Jay McInerney writing in the Observer about The Great Gatsby (Observer):
T
he Great Gatsby seems to be enjoying a moment, what with the success of the New York production of
Gatz, opening in London
(described by America's leading theatre critic Ben Brantley as "The
most remarkable achievement in theatre not only of this year but also of
this decade"), and the release later this year of Baz Luhrman's $120m
film version. The book was little noticed on your side of the Atlantic
on its initial publication. Collins, which had published the English
editions of
F Scott Fitzgerald's
first two novels, rejected it outright, and the Chatto and Windus
edition failed to arouse much enthusiasm, critical or commercial, when
it was published in London in 1926. To be fair, the novel hadn't been a
smash hit in the States the year before, selling less than his two
previous novels and falling well short of the expectations of Fitzgerald
and his publisher, despite some very good reviews.
TS Eliot
declared: "In fact, it seems to me the first step American fiction has
taken since Henry James." And yet, many of the 23,000 copies printed in
1925 were gathering dust in the Scribner's warehouse when Fitzgerald
died in obscurity in Hollywood 15 years later.
At that time, Gatsby seemed like the relic of an age most
wanted to forget. In the succeeding years, Fitzgerald's slim tale of the
jazz age became the most celebrated and beloved novel in the American
canon. It's more than an American classic; it's become a defining
document of the national psyche, a creation myth, the Rosetta Stone of
the American dream. And yet all the attempts to adapt it to stage and
screen have only served to illustrate its fragility and its flaws.
Fitzgerald's prose somehow elevates a lurid and underdeveloped narrative
to the level of myth.
How popular are your tweets? Take a lesson from some researchers (The Atlantic):
The algorithm comes courtesy of
a fascinating paper [pdf]
from UCLA and Hewlett-Packard's HP Labs. The researchers Roja Bandari,
Sitram Asur, and Bernardo Huberman teamed up to try to predict the
popularity -- which is to say, the spreadability -- of news-based
tweets. While previous work has relied on tweets' early performance to
predict their popularity over their remaining lifespan, Bandari et al
focused on predicting tweets' popularity
even before they become
tweets in the first place. The researchers have developed a tool that
allows Twitterers -- and, in particular, news organizations -- to
calibrate their tweets in advance of their posting, creating content
that's optimized for maximum attention and impact. That tool allows for
the forecasting of a tweeted article's popularity with a remarkable 84
percent accuracy.
An anthology of contemporary Taliban poetry is being published (The Atlantic)
We understand where these criticisms are coming from. Troops from 50
different countries are currently fighting in Afghanistan, and each week
brings news of more injured and dead. At the same time, though, we
would make a distinction between sympathy and empathy. This collection
was not complied to garner sympathy for the Taliban. What it does give
the reader is a new window on an amorphous group, possibly allowing one
to empathize with the particular author of a poem, letting one see the
world through their eyes, should one want to do so. For this collection,
we felt these songs brought something new to the discussion, and added a
perspective on where those who associate themselves with the movement
are coming from. From our own experience, we knew how important and
resonant these songs were for people living in Afghanistan, and we
thought it would be useful to present these to a broader community of
scholars, poets and the general public.
And a somewhat related opinion piece in Salon about the need to read books-with a question mark (Salon):
Essentially we haven’t changed since the beginning of our histories.
We are the same erect apes that a few million years ago discovered in a
piece of rock or wood instruments of battle, while at the same time
stamping on cave walls bucolic images of daily life and the revelatory
palms of our hands. We are like the young Alexander who, on the one
hand, dreamt of bloody wars of conquest and, on the other, always
carried with him Homer’s books that spoke of the suffering caused by war
and the longing for Ithaca. Like the Greeks, we allow ourselves to be
governed by sick and greedy individuals for whom death is unimportant
because it happens to others, and in book after book we attempt to put
into words our profound conviction that it should not be so. All our
acts (even amorous acts) are violent and all our arts (even those that
describe such acts) contradict that violence. Our world exists in the
tension between these two states.
Today, as we witness absurd wars
wished upon us less from a desire for justice than from economic lust,
our books may perhaps help to remind us that divisions between the good
and the bad, just and unjust, them and us, is far less clear than
political speeches make them out to be. The reality of literature (which
ultimately holds the little wisdom allowed us) is intimately ambiguous,
exists in a vast spectrum of tones and colours, is fragmented,
ever-changing, never sides entirely with anyone, however heroic the
character may seem. In our literary knowledge of the world, we intuit
that even God is not unimpeachable; far less our beloved Andromaque,
Parzifal, Alice, Candide, Bartleby, Gregor Samsa, Alonso Quijano.
From the Globe and Mail a news item about some teen inmates encouraged to write about their experiences in graphic novel form (GandM)
The result is In and Out, a graphic novel illustrated by
Meghan Bell, a professional artist outside the system, based on a story
line developed by the small group of 16-to-19-year-old inmates.
It
follows the experiences of a young man who fights to get his life on
the right track, while his brother and friends are trying to pull him
back into a continued life of crime.
The goal of the project, Ms.
Creedon said, was to both encourage literacy and find a way for repeat
offenders to get across to their peers that there is a way to get out
and stay out.
“They refer to themselves as frequent flyers,” Ms. Creedon said. “They get out and then come right back in ... it is tragic.”
She
said the recidivism rate is in a large part due to the fact most young
offenders have such poor literacy skills that they can’t get jobs.
California takes another big step towards open education in higher ed:
Educators say they want faster, more precise results for online searches of educational content.
How Dorothy Parker Came To Rest In Baltimore
OCLC Picks Jack Blount, former Dynix Executive, as New CEO -
