Experiencing delays
Yes, yes, of course you’re annoyed that I haven’t answered your email. If it makes you feel any better, I haven’t answered anyone else’s, either. Please give me a few days to work through a gargantuan backlog.
And no, if you were asking: I’m not planning to attend BEA. There’s the [...]
Wilsey’s Oh the Glory of It All
My review of Sean Wilsey’s debut memoir appeared in the weekend’s Boston Globe. Here’s an excerpt:
The writer David Foster Wallace argued in a 1993 interview that it’s impossible to spend as many “slack-jawed, spittle-chinned, formative hours” in front of the TV as he and many writers of his generation did “without internalizing the idea [...]
Remainders: gender and sex edition
A study conducted by Lisa Jardine and Annie Watkins reveals that “women read the works of both sexes,” while “men stick to books written by men.”
Literary couples — now and then.
“The widower of Dame Iris Murdoch has launched a stinging attack on one of her former lovers, who described her as an intellectual lightweight and [...]
Harry Crews turns 70, slides out of print
Harry Crews turns 70 next week. I took a class with him long ago at the University of Florida, but didn’t read his work until the following summer. Then I polished off one novel, A Feast of Snakes, in a single sitting, and promptly went to the library to check out everything else he’d [...]
Pynchon apologizes for missing Barthelme’s “Postmodernist Dinner”
A University of Houston exhibit of Donald Barthelme’s papers includes letters from fellow writers, including Thomas Pynchon, who
wrote in 1983 to apologize for not responding to Barthelme’s invitation to a “Postmodernist Dinner”in New York. The notoriously reclusive author of Gravity’s Rainbow said he couldn’t have attended anyway, as he was “between coasts, Arkansas or Lubbock [...]
Write copious nonsense, ace the SAT
The new SAT essay allegedly rewards students for writing badly, so long as they write at length:
the test encourages wordiness. Longer essays consistently score higher. Shortly after the test was first administered in March, I looked at scored samples that were made public, including the set used to train graders. I discovered that I could [...]
The Smart Set: a weekly events listing by Lauren Cerand
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. Submit details to lauren@maudnewton.com, with the date of the event in the subject line.
MONDAY, 5.30: HOLIDAY.
TUESDAY, [...]
Have a damn good weekend
That’s all for me for the week.
Maud Newton was last seen storming into the bush to stalk the notoriously shy red-breasted popinjay, where she was to spend her holiday weekend following its distinct loud hawking and searching the sky for the remarkable gin-scented vapor clouds that follow in its wake. When she’ll re-emerge, victorious, [...]
Textbook trouble in Terminator Town
This is one of those news items that seems, at first, like a brilliant satirical hoax.
Conversational Reading reports on a news story in the Sacramento Bee (reg. required), which says that the state assembly has passed a bill which would limit textbooks to 200 pages:
AB 756 would force publishers to condense key ideas, basic [...]
Adapt this
USA Today looks at four big screen adaptations (including War of the Worlds and Everything is Illuminated) coming to the ‘plex near you this summer, and asks, with seeming innocence, how different the book is from the movie. Which is all pretty fun, and only a bit spoilery, but when they say “Not much”, you [...]
Way more reliable than the Kentucky Derby (possible Harry Potter spoiler)
Bookies in the UK are taking bets on which long-standing character will bite the dust in the next Harry Potter installment. But a flurry of bets from Bungay– the town in which, “coincidentally”, the publishers are located — has prompted a freeze on bets placed against the untimely demise of Albus Dumbledore, Hogwart’s headmaster.
Please, [...]
Now, an iPod to save your marriage
The NY Times asks, is listening to an audio book reading?
But audio books, once seen as a kind of oral CliffsNotes for reading lightweights, have seduced members of a literate but busy crowd by allowing them to read while doing something else. Digital audio that can be zapped onto an MP3 player is also [...]
Reading aloud, more reader reports
As an enabler of my continuing study of the pleasures of adults reading aloud, Maud Newton dot com regular reader Robert has consented to share his delightful account of a quarter century of reading aloud:
If you read aloud for half an hour a day on a regular basis, you will be surprised by how [...]
Until soon
That’s all from me for the week. Annie Reid, whose argument against Michael Jackson as Poe actually makes the concept strangely palatable, takes over tomorrow and most Fridays. Happy weekend, everybody.
One big happy world
The n+1 editors continue to parcel out parts of the second print issue. Up recently: a a reflection, at the start of a larger look at “The Intellectual Situation,” on the contemporary tyranny of happiness.
Aldous Huxley wrote a letter to George Orwell right after 1984 appeared, in which he praised the Big Brother vision [...]