Why Books Will Always Be With Us... along with almost everything else.
Umberto Eco goes all encyclopedic on us (but in a nice way!) summing up (and reopening) the themes of a lifetime of reading, writing and watching. Though I'm sure what he says about the Web and electronic media will be picked to bits here, I'd say that would be a perfect vindication of this extraordinary exercise in common sense. [
Via Arts & Letters Daily.]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Nov 26, 2003 -
14 comments
Is It Fiction If It Says "Fiction" On The Cover? Jorge Luis Borges brilliantly obscured fact and fiction presenting fiction as fact. Things seem to have swung round 180º and fact is now increasingly being sold as fiction. This certainly seems to be the case with Siri Hustvedt's
What I Loved. She's
Paul Auster's second
wife and... Well... now
even critics, like The New York Observer's
Joe Hagan have joined the fun, as Slate's
Katie Roiphe duly noted. Fact is now presented as fiction, without the traditional disguise of the
roman à clef. I think it's sad. In fact, it's an attempt on the life of imagination itself. Perhaps these authors who write memoirs masquerading as novels could be sued under the Trade Description Act? [
With thanks to the always excellent Literary Salon weblog. Thanks to ColdChef for pointing it out to me.]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Apr 23, 2003 -
28 comments
But...But Wallace Stevens Sounds So...English! Here's an extraordinary wealth of poets' voices from
The Factory School Digital Audio Archive. Natural curiosity, of course, kicks in with the prosaic question of what your favourite poets
sound like. Some are unexpectedly pompous; others are a bit Beverly Hillbillies; a few are steeped in real
gravitas. But why does reading a particular poet, in years and years of silence, make one suppose he or she hasn't a living voice like the rest of us?
Wallace Stevens and
Anne Sexton, for instance, surprised me immensely... [
Via wood's lot; requiring Real; a few links broken.]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Nov 16, 2002 -
17 comments
Is McSweeney's Sounding More And More Like Random House? Or is it just me? As a lifetime subscriber and fan of David Eggers, I'm sickened by the glib, shameless commercialism that now contaminates what was once an interesting website for new writers. What in the hell has happened? Or is the new book-peddling climate just another tiresome take on post-post-post modernism or, more likely, just blatant PR?
(Latest example inside)
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Oct 29, 2001 -
19 comments
Finally the Nobel Prize For Literature Gets It Right Jorge Luis Borges didn't get it. Neither did Marcel Proust. But today V.S.Naipaul, arguably the best writer in the English language since Samuel Beckett died, was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Doesn't this just show it helps not to be English(e.g. Irish, American, Indian or Trinidadian)to be able to write dry and timeless prose such as Sir Vidia's?
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Oct 11, 2001 -
29 comments
