May 2011
9 posts
Jonathan Franzen, Elif Batuman, and the MFA Debate
The internet lit blog topic du jour is Jonathan Franzen’s op-ed in the New York Times, which distills his Kenyon College commencement address. Franzen sets up a clean division between the rewards of technology (the narcotizing ease of its satisfactions, one might say) and the hard-earned rewards of real relationships (they are difficult, but more meaningful!), and urges us to make the harder...
Falling Asleep to BBC
I’m just going to put in a word here for listening to the BBC World Service just before bed, something I do every night. Even if you don’t have an HD radio and a nearby station that plays the World Service on one of its channels, you can get the World Service on your laptop, which you can place conveniently by your bed, or in your bed, as I often do. Yes, it may be conventionally...
The Wisdom of Elif Batuman's Blog Headers
“If writing is not a tearing of the self toward the other within a confession of infinite separation… then it destroys itself.” — Jacques Derrida
Mystery Solved!
Read the post below to learn about The Mystery of The Book That Never Came, then come back to read the solution.
Solution to the Mystery of the Book That Never Came:
It turns out I have two accounts. One under a username, and one under my e-mail address. They both have different account histories, but otherwise they are the same.
In other words, for some time now, there have apparently been...
This Kind of Thing is Always Happening
The week before last I ordered “A Country Called Amreeka,” Alia Malek’s re-telling of American history through Arab-American eyes.
Or so I thought. Every day I checked the foyer of my building, hoping to find the brown Powell’s envelope on top of the mailbox. Every every day it wasn’t there. Finally, today, I checked into the situation. Just before heading home, I...
Summer Project
Lately I’ve been reading about the revolution in Tunisia, following that country’s transition to democratic rule, and taking French classes at the Alliance Francaise. I’m hoping to write some journalism and non-fiction essays about the situation in Tunisia, and I may even travel to Tunisia for the July 24 Constitutional Assembly elections if I can get my act together and it seems...
"Caves of Our Fathers"
Toledo Smith speaks from the heart about the dream of his father, Montana Smith, that there would one day be a Museum of Unnatural History and that it would have a cave. Ross Arbes wrote a fantastic speech that I delivered at the grand opening of the cave in the museum at 826DC in Columbia Heights.
The poet and writer Sandra Beasley took this really fun photograph. Make sure to check out her...
bin Laden Day
Maybe it was the pre-dawn party at the White House, or the weird sense of community and closure, but I spent the day thinking May 2 would be declared a national holiday. I can see it now — bin Laden Day.
It will be an obligatory holiday no one will quite know how to celebrate. “Any plans for bin Laden Day?” friends will ask, and the question will prompt an awkward silence, or...
On Bin Laden
I fell asleep around 10:30 with the BBC World Service playing on my laptop, which was resting on my bedside table, and I woke up some time later — I don’t know when — to the voice of Dan Damon (I think it was him) saying “Osama bin Laden is dead. The United States has recovered his body. We go now to the White House, where President Obama is preparing to speak.”
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