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The Way We Live Now Archives

September 19, 2008

Argh. Really.

It not just Emoticon Day, it's Talk Like a Pirate Day. Please don't.

Posted at 11:22 AM in The Way We Live Now | | Comments (0)

Happy Emoticon Day :)?

Sept. 19, 1982: The electronic smiley face makes its debut. Interpersonal communication will never be the same again.

Posted at 10:36 AM in The Way We Live Now | | Comments (0)

September 18, 2008

The "ATM of Books"

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..."

Posted at 10:39 AM in The Way We Live Now | | Comments (0)

September 11, 2008

American Culture: Domesticity, Religion, and...Golf?

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?

Posted at 09:24 AM in The Way We Live Now | | Comments (0)

August 27, 2008

Twittering the Classics

I don't know about you, but I have been underwhelmed by Twitter as a vehicle for political coverage. Just because everybody's doing it doesn't mean it's a good idea. Does "twittering" sound like serious reportage to you?

Twittered literature, however--now there's an idea with legs. Call it twitlit. Maud Newton notes that, so far, we have twittered versions of Moby-Dick, Paradise Lost, and William Blake. Others?

Posted at 02:39 PM in The Way We Live Now | | Comments (0)

August 21, 2008

Conventional Wisdom

That's conventional as in conventions, "stultifying media spectacles where no one expects anything to happen." So says Chris Lehmann in a Q&A posted today by Harper's. Chris is a senior editor at CQ, the nonfiction editor of Booforum, and a very sharp guy. (He's also a good friend of mine from my Book World days, but I would flag this even if I didn't know him.)

From "Six Questions for Chris Lehmann on 'Moronic' Campaign Coverage and the 'Press Bubble' ":

6. But don't these narratives sometime become self-fulfilling prophecies?

Yes, and the distressing proof text of that argument is the 2000 election. It's not a stretch to say that the media largely defeated Al Gore. They burrowed in with these idiotic memes about him being uncomfortable in his own skin and about his claiming to have invented the Internet and Naomi Wolf advising him on how to be a he-man. Most of it wasn't even true, but that didn't matter because the press is so invested in its own narrative that it all becomes self-fulfilling; these things are repeated like mantras. In the same way, it never seems to matter that John McCain is the wealthier candidate and represents economic interests that are in many ways aristocratic; it's always Barack Obama who is the "elitist."

(Via Romanesko.)

Posted at 02:32 PM in The Way We Live Now | | Comments (0)

August 11, 2008

What Else Does She Do?

From the cover of the September issue of Lucky: "Milla Jovovich gets sexier and sexier."

Hey, it's a living.

Posted at 09:20 PM in The Way We Live Now | | Comments (0)

August 01, 2008

Kerplink-Kerplank-Kerplunk...

We're headed to Blueberries for Sal country--Maine, somewhere around here--for an actual vacation, so posting will be intermittent or possibly even nonexistent until Aug. 13, when we're back in swampy, mosquito-filled D.C. See you then!

Though the bear in Blueberries for Sal was imagined, the rest of the story was completely real. McCloskey has pictured his own daughter in Sal, and his late wife, Peggy, is the mother in the story. The kitchen illustrated in the endpapers is their own, although the fascinating old stove is like the one that was in Peggy McCloskey's mother's home in Hancock, Maine.

Posted at 07:34 AM in The Way We Live Now | | Comments (0)

May 01, 2008

Noises Off

Yesterday was International Anti-Noise Day. If only I'd known. Greg McNamee has a quiet meditation on our noisy lives over at Britannica Blog. Read it in a quiet place, if you can find one.

Posted at 03:06 PM in The Way We Live Now | | Comments (0)