Read some new fiction of mine in The Collagist, an excellent new online mag from Dzanc Books.
Details and some congressional crowing here. (Note to Rep. Cohen's office: Proofread the website headlines a little more closely.) Publishers and authors cheer.
I did a long analysis for the Chronicle back in June on the subject of libel tourism, and it's good to see some legislative attention being paid to the issue. Now, back to that pesky economic crisis.
Cloud tagging with a purpose: "a visual historiography of an evolving discipline." Fun to play with, and maybe even illuminating, if you pay attention.
(Via HNN.)
Publishers Marketplace has rolled out the beta version of a bookstore locator. Just select a state or metro area and the program pulls up local results. It's not perfect or complete--it only lists stores selling new books, so there's no listing for my favorite nearby used-book destination, Books for America--but it has the makings of a nifty tool for the booklover on the move.
(Via.)
D.C. Noir 2: The Classics got a nice write-up in the Post yesterday. For obvious reasons I'm predisposed to like the book, and it sounds like there's plenty to like:
Two of the finest stories rely on a collision of cultures. Edward P. Jones's masterful "A Rich Man" follows a womanizing senior citizen's descent into a maelstrom of trouble with a younger generation that he fails, tragically, to understand. Elizabeth Hand's "Wonderwall" captures with visceral immediacy the landscape of Southwest Washington in the 1970s as experienced by artsy college students from suburban Maryland: "gunshots, sirens, the faint bass throb from funk bands at the Washington Coliseum, the ceaseless boom and echo of trains uncoupling in the railyards that extended from Union Station."
That sounds like D.C., baby.
Don't yawn. This is critical stuff for publishers who rely on textbooks as a source of revenue and for the students who are less and less willing to pay big bucks for those textbooks.
A couple of weeks ago, I did a story for the Chronicle about plummeting textbook sales at university presses. It caught the attention of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has done a follow-up. As they kinda sorta admit, it borrows freely from my reporting (and also from my Chron colleague Jeff Young's coverage of textbook piracy).
Still, I'm glad to see this issue get picked up by mainstream papers, because ithe impact goes far beyond the murkier realms of academe, and it's only going to get more interesting as students and professors figure out more ways to get around the old publishing models. More thoughts on that TK, as we say in the trade.
One of David Foster Wallace's students has posted a copy of the syllabus Wallace used to teach an undergrad course on "Literary Interpretation." The document makes more honest literary sense than most of the overbearing, over-reaching tributes we've had thrown at us since Wallace's suicide:
The goals of this section of E67 are to survey certain important forms of modern literature—short stories, novels, poems—and to introduce you to some techniques for achieving a critical appreciation of literary art. "Critical appreciation" means having smart, sophisticated reasons for liking whatever literature you like, and being able to articulate those reasons to other people, especially in writing. Vital for critical appreciation is the ability to "interpret" a piece of literature, which basically means coming up with a cogent, interesting account of what a piece of lit means, what it's trying to do to/for the reader, what technical choices the author's made in order to achieve the effects she wants, and so on. As you can probably anticipate, the whole thing gets very complicated and abstract and hard, which is one reason why entire college departments are devoted to studying and interpreting literature.
(Via.)
It's the sound of word lovers mobilizing to save their favorite bits of under-used English from the dustbin of diction. From the Times (U.K.):
Dictionary compilers at Collins have decided that the word list for the forthcoming edition of its largest volume is embrangled with words so obscure that they are linguistic recrement. Such words, they say, must be exuviated abstergently to make room for modern additions that will act as a roborant for the book.
Translation: These words are being booted out of Collins's dictionary to make room for words that everybody still uses.
You can help. The Times has organized a voting campaign, asking readers to pick their favorite from a list of 24 threatened words. Some British celebs have already joined the cause:
Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate, will support skirr, a word he has occasionally used to describe the sound of beating wings. "I’m a very keen bird-watcher," he told The Times. "Birders do use this word from time to time so I thought it might have a better chance than others, such as vilipend. I saw 10,000 knot flying over The Wash in the evening recently and the noise they made was a skirring noise."
