Saturday, October 30, 2004
Objets trouves
I found this amazing thing: FOUND Magazine, where notes, photos, and other things that people find end up. Some of the items are funny, or disturbing, or both. While I find this fairly fascinating, I think the ethics are questionable. How awful would it be to have a note you wrote in a fit of anger show up on the Internet? Especially if you had decided against sending it and crumpled it up and thrown it away--only to have it blow out of the trash and end up on the shoe of some stranger who submits it to FOUND.
As for me, I just hope those affirmation tapes I made myself in my early 20s never turn up in a thrift store.
I found this amazing thing: FOUND Magazine, where notes, photos, and other things that people find end up. Some of the items are funny, or disturbing, or both. While I find this fairly fascinating, I think the ethics are questionable. How awful would it be to have a note you wrote in a fit of anger show up on the Internet? Especially if you had decided against sending it and crumpled it up and thrown it away--only to have it blow out of the trash and end up on the shoe of some stranger who submits it to FOUND.
As for me, I just hope those affirmation tapes I made myself in my early 20s never turn up in a thrift store.
Vintage Swag
Great stuff: CRY BABY RANCH - Western Wear, Cowkid Clothing, Cowgirl Gifts, Cry Baby Rancho & Just Fun Stuff!
Great stuff: CRY BABY RANCH - Western Wear, Cowkid Clothing, Cowgirl Gifts, Cry Baby Rancho & Just Fun Stuff!
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
A gentle madness
The guy who writes as Thomas H. Benton talks about his own private library. Read some of his archives as well. I read the "fat professor" essay when it was published in the Chronicle a couple of months ago, so I recognized his name this time.
Professor Benton, whoever he really is, should write a novel. Wouldn't a writer of his talent do a good job on the classic novel of academe? Straight Man would be a forgotten weekend's reading in the face of it. Wonder Boys... well, Wonder Boys would still be Wonder Boys, but Moo might suffer some embarrassment.
The guy who writes as Thomas H. Benton talks about his own private library. Read some of his archives as well. I read the "fat professor" essay when it was published in the Chronicle a couple of months ago, so I recognized his name this time.
Professor Benton, whoever he really is, should write a novel. Wouldn't a writer of his talent do a good job on the classic novel of academe? Straight Man would be a forgotten weekend's reading in the face of it. Wonder Boys... well, Wonder Boys would still be Wonder Boys, but Moo might suffer some embarrassment.
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Still no redesign
No, I still haven't redesigned the site. Still no comments, and the permalinks are completely unstyled. Compatibility with older templates does not seem to be a Blogger feature, but I still like the improvements they've made.
No, I still haven't redesigned the site. Still no comments, and the permalinks are completely unstyled. Compatibility with older templates does not seem to be a Blogger feature, but I still like the improvements they've made.
Dead or alive
J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield, Aging Gracelessly (washingtonpost.com)
Okay, first of all: J.D. Salinger is still alive? How could I have missed that? I heard or read at least two interviews with his daughter a few years ago when she published a book about him, but I don't remember any of them mentioning the fact that he was actually still alive at the time.
But second, I'm quite relieved to find out that I am not alone in not really liking Catcher in the Rye or The Old Man and the Sea. Granted, I was in my 20s by the time I read Catcher in the Rye, so maybe I was just too old for the angst to appeal to me--although I've never outgrown young adult literature, so I don't think that's the case. I do remember, as Yardley mentions in this article, that the voice seemed forced, especially compared to the narrators of some of the excellent young adult novels I grew up with. For example, The Outsiders has its faults (one of them being the too-obvious influence of both Rebel Without a Cause and Catcher in the Rye) but you can't deny the authenticity of the voice--natural enough for a first-person young adult novel written by a 15-year-old.
Yardley suggests that Catcher in the Rye created the image of teen angst that persists today. Even though it was published as an adult novel, I do think it paved the way for the young adult genre to move away from strictly romance (in the 30s and 40s) and the occasional boys' adventure novel to the more realistic "problem novels" that dominated YA in the late 60s and 70s, and are only now starting to be overtaken by teen chick lit and YA fantasy. It proved that adults would buy a book with a teenage protagonist, which probably made publishers more likely to look at books like The Outsiders and A Separate Peace. So even though I didn't care much for the book itself, and I don't think it necessarily still needs to be required reading in high school, it might have had a profound effect on adolescent readers merely by making it possible for good books that might not have otherwise been published to exist. So I'm moving it from my list of Books Everyone Says You Should Have Read to my list of Not-Great Books You Should Read Because of Their Cultural Impact. It will bump Peyton Place down a notch.
J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield, Aging Gracelessly (washingtonpost.com)
Okay, first of all: J.D. Salinger is still alive? How could I have missed that? I heard or read at least two interviews with his daughter a few years ago when she published a book about him, but I don't remember any of them mentioning the fact that he was actually still alive at the time.
But second, I'm quite relieved to find out that I am not alone in not really liking Catcher in the Rye or The Old Man and the Sea. Granted, I was in my 20s by the time I read Catcher in the Rye, so maybe I was just too old for the angst to appeal to me--although I've never outgrown young adult literature, so I don't think that's the case. I do remember, as Yardley mentions in this article, that the voice seemed forced, especially compared to the narrators of some of the excellent young adult novels I grew up with. For example, The Outsiders has its faults (one of them being the too-obvious influence of both Rebel Without a Cause and Catcher in the Rye) but you can't deny the authenticity of the voice--natural enough for a first-person young adult novel written by a 15-year-old.
Yardley suggests that Catcher in the Rye created the image of teen angst that persists today. Even though it was published as an adult novel, I do think it paved the way for the young adult genre to move away from strictly romance (in the 30s and 40s) and the occasional boys' adventure novel to the more realistic "problem novels" that dominated YA in the late 60s and 70s, and are only now starting to be overtaken by teen chick lit and YA fantasy. It proved that adults would buy a book with a teenage protagonist, which probably made publishers more likely to look at books like The Outsiders and A Separate Peace. So even though I didn't care much for the book itself, and I don't think it necessarily still needs to be required reading in high school, it might have had a profound effect on adolescent readers merely by making it possible for good books that might not have otherwise been published to exist. So I'm moving it from my list of Books Everyone Says You Should Have Read to my list of Not-Great Books You Should Read Because of Their Cultural Impact. It will bump Peyton Place down a notch.
Saturday, October 16, 2004
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Just in time for Halloween!
The Literary Gothic - the premier webguide to Gothic & supernaturalist literature written prior to 1950
The Literary Gothic - the premier webguide to Gothic & supernaturalist literature written prior to 1950
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