Roadtripping.
paperhaus May 18th, 2008
pictures here. words and pictures here.
so tired I’m dizzy sitting still. must lie down. but you — how are you?
Archive for the 'online' Category
Snap judgments
paperhaus April 7th, 2008
Racial politics in Pittsburgh, from the MFA perspective. It’s like it’s the 70s. Or the 50s. Or maybe even the 30s.
Jane Smiley on Jennifer Weiner’ Certain Girls. She condescends about genre, then workshops the book in place of reviewing it: “If she had asked me, I would have said, ‘Tell the whole story from the kid’s perspective.’ That would have been the more daring and intriguing way to use the material.” The time for conversations about how Weiner should tell the story is over; a review ought to meet the completed, edited, published book on its own terms. Plus, Smiley obsesses about the cover over the contents, and the cover is pink (she’s — ahem — not a fan). How about we don’t judge a book by its pink cover? Or, while we’re at it, chicks by the brownness or whiteness of their skin? (see above).
Ed strikes back at Smiley. Look out.
And it turns out that this review would have run pretty much as is, no matter who was editing the book review at the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Under the weather (which is cold and wet)
paperhaus March 19th, 2008
Back in Pittsburgh, which is still in the grips of winter. I’m in the grips of the grippe, or some such virus coughed onto me on the transatlantic flight from Istanbul (thanks, guy).
There are few things more boring than a blogger blogging about why they’re not blogging. So my apologies.
Whatever traces of insights I can muster are on Jacket Copy. I’ll be back. Right after this fever breaks.
To ultimately blog
paperhaus February 11th, 2008
Today’s LA Times runs my review of Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wide Web. The book, edited by Sarah Boxer, can be thought of as an anthology of great web writing, focusing on 27 sites, all of which I found deserving, too.
The book itself is somewhat problematic, because gives so little attention to non-text media. There are no video blogs — which means the masterful zeFrank is left out; only one photoblog is included. Only a handful of the included blogs use photos in their posting, whereas many bloggers use pictures and youtube clips to tell their stories (why am I telling you this? you know this). All links are stripped from the entries, so what used to read as an engagement with a greater conversation sounds like straight narrative. The blogs’ designs are ignored (except for popping the header image at the top of each blog’s chapter), which seems to duck the issue of how much content and design come together on the web. And, in some sense, to miss many of the elements that make blogs blogs.
Nevertheless, the blogs are all wonderful to read. I couldn’t link to them in the paper, so I do so now, roughly in the order in which I enjoyed them.
El Guapo in DC - my favorite, and now the fellow has gone and stopped blogging. El Guapo, mucho amor.
Ironic Sans - words and graphics. I know, I could be more specific, right?
Under Odysseus - the Iliad and the Odyssey, from a soldier’s POV. “Oh, fuck the horse, Odysseus! Do you really think the Trojans are going to fall for that?!”
The Diary of Samuel Pepys - a genuine diary from an upper-class Brit in the 1660s, posted in blog form.
Go Fug Yourself - fashion snark at its best
Click Opera - Momus lives.
Cosmic Variance - musings on the universe from theoretical physicists, plus the occasional Sesame Street video.
The Old Hag - an iconic litblogger who doesn’t litblog as much as she used to.
The Rest is Noise - Alex Ross is still blogging, even though his book of this title is now on shelves
The Smoking Gun - FOIA geniuses. Goodbye, James Frey
Get Your War On - clip-art comics without mercy
Language Log - linguists online. watch your Ps and Qs.
How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons - life in Sweden, from a man who moved there for his husband, with a funnily relevant Swedish word or two at the end of each post.
julia {Here Be Hippogriffs} - a mommy blog that for a long time was a miscarriage blog. Commentors galore.
Eurotrash - blogging from the UK
Micrographica - teeny comics, about rats and turds.
Midnight in Iraq - Now that this soldier is home from Iraq, the blog is called The Midnight Hour.
Johnny I Hardly Knew You - a blog. Kinda arty.
Angry Black Bitch - says it all.
Nina Paley - the cartoonist has been chronicling her longlasting animation project, which was recently admitted to the Berlin International Film Festival.
Rootless Cosmopolitan - politics, with an internationalist take
The Becker-Posner Blog - a Nobel prizewinning economist vs. a federal court judge.
Radio Urugay - street photography
Matthew Yglesias - blogs for The Atlantic
It’s Raining Noodles - the far too cute diary of a 19-ish girl in Singapore
I Blame the Patriarchy - defunct now, except for the occasional election season rant
Raed in the Middle - a little bit middle eastern, a little bit American. Justifiably frustrated.