The National Trust has been assessing the damage that Gustav and Ike inflicted on historic structures in Galveston and elsewhere (even as far north as Plano, Illinois). More upsetting is this news from New Orleans:
The Trust also reports increased pressure from the Nagin administration in New Orleans to demolish historic properties damaged by Hurricane Katrina. In the wake of Hurricane Gustav, the mayor has suspended review of historic structures by the Neighborhood Conservation District Committee (NCDC), a citizens' group formed to ensure that salvageable historic properties are preserved. The mayor argued that review might "hinder, or delay necessary action in coping with the emergency." The Trust notes that properties judged to be in imminent danger of collapse are already exempt from NCDC review.
At least it looks as though Mayor Nagin has had second thoughts about his order, although from this report I can't tell whether the structures already condemned under that order will get a reprieve.
(Via the AHA Today blog.)
Hoist a pint to the pub sign, now an endangered species:
The painted pub sign, one of the oldest popular visual arts traditions in Britain, is locked in decline. That is the fear of conservationists who hope to alert pub chains and breweries to a "catastrophic" loss of the traditional skills involved and a failure to preserve a heritage that dates back to Roman times."
Want to help? Drink independent:
The growing corporate ownership of public houses across the British Isles has led to the standardisation of what is on offer, both inside and outside the bar. The situation has worsened in the past five years because of the increasing number of pub closures. Figures compiled by the Campaign for Real Ale show that an average of 57 pubs shut permanently every month.
(Via.)
Surprise us sometime by not putting Philip Roth's latest on the cover of the section. It would be okay. Really.
(For yesterday's section, I'd have gone with either the review of Asne Seierstad's The Angel of Grozny or the review of Marilynne Robinson's Home. Either would have been a more refreshing choice than Indigation.)
It not just Emoticon Day, it's Talk Like a Pirate Day. Please don't.
The Economist reviews Henry Hitchings's The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English:
...a book which is really about the way the English language has roamed the world helping itself liberally to words, absorbing them, forgetting where they came from, and moving on with an ever-growing load of exotics, crossbreeds and subtly shaded near-synonyms. It is also about migrations within the language's own borders, about upward and downward mobility, about words losing their roots, turning up in new surroundings, or lying in wait, like "duvet" which was mentioned by Samuel Johnson, for their moment.
I want this book.
Sept. 19, 1982: The electronic smiley face makes its debut. Interpersonal communication will never be the same again.
A new, occasional feature for those I-got-the-diction-blues days, which get more frequent the more time I spend online.
Today's entries: access, process, networked, friend (as a verb).
The Espresso Book Machine, coming soon to a library near you? In 5-7 minutes, the Espresso will deliver a printed-and-bound copy of any book you like (as long as it's out of copyright and available in digital form through a collection the machine can access).
The Espresso's manufacturer, On Demand Books*, has big dreams for it, imagining a global network of machines in libraries and bookstores. "What Gutenberg’s press did for Europe in the 15th century, digitization and the Espresso Book Machine will do for the world tomorrow."
Okay then! Still, a cool idea. More love for the Espresso here and here.
*On Demand Books was co-founded by Jason Epstein, formerly editorial director of Random House, and a founder of the New York Review of Books. (I worked for his ex-wife, Barbara Epstein, at the NYRB long ago, but that's a story for another time.) The On Demand site links to a letter he wrote to the WSJ in May. In it, he predicts a print-rich POD future in which "a multilingual, deep backlist will reside on Web sites of related interest, as well as with aggregators--and be transmitted on demand as swiftly as email..."
Should research conducted with federal dollars be made freely available to the public after it's published? The NIH says yes. Publishers say not so fast.
Last week, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Calif.) introduced a bill, H.R. 6845 or the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, that would make it a lot harder for federal agencies to require copyright holders to make federally funded research available to the public post-publication. Although the current NIH public-access policy is the bill's obvious target, it could apply to any federal agency funding any kind of research, scientific or otherwise.
