Posted by Juliet Linderman Gay Talese reflects on his time at the New York Times, and how wasted everyone at the City Desk was. This is what (my) dreams are made of.
Who will Criticize the Critics?
Posted by Jason Diamond Things I picked up and though about while reading the NY Times Sunday Book Review series of essays, “Why Criticism Matter” this morning.
Mad Literary Name Dropping Takes Place in the Times Review of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom
I think they liked it? “19th-century realist” “even as he condescendingly attributed to them every venal quality from hypocrisy and vanity to paranoia and Machiavellian conniving.” “not Nietzschean stereotypes easily divided into categories of “hard” (shameless, ambitious brutes) or “soft” (pathetic, sniveling doormats)” “But it is neither this heavy-handed leitmotif nor the twisty, Dickensian plot” “threatening to turn them into authorial pawns subject to simple Freudian-Darwinian imperatives.”
It’s National David Remnick Day
David Remnick is all over the place this morning: a new book on Barry Obama is out, an appearance on MSNBC, a Times profile, and this poem from The Awl: David Remnick: American Giant David Remnick writes and edits In his spare time he reports Those are just three of his credits He’s got talents of all sorts David Remnick trimmed his budget Saved his staff from major cuts He’s a hero—let’s not fudge it— A mensch! This ain’t some […]
Benjamin Kunkel Will Make Sweet Love to You, Philip Roth Will Tap Your Ass
By Jason Diamond But my favorite part of Kate Roiphe’s essay, “The Naked and the Conflicted“, in the New York Times Sunday Book review has to be: “writers like Jonathan Safran Foer who avoid the corruptions of adult sexuality by choosing children and virgins as their protagonists.” What I gained from this essay is more evidence that Philip Roth is an old guy who can’t deal with his inability to hump women that he probably treats like shit, Norman Mailer […]
Outside of Society, That’s Where Patti Smith Wants to be
Patti Smith was in the New York Times yesterday, discussing the PBS premier of the documentary, “Patti Smith, Dream of Life”, on Dec. 30th. The broadcast, part of the PBS series “POV,” is but the first step in what appears to be an all-out blitz to erase any remaining notions that Ms. Smith has not done enough work yet. That quote didn’t sit right with me, as I wasn’t aware anybody thought Smith’s body of work was lacking anything — […]
The Millennials Will Usher in a New Age of Literacy
Over and over again are there complaints about our Twitter-obsessed minds, our over-texting tendencies, and the fact that no one actually reads books anymore. On the path to illiteracy, are we? Developing a generation of Adderall-induced, emoticon-using, pathetically apathetic individuals? Think again, please.
The Goodness of Art
By Laura Macomber I recently wrote a 45-page paper discussing the paradox of cultural elitism in post-war, post-fascist societies as discussed by three different works of literature: “Todesfuge” (Death Fugue) by Paul Celan, Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman, and The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek. Admittedly, the paper was my senior honors thesis in Comparative Literature and I wrote it for no one but myself and a handful of professors. And though I felt deep concern for the […]