Happy New Year
Before the New Year’s Eve festivities commence, I wanted to pop in and wish all of you a happy 2005.
You wouldn’t know it from the childhood New Year’s Eve stories I invariably trot out, but I like the change from the old year to the new. Everything feels bright and shiny, for [...]
On annual “best of” anthologies
Robert Daseler, a good poet (and one of my email pals), sends in his thoughts on annual “best of” anthologies:
I would like to draw your attention to a book that you might otherwise overlook. Louis Menand, a regular contributor to The New Yorker, edited The Best American Essays 2004, and it turns out [...]
Iowa schoolchildren shielded from Hotmail, The Onion and MaudNewton.com
Joe, a high school teacher in a northeastern Iowa town, reports that The Onion, Homestar Runner, Hotmail and MaudNewton.com are among the sites proscribed by the school system’s “Bess Internet filtering software,” which “helps protect more students & library users online from inappropriate or illegal Internet content than any other filter.”
Due to [...]
The Smart Set: Lauren Cerand’s Weekly Events
The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled by Lauren Cerand, that appears Mondays and highlights the best of the week to come. Special favor is given to New York’s independent booksellers and venues, and low-cost and free events. Please submit details to lauren@maudnewton.com by the Thursday before publication for consideration.
I am a bit miffed [...]
MLA Convention dispatch #2: w(h)ither publishing?
An anonymous MLA convention-goer is sending dispatches, including this one, while Maud is otherwise engaged this week. Unfamiliar with the Modern Language Association? Consult this quick primer.
The keys — well, two anyway — to surviving the MLA are hydration and overcaffeination.
This makes the loooong line at Starbucks a great place to scope the [...]
A monument to the printed page: Seattle’s new public library
A dispatch from Sean Carman, intrepid cultural reporter for Maudnewton.com.
Seattle’s new downtown public library is amazing. If you visit, expect to find yourself in the condition I’m experiencing as I try to write this paragraph. I don’t know where to begin. I’m literally speechless. Here is what my heart wanted this first paragraph to say: [...]
How to help
I’ve only just seen Hurree’s impassioned email to the literary blogger community. He passed along the word about TsunamiHelp, a blog that’s playing a huge role in marshalling support for victims of the Tsunami disaster. Take a look. And if you’ve been meaning to look up the Red Cross tsunami donation page, [...]
R.I.P. Susan Sontag
That shock of white hair always gave her an air of immortality, but Susan Sontag died today, at 71, after a bout with leukemia. She spoke earlier this year about “the truth of fiction.” (Thanks for letting me know, GMB.)
Some of my favorite pieces on Sontag in recent years have been penned by [...]
MLA Convention dispatch #1: “Get this housewife out of here!”
An anonymous MLA convention-goer is sending dispatches from the convention while Maud is otherwise engaged this week. Her first report centers on MaudNewton.com hero Grace Paley. Unfamiliar with the Modern Language Association? Consult this quick primer.
An elderly female professor of my acquaintance often has to deflect importuning undergraduates because, well, if the Pillsbury Doughboy [...]
In preparation for the MLA dispatches
While I’m otherwise occupied this week, a mysterious MLA convention-goer will be sending dispatches about her experiences there.
If you, unlike those of us in the Maud household, have managed to steer clear of English Departments in general, and the Modern Language Association in particular, why sully yourselves now?
But if you plan [...]
Kafka: the musical
Zadie Smith (White Teeth) and her husband, writer Nick Laird, are collaborating on a musical about the life of Franz Kafka:
Smith told British magazine Dazed and Confused, “It’s not exactly a cheery, high-kicking affair. It’ll need some good actors like Nathan Lane or Anthony Sher.” She would also like the show to run at London’s [...]
Favorite books, and holiday remainders
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a brief piece for Newsday about some of my favorite books of the year. Today it appears alongside 2004 selections from Laurie Muchnick, Scott McLemee, Peter Terzian, and others.
I mentioned Muriel Spark’s The Finishing School (a hilarious, plot-driven commentary on the creative writing culture and the [...]
Holiday wishes and miscellany
There’s no snow in Brooklyn, at least not yet, but we in the Maud household are buried nonetheless.
If you celebrate Christmas, have a great one. If you don’t, enjoy the quiet. The blogging and email response forecast through the end of 2004 remains unpredictable. For now, here’s a personal, less-than-heartwarming holiday [...]
“‘Twas The Night Before Christmas”: actually a tragedy
Wendy McClure of Poundy and Television Without Pity (and author of the forthcoming memoir I’m Not the New Me) shares her early attempts at poetry interpretation:
when I was six years old, my grandpa read A Visit from St. Nicholas (aka “Twas The Night Before Christmas“) aloud to me, and though I’d probably heard the poem [...]
Patriot Act: still problematic
I was deeply troubled by Rachel Donadio’s recent New York Times Book Review essay, “Is There Censorship?,” in which she suggests that because liberals can’t point to many concrete, deleterious effects of the Patriot Act (and other “anti-terrorism” laws and regulations), we are overreacting when we decry its far-reaching provisions.
The argument seems to [...]