I covered a hearing on the bill last week. It got pretty dramatic. Favorite moment: a copyright expert asking whether we really want "the hairy snout of government" poking around in the publishing biz.
Do we? You be the judge. My Chronicle of Higher Ed coverage here, Library Journal coverage here. Peter Suber has been covering the bill and reactions to it on his Open Access News blog, including one post in which he quotes from my story. It looks like not much more will happen with the bill this fall, but this is one to keep an eye on.
My former colleagues over at the Washington Post Book World are now blogging daily. Check it.
The BBC has a thoroughly depressing (but worth reading) article on its website today about how human activity is making the oceans too noisy for dolphins and whales to communicate, with serious repercussions for their breeding-and-feeding habits. The Beeb reports on a new report from IFAW, the International Fund for Animal Welfare:
Noise generated by ships' engines and propellers, and by seismic airguns used in oil and gas exploration, produce a range of frequencies that can interfere with both these groups of species, IFAW concludes.
Its report--Ocean Noise: Turn it down--cites research showing that the effective range of blue whales' calls is only about one-tenth of what it was before the era of engine-driven commercial shipping.
Quiet down, people. We could use more peace and quiet on land, too.
(Via The Book Bench, "Leviathan Lost")
I don't have anything useful to say about the suicide of David Foster Wallace, news of which has been widely if sketchily reported in the last 24 hours, except to say that it rattled me more than I'd have expected, and that most of my questions about it will likely never be answered. From my Book World days I have a galley of Infinite Jest signed by Wallace, and it's an odd thing to hold it now and look at a name written in a dead man's hand.
The Howling Fantods website has been collecting blogospheric and MSM reactions, obits, and commentary. It's fascinating, in a somber way, to see how news like this spreads and what kinds of reactions it provokes. Worth reading if Wallace meant something to you, or if you're curious about how the culture tries to take the measure of a writer.
Is Ambrose Bierce, a k a the Broad-Gauge Gossip, really bidding farewell to the blogosphere? In a few short weeks, the pseudonymous and apparently well-connected blogger has kicked up quite a stir with his/her reports on the tenure-and promotion racket at high-profile history departments.
Say it ain't so, A.B. Don't let a few naysayers force you out of the game.
WASHINGTON—The National Endowment for the Arts announced Monday that it has begun construction on a $1.3 billion, 14-line lyric poem—its largest investment in the nation's aesthetic- industrial complex since the $850 million interpretive-dance budget of 1985.
"America's metaphors have become strained beyond recognition, our nation's verses are severely overwrought, and if one merely examines the internal logic of some of these archaic poems, they are in danger of completely falling apart," said the project's head stanza foreman Dana Gioia. "We need to make sure America's poems remain the biggest, best-designed, best-funded poems in the world."
On a more serious note: Gioia announced today that he's stepping down as the NEA's chairman in January, two years ahead of schedule.
Yup, if Salman Rushdie, editor of this year's Best American Short Stories, is to be believed:
Q.What do the themes in this year's best stories show about American culture today?
A. There's clearly an interest in domestic subjects, religious subjects, and, most mysteriously, in the game of golf. But there were enough wilder, more imaginative fictions to satisfy my taste for that kind of thing.
Yeah, we're all about the golf, we are. Just ask anybody.
Then again, ask a dumb question....
Hey, has anybody mentioned that Rushdie didn't make the shortlist for the Booker this year?
Bored already by the Booker shortlist? I am. The Guardian (though no stranger to Booker coverage) has some literary relief. They asked naturalist Esther Woolfson for a personal list of "Top 10 birds in fact and fiction." In fiction, she says, she likes "a hint of birds: a bird as subsidiary character, as metaphor or symbol."
Number one on her list is a D.C. book--nonfiction--that I'm sorry I haven't known about: Spring in Washington, by Louis J. Halle. Wollfson describes him as "an extraordinary man, a naturalist and a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department"--one of those quiet enthusiasts you find here.
Spring in Washington, written about the spring of 1945, is an appreciation of the minutiae of life after the end of war, what Halle describes as "snatching the passing moment and examining it for signs of eternity"...
