The Kakutani Two-Step
“The Kakutani Two-Step. It works roughly like this: belittle a novelist’s finest work to date – preferably by tossing around unsupported adjectives…say, “arbitrary,” “flimsy,” and “unfinished.” Then, five or six…
Features & Reviews
9297 posts
The Brain and the E-Book
“Is there a difference in the way the brain takes in or absorbs information when it is presented electronically versus on paper? Does the reading experience change, from retention to…
Writing as a Radical Way of Living
Last Monday I had the good fortune to catch a talk given by Natasha Wimmer, translator of Roberto Bolaño’s novels the Savage Detectives and 2666, at the 111 Minna Gallery…
The Facts About John Cheever
The publication of a great writer’s collected works should be a cause for celebration, and or at least a measured reassessment. How disturbing, then, that the Library of America’s two-volume…
You Caught Me
Tao Lin’s characters are constantly connected, yet physically detached. The technology they live and breathe often seems less mechanical than its users.
Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd
The popular software Pl@giarism used to detect cheating students by comparing their papers against published texts was recently used by Sir Brian Vickers, an authority on Shakespeare, to determine whether…
Craig Schwartz Memories
On Friday night, and in preparation for Where the Wild Things Are, I rewatched Spike Jonze’s first feature, Being John Malkovitch. What struck me was not the film’s final childlike shots or…
The Scholars and the Pornographer
Dame Helen Gardner and George Newton Bowlin Laws—it seems funny, but very good to me to see them in the same sentence. I first saw Helen Gardner, brilliant scholar, denizen…
Notable San Francisco, This Week 10/12-10/18
This week in San Francisco home-ec gets a rock’n’roll makeover, Doug Dorst does multiple events, LitQuake kicks into full swing, and The Rumpus gets its groove on at The Rickshaw…
The Definition of Doing It
If you thought having sex was complicated, try defining it. Lexicographer and language expert Jesse Sheidlower, author of the famed F-Word, and currently serving as Editor at Large (North America)…
Notable New York, This Week 10/12-10/18
MONDAY, October 12, 2009 – SUNDAY, October 18, 2009 This week in New York, The New Yorker Festival hits town. And yes, while the “Humor Revue,” “About Towns,” and “Kaffeeklatches”…