Archives for The Way We Live Now

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… Continue reading »

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… Continue reading »

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,… Continue reading »

From the cover of the September issue of Lucky: “Milla Jovovich gets sexier and sexier.” Hey, it’s a living.

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… Continue reading »