation, Generation DotNet, Millennials, and Generation 9-11 ... the list goes on forever. None of these names seem to fit. Sure, we use the internet; yes, 9-11 was a formative political experience; true, the letter Y comes after the letter X. But I argue that these names don’t sufficiently capture who we are as a group. They don’t capture who we are as a generation.
We offer the Splinter Generation as a possible alternative. Use it if you like it. Don’t use it if you hate it. Just please, for the love of God, stop calling us Generation Y.
From Splinter Generation, writing by and for those of us under 35
What’s Wrong with Generation Y (or any of those other millions of names we have)?
What does Generation Y even mean? What does the Google Generation even mean? We’ve been called Generation Y, Generation Me, the Google Generation, Generation DotNet, Millennials, and Generation 9-11 ... the list goes on forever. None of these names seem to fit. Sure, we use the internet; yes, 9-11 was a formative political experience; true, the letter Y comes after the letter X. But I argue that these names don’t sufficiently capture who we are as a group. They don’t capture who we are as a generation.
We offer the Splinter Generation as a possible alternative. Use it if you like it. Don’t use it if you hate it. Just please, for the love of God, stop calling us Generation Y.
From Splinter Generation, writing by and for those of us under 35
Economists: Novels can explain world problems
Did we not believe this before some economists said something? Didn't all of us readers think that fiction has a powerful way of teaching truths about the human experience?
Those of us who were lit majors have known it all along: The novel works better than academic literature to explain global problems. But now some economists are validating that notion.
“Despite the regular flow of academic studies, expert reports, and policy position papers, it is arguably novelists who do as good a job – if not a better one – of representing and communicating the realities of international development,” says Dr. Dennis Rodgers from England’s Manchester University’s Brooks World Poverty Institute.
From "Why novels are best at explaining world problems" in the Christian Science Monitor.
Those of us who were lit majors have known it all along: The novel works better than academic literature to explain global problems. But now some economists are validating that notion.
“Despite the regular flow of academic studies, expert reports, and policy position papers, it is arguably novelists who do as good a job – if not a better one – of representing and communicating the realities of international development,” says Dr. Dennis Rodgers from England’s Manchester University’s Brooks World Poverty Institute.
From "Why novels are best at explaining world problems" in the Christian Science Monitor.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
"Brains are back!"
After eight years of proud incuriosity and anti-intellectualism, we now have a leader who values nuance and careful thought.
What Obama's election means, above all, is that brains are back. Sense and pragmatism and the idea of considering-all-the-options are back. Studying one's enemies and thinking through strategic problems are back. Cultural understanding is back.
From Michael Hirsh in Newsweek.
As a writer (ok, ok, and a liberal), it's wonderfully refreshing that the nation's leader is an intellectual, a former professor, and a scholar of constitutional law. Sure, Laura Bush was a librarian and George Bush read Camus. But this, this is different.
As Toni Morrison and Jonathan Safran Foer look forward to this administration, so do I (see: Writers welcome a more literary president-elect in Barack Obama).
What Obama's election means, above all, is that brains are back. Sense and pragmatism and the idea of considering-all-the-options are back. Studying one's enemies and thinking through strategic problems are back. Cultural understanding is back.
From Michael Hirsh in Newsweek.
As a writer (ok, ok, and a liberal), it's wonderfully refreshing that the nation's leader is an intellectual, a former professor, and a scholar of constitutional law. Sure, Laura Bush was a librarian and George Bush read Camus. But this, this is different.
As Toni Morrison and Jonathan Safran Foer look forward to this administration, so do I (see: Writers welcome a more literary president-elect in Barack Obama).
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
That's KABLAMMO.
You are: A writer with great work that begs to be submitted to a lit mag.
Kablammo is: A new literary magazine seeking new voices. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry. 5,000 words or less.
Email your best stuff to: kablammomag (at) gmail.com. ALSO SEE the Kablammo Web site.
Handy-dandy writing tool
A place to find deadlines and calls for submissions from a variety of lit mags:
NewPages Call for Submissions -- a great source for possible submissions, ranging all over, from Alimentum (food-related creative writings) to the Green Mountains Review (out of Vermont) and MUCH more.
Check. It. Out.
NewPages Call for Submissions -- a great source for possible submissions, ranging all over, from Alimentum (food-related creative writings) to the Green Mountains Review (out of Vermont) and MUCH more.
Check. It. Out.
A day late...
and a dollar short:
Poems for election day, via the New York Times, by some of the country's leading poets.
From John Ashbery (a tiny excerpt):
The old mule delivers the goods.
Nugatory diddlings are on the decline.
Stateliness has its day.
JD McClatchy may be a bit more literal with his (also an excerpt):
The older couples had voted just after dawn,
And by noon the exit polls are underway.
Some talking head opines in San Jose.
My poster is mute and silent on the lawn.
Three more at the Times.
Poems for election day, via the New York Times, by some of the country's leading poets.
From John Ashbery (a tiny excerpt):
The old mule delivers the goods.
Nugatory diddlings are on the decline.
Stateliness has its day.
JD McClatchy may be a bit more literal with his (also an excerpt):
The older couples had voted just after dawn,
And by noon the exit polls are underway.
Some talking head opines in San Jose.
My poster is mute and silent on the lawn.
Three more at the Times.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
How to Read Like a President
From the New York Times:
You can tell a lot about a president — or a presidential candidate — by what he reads, or says he reads. We know the iconic examples: George Washington and his rules of civility, Thomas Jefferson and the thinkers of the French and Scottish Enlightenments, Lincoln and the Bible and Shakespeare. Though a generation apart, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt both loved Alfred Thayer Mahan’s “Influence of Sea Power Upon History” and savored the imperial poems of Kipling. Together such works created a kind of Anglo-American ethos in their minds — an ethos Franklin Roosevelt would make concrete during World War II, when he and Winston Churchill quoted Edward Lear’s nonsense rhymes to each other as they fought Hitler and Japan.
Read it here.
You can tell a lot about a president — or a presidential candidate — by what he reads, or says he reads. We know the iconic examples: George Washington and his rules of civility, Thomas Jefferson and the thinkers of the French and Scottish Enlightenments, Lincoln and the Bible and Shakespeare. Though a generation apart, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt both loved Alfred Thayer Mahan’s “Influence of Sea Power Upon History” and savored the imperial poems of Kipling. Together such works created a kind of Anglo-American ethos in their minds — an ethos Franklin Roosevelt would make concrete during World War II, when he and Winston Churchill quoted Edward Lear’s nonsense rhymes to each other as they fought Hitler and Japan.
Read it here.
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