Amazon breakthrough novelist award
paperhaus February 7th, 2008
If you’ve been thinking you might want to read some of those Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award entries but don’t know where to start, may I recommend The Stars Here Are Mostly Planes, about a woman named Katie who’s been thrown out of graduate school for some unnamed offense:
We didn’t stop for food. It would have been unbearable to face each other over a table, so we all stared forward and resigned ourselves to packaged peanut butter crackers from my mother’s purse. Bright orange crackers with that synthetic cheese tang. Not their usual thing, for sure. In fact, my mother managed to nibble about half of one before she began to cry. The crying went unacknowledged for several miles. I ate my crackers without complaint. This is the kind of thing I would have to start enjoying, out here among the American masses where people own lawnmowers and eat squirtable cheese and struggle to insure their saturated hearts. I should be the one crying.
In the excerpt, Katie goes on to re-befriend (refriend?) a buddy from adolescence who now lives in semi-squalid, semi-alcoholic circumstances in Chicago. Her friend’s apartment “has carpeting like the pelt of a garage-sale Care Bear.” I can see it — and I’m not taking off my shoes. What’s more, the excerpt leaves as many questions as it answers (what did Katie do, exactly? what kind of trouble is she getting herself into now?) and it’s got that witty, sarcastic voice.
Katie is a painfully funny loser-in-denial the likes of Teabag in Home Land by Sam Lipsyte, or maybe Charles Ossining of TC Boyle’s Road to Wellville. So far, though, she’s only skirted unrespectability — she is a repressed Tennessee Presbyterian, after all.
Sarah Harris, who is witty (as you can see), smart and talented, is in my program at Pitt, and she is most deserving of your attention. In fact, consider this a shameless plug for her work. With 1,000 finalists, popularity snowballing to favor the most-rated, and Sarah’s work buried 8 pages deep within the general fiction category, I can’t help but tell you about how terrific it is. I urge you to read and rate The Stars Here Are Mostly Planes. You’ll love it. Vote for Sarah Harris in ‘08!
No longer in NYC
paperhaus February 4th, 2008
If I were in LA tonight, I’d go to this panel — with Mark Sarvas and Veronique de Turenne, among others — at Skylight Books on the new NBCC recommended list. More people talking about more good books is definitely a good thing. But what to call the list is turning out to be tough. The current name — its second — is Good Reads; given the popularity of the book-based social networking site GoodReads, it might be better called something else.
Instead I am in Pittsburgh, where the lack of food in the house is made up for by the plethora of papers to be graded. More soon.
36 hours, 374 comments
paperhaus January 29th, 2008
That’s what you get when you’re a literary agent and you ask people to post the first page of their WIPs. A prize — bragging rights and the choice of a 10 minute phone conversation with Nathan Bransford (said agent), one of his clients’ books, or a partial critique — goes to the winner. Nathan has this co-judge, so 400 or so first pages shouldn’t be too daunting — except that there are still 20 hours or so before the gates close. Post ‘em if you got ‘em.
A few bits of goodness
paperhaus January 25th, 2008
Go, Jessica! The Booknerd wins a sweet chunk of change for her business plan for a new independent bookstore in Brooklyn.
Condalmo says always carry a book with you. This is easy when you can’t stop hauling an enormous backpack around.
They’re reading Bless Me, Ultima in Marfa, Texas, a decidedly artistic town where David Kipen finds his photographic side.
Cecil’s PLAIN Janes are brilliantly drawn.
LAist is now twittering.
Obsessing the Mysteries at Sundance
paperhaus January 22nd, 2008
Shortly after beginning my graduate career at Pitt, the place where Michael Chabon was an English major undergrad, I was an extra in the film version of his book Mysteries of Pittsburgh. I was in the crowd in the punk club scene.
If you’ve read Mysteries of Pittsburgh and have a photographic memory, you’ll be saying, Erm, what punk club scene? And you’d be right. There isn’t one in the book, but there is one in the nipped and tucked screen version from Rawson Marshall Thurber. The man behind Dodgeball.
The book, set in Pittsburgh, is about recent college-grad Art who’s forestalling getting on with his life. He becomes friends with the elegant, Gatsby-like Arthur; begins dating Phlox, a quirky thrift store gal with a romantic streak; and hangs out with wealthy, preppy Jane and her Brando-ish, Id-man Cleveland. Phlox and Arthur are the two emotional poles in Art’s life, and he can’t float between them forever. Arthur is so important to the story that his excision from the film version makes me awfully skeptical.
But I’m also curious, curious, curious, and the film is finally playing now at Sundance. So I have gathered these early reviews of the movie The Mysteries of Pittsburgh from the people who got passes, waited in line (mostly bearded, carrying blackberries, according to MTV movies) and stayed for the duration.
IndieWIRE: beautiful, lacking narrative heft.
Hollywood Reporter: “reverential and smart.”
MTV: Rawson Marshall Thurber’s (do you really need all three names, dude?) direction is ham fisted.
LA Times blog The Envelope: “rooted” performances make this, in one executive’s words, “a real director’s movie.”
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “Pittsburgh looks stunning.”
After Elton: Quite a lot of the queer removed … as for the mystery, it’s a snoozer.
Cinematical: Dodgeball is a much better film than this one.
Nevertheless, I won’t be boycotting.
