Scott Spencer is teaching this class at Columbia. It looks really cool.
Archive of posts filed under the Literature category.
This one is for fans of George V. Higgins
I don’t think there are many remaining fans of George V. Higgins: he died 20 years ago, his popularity had been in decline for decades, and his only bestseller was his first book, in 1970, which was also made into a well-received but not particularly popular or well-remembered movie. His writing was extremely mannered, and […]
Nicky Guerreiro and Ethan Simon write a Veronica Geng-level humor piece
I don’t usually go around recommending amusing things that are completely off topic to the blog, but this piece by Nicky Guerreiro and Ethan Simon was just too funny. It’s Veronica Geng-level quality, and I don’t say that lightly. As with Geng’s articles, you can laugh and be horrified at the same time. The story […]
Rasslin’ over writin’ teachin’
In an article entitled, “Our Students Can’t Write. We Have Ourselves to Blame,” college professor Robert Zaretsky writes: I, for one, spend my semesters picking through the salads tossed and served up as papers by my students. Consider the opening paragraph from a paper I received this semester. The student, who chose to write on […]
The revelation came while hearing a background music version of Iron Butterfly’s “In A Gadda Da Vida” at a Mr. Steak restaurant in Colorado
I just read “Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Musak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong,” written by Joseph Lanza and published in 1994, around the same time as V. Vale’s and Andrea Juno’s cult classic book, “Incredibly Strange Music.” Lanza’s book was witty, thought-provoking, and informative, and I liked it a lot. It reminds of the […]
This one’s for all the Veronica Geng fans out there . . .
I recently read Joseph Lanza’s excellent book from 1994, “Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Musak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong.” I’ll have more to say about this book in a future post, but for now I just had to share this bit I noticed on page 53: Lyndon Baines Johnson owned Muzak franchises in Austin […]
Counterfactual history and historical fiction
In her book, “Telling it like it wasn’t: The counterfactual imagination in history and fiction,” Catherine Gallagher usefully distinguishes between three sorts of historical speculation: 1. Counterfactual histories which are “generally analytical rather than narrative” and “indicate multiple possibilities that went unrealized rather than to trace out single historical alternative trajectories in detail.” 2. Alternate […]
Richard Hamming’s “The Art of Doing Science and Engineering”
I bought this charming book and started flipping through and reading bits here and there. It has a real mid-twentieth-century feel, reminiscent of Richard Feynman, Martin Gardner, and Hugo Steinhaus. It gives me some nostalgia, thinking about a time when it was expected that students could do all sorts of math—it kinda made me wish […]
Frank Sinatra (3) vs. Virginia Apgar; Julia Child advances
I happened to come across this one from a couple years ago and the whole thing made me laugh so hard that I thought I’d share again: My favorite comment from yesterday came from Ethan, who picked up on the public TV/radio connection and rated our two candidate speakers on their fundraising abilities. Very appropriate […]
Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics
Aki points us to this fun 1990s-style webpage from Jeff Miller. Last year we featured his page on word oddities and other trivia. You might also enjoy his page, Earliest Uses of Various Mathematical Symbols. Here’s an example: The equal symbol (=) was first used by Robert Recorde (c. 1510-1558) in 1557 in The Whetstone […]
What’s the best novel ever written by an 85-year-old?
I recently read A Legacy of Spies by John Le Carré. It was pretty good. Which is impressive given that the author wrote it when he was 85! OK, I’m not saying it was as good as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but I still liked it. It was done well, and if it featured some […]
Here is how you should title the next book you write.
I was talking with someone about book titles. I thought Red State Blue State Rich State Poor State was a good title, but the book did not sell as well as I hoped (not that I thought it would sell enough to make me lots of money; I’m just using sales here as a proxy […]
“Sponsored products related to this item”
I happened to look up the classic programming book Code Complete (fully, “Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, Second Edition,” by Steve McConnell) and I learned two amusing things when scrolling down the page: 1. It says, “You last purchased this item on September 9, 2004.” Wow! I bought it, probably on Bob […]
Meg Wolitzer and George V. Higgins
Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m a Meg Wolitzer fan (see here and here). During the past year or so I’ve been working my way through her earlier books, and I just finished Surrender, Dorothy, which was a quick and fun and thought-provoking read, maybe not quite as polished as some of […]
Luc Sante reviews books by Nick Hornby and Geoffrey O’Brien on pop music
From 2004. Worth a read, if you like this sort of thing, which I do, but I guess most of you don’t.
Creatures of their time: Shirley Jackson and John Campbell
I recently read two excellent biographies of literary figures: Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin, Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, by Alec Nevala-Lee. Franklin’s is a traditional literary biography, going through Jackson’s life in fine detail and focusing […]
“The Critic as Artist,” by Oscar Wilde
A commenter pointed us to The Critic as Artist, by Oscar Wilde. I’d never heard of this story before, so I clicked on the link and read it, and it was excellent. Some bits: Ernest: But, seriously speaking, what is the use of art-criticism? Why cannot the artist be left alone, to create a new […]
There is only one reality (and we cannot demand consistency from any other)
I bought The Shadow of the Torturer when it came out in paperback, I guess in response to a positive review. I found it kinda difficult to read, but I wanted to know what would happen next, so I bought volumes 2, 3, and 4 when they came out too. By the time I was […]
The norm of entertainment
Someone pointed me to a comment that a psychology researcher wrote that he almost never reads our blog and that it “too quickly bores me.” That’s ok. I’m sure that lots of people have stumbled upon our blog, one way or another, and have been bored by it. We don’t have a niche audience, exactly; […]
Tessa Hadley on John Updike
Lots to think about here. To start with, this is the first New Yorker fiction podcast I’ve heard where they actually criticize the author instead of just celebrating him and saying how perfect the story is. This time, they went right at it, with the interviewer, Deborah Treisman, passing along some criticisms of Updike and […]