"This again is fresh earth and fresh sky. Look up when you reach Washington's home at Mount Vernon and, like as not, you will see one or several American eagles soaring against the blue. They do duty for bronze eagles over Washington's tomb"....
Reading this book makes me wonder what has changed in the natural landscape of Washington, what has been lost over the 60 odd years, what has diminished.
I wonder too. I am going to buy a copy of Halle's book and find out.
She's an Argiope aurantia, also known as a writing spider because of the stabilimenta or zig-zag patterns the species weaves into its webs. You can see some of them in the pic.
My son spotted her on our lavender plant a few weeks ago, and she's come to be kind of a family friend. But I haven't seen her since Hurricane Hanna blew through last weekend. I hope she's okay. The lavender looks lonely without her.
My review of Tim Butcher's Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart runs in the Sept./Oct./Nov. issue of Bookforum. Butcher was the Telegraph's Africa correspondent when he set out, in 2004, to retrace H.M. Stanley's 1874-77 journey along the Congo River. It's almost as dangerous a trip now as it was back then, and it takes guts to attempt it.
The corruption, misery, and decay that Butcher encountered along the way makes for eye-opening reading about what's happened to the country post-independence. (It's not pretty.) But I had some quarrels with the book as travel lit. A bad trip isn't the same thing as a good story. More worrisome to me was Butcher's decision, at the end of the book, to issue a continent-wide call for "the people of Africa" to take responsibility for their postcolonial problems. Just how far have we come since the imperialist generalizations of 130 years ago?
Not everyone has been hit hard, but the latest numbers have got many people rattled. What's causing the decline, which has picked up speed in the last couple of months? It's not just the economy. Is it textbook piracy? The used-book market? The misuse of course-management software, which profs sometimes use to download chapters to give to their students? I talked to some university-press folks to find out more.
N.B. Before you start blaming high textbook prices, please note that we're not talking about those back-breakers that commercial publishers inflict on students for hundreds of dollars. "Textbooks," in this case, means monographs adopted as course reading--and monographs are the lifeblood of university presses.
Do you ever get the feeling that bookers for TV news shows need to expand their rolodexes a wee bit, especially when they're in need of historians to put the current election in a little bit o' perspective? Why is it always Michael Beschloss, Michael Beschloss, and Michael Beschloss?
And where, some of us have wondered, are the ladies--Doris Kearns Goodwin notwithstanding? ( I don't insist on absolute gender parity, but some diversity would be refreshing.) Ambrose Bierce, whose blog I mentioned yesterday, has some thoughts on the glass ceiling of punditry, and draws up a list of female scholars who could help break it.
Want to find out who's in at Princeton, who's out at "Leland Stanford Junior University"? Itching to know which history departments are imploding and which are on the rise? Ambrose Bierce has the inside scoop at the Broad-Gauge Gossip. Catch him/her now before someone decides to out the pseudonymous blogger.
So reports AHA Today, the American Historical Association's blog (which I highly recommend checking out if you haven't already):
In a ruling issued August 26th, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ordered the release of most of the grand jury testimony from the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and a related case against Abraham Brothman and Miriam Moskowitz. The release will cast fresh light on one of the most celebrated spying cases of the Cold War; allowing scholars and journalists to explore the relationship between citizens and the government in that period.
...over at A Historian's Craft. You can keep up via RSS feed. (Which reminds me--you can sign up for my feed, too.)
This reminds me of the literary geospaces projects I wrote about for the Chronicle not long ago. This digital humanities stuff has legs.
(Via HNN.)
The Magnetic Fields got it right. D.C. is more than just the grand old seat (or a swamp of iniquity) to some of us. As I probably tell people too often, I grew up in Washington, and I feel obliged to remind people from time to time that "inside the Beltway" means something very different to those of us who actually live here.
So, in this election season, when politicians say "Washington" the way others say "child molester," I'd like to point out a few of my favorite things about this town. I've added a section of D.C. links to the site--mostly literary, cultural, and historical--and I'll add more as they occur to me. Suggestions welcome.
