paperhaus January 19th, 2009
That’s the picture. It can be found here, on Jacket Copy. It can also be found here, on the bozo’s website. Click to see the bozo’s version big, which shows how yes, the clouds and reflections are exactly the same.
Not that I am surprised some bozo runs around using other people’s photos. It’s what bloggers are accused of — irresponsibility, lack of journalistic ethics, deliberate un-awareness that people gots to get paid for their work. Or, at the very least, given credit. I’m all for Creative Commons. I let people use my pictures all the time — for free, but with credit. Think about it, bozo: did I drive out to Book Soup last Sunday for you? No, I did not. The picture is not yours.
What really galls me is that this pic ends up on LAist — credited to the bozo. LAist — where I WAS EDITOR — get the whole blogging thing. They provide photo credit. To, unfortunately, the bozo, who does not.
paperhaus July 7th, 2008
LA Times film reviewer Kenneth Turan writes about the risk of being wrong in the face of “the tyranny of the masterpiece.” I am kind of amazed by the comments — many vitriolic, from whocareswhatcriticssay to whydontyoureviewmorelatinofilms — because I think he’s entirely right. He may specify film, but he could just as easily be writing about book reviewing:
Whenever I get to moments such as these, I reread, as I did then, a passage from “The Immediate Experience” by critic Robert Warshow. “A man goes to the movies,” Warshow wrote. “The critic must be honest enough to admit that he is that man.”
By reminding us that anyone who writes about film is a person with idiosyncratic tastes before he or she is a critic, Warshow underscores how human and personal a job criticism is when it’s done right. If I didn’t appreciate “Amores Perros,” I had to say so (and in fact I did in a subsequent Sunday essay), even if it meant realizing sometime down the road that I’d missed the boat on the “Vertigo” of our time.
To pretend either to like it or that I didn’t really have an opinion, to pretend in effect that I was someone else to save face and be one of the gang, was simply unacceptable. Criticism is a lonely job, and in the final analysis, either you’re a gang of one or you’re nothing at all.
paperhaus February 26th, 2008
I’m very excited to be blogging over at the Los Angeles Times’ book blog, Jacket Copy, starting, well, yesterday. And continuing daily, along with contributions from the paper’s book review staff. So add to your rss reader, if you’re into that kind of thing.
Pinky’s Paperhaus will continue, with more about what’s up in Pittsburgh, grad school, teaching, non-book-related rants, and perhaps even a podcast or two. With authors. Who are good. Oh, yeah.
paperhaus May 12th, 2007
The LA Times reports on the book-critics-vs-litblogs kerfluffle with this nicely circumspect comment from Mark (TEV) Sarvas:
This was truly a false dichotomy. The two sides needn’t be in opposition, certainly not at this time. There is a vast ecosystem of information about books out there, and all of it needs our support.
Vast ecosystem, exactly.
Unfortunately, the article misattributes an earlier quote (to Ed instead of Colleen), and got another little fact wrong — a quote appearing on the NBCC blog, not in the Washington Post. Of course bloggers get peeved at this kind of oops! reporting, which distracts from the larger point.
Here’s some more of Josh Getlin’s article:
Indeed, more than at any time in the last 40 years, there is a bounty of news, features, criticism and gossip about books in newspapers, magazines and journals, blogs, radio and TV, podcasts and an ever-growing number of book clubs and festivals. It’s by all appearances a flourishing literary moment in a culture that traditionally values other forms of entertainment, and it raises the question: Why should two key elements of that mosaic, litbloggers and book reviewers, be trading shots at all?
Errors notwithstanding, the article is entirely worth reading. Now be nice, everyone. Don’t go throwing peanuts at each other at BEA.
PS How annoying is it that the NY Times has put their article about book blogging into the pay-only archive?
PPS Nice photo, Mark.