Features & Reviews
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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 comprehension, depending on the medium?” David Gelernter, a professor of…
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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 in San Francisco. In the course of her opening remarks,…
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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 publication of John Cheever’s stories and novels has also been…
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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.
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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 or not Shakespeare collaborated with Thomas Kyd on The Reign…
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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 how Christopher Walken and those expensive, “absurdly heavy” monster suits…
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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 of Oxford University, later to be made a Dame on her…
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Horsley
Over at Open, the British writer Sebastian Horsley, who claims to have slept with 1,300 prostitutes, writes an article explaining his reasoning. Horsley dabbles on a plethora of topics pertaining to his love of prostitution and he implores us all…
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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 Stop.
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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) of the Oxford English Dictionary, writes about the challenges of defining…
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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” seem to have been sold out before they were on…
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Sherman Alexie on Kindles, Sexiness and Controversy
Sherman Alexie, whose novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was banned in some school districts, is no stranger to controversy. He’s recently come out with a new collection of stories and poetry called War Dances. In this…