archive

Miscellaneous

From Axess, a special issue on Reality Invades Fiction, including an editorial; and self-representational literature erases the boundaries between reality and fiction. Is reality being depicted or created? Instead of basing their identity on memory, today’s writers choose to construct new images of themselves; a strange sub-genre of 18th and 19th-century literature gave voices to objects. Critics have usually viewed this as the manifestation of a commodified world, but it may represent something deeper, springing from the philosophies of Locke and Burke, about the nature of property, and the inextricable mingling of the human self and the physical world; and the virtual world did not become the socially liberated universe that many people believed. At meeting places on the internet patterns of behaviour from the physical world are reproduced. And the virtual economy is becoming more closely linked to the real economy.

An interview with Elaine Dundy: "Gore Vidal introduced us. He said, 'Here are the two funniest women writers around.' We just looked at each other. It was a real conversation stopper". The hardest part of Sally Reus' job is, in her words, "trying to figure out what to do with all the sexy books".

Ten years ago, men's monthlies were making fortunes for publishers on both sides of the Atlantic. And FHM editor Ed Needham was at the heart of it. But, he says, the internet and trashy weeklies have destroyed all that: the party's over, and it's time to move on. Story of the blues: Rugged and hard-wearing, Levi's were the original American jeans. But they couldn't keep up with the designer ranges or the supermarket bargains, and have spent a decade in the doldrums. 

From Nextbook, Shalom Auslander on what he's going to write this summer: Time has arrived to rock the world of fiction. From The Observer Magazine, a special issue on How To... for the summer. 

A review of Deeper Than Reason: Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music, and Art by Jenefer Robinson (and chapter 4: "The Importance of Being Emotional"). Fifty years after the publication of Jack Kerouac's Beat novel On the Road, a new dispute has erupted around the famously peripatetic writer. 

Jay Rosen on how a blog is a little First Amendment machine. A review of The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun.

The first chapter from The Seven Hills of Rome: A Geological Tour of the Eternal City. A team of scholars traveled to a medieval library in Venice to create an ultra-precise 3-D copy of an ancient manuscript of Homer's Iliad — complete with every wrinkle, rip and imperfection — using a laser scanner mounted on a robot arm.

A review of Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See by Robert Kurson. A review of Sleeping Buddha: The Story of One Family's Past, and Afghanistan's Search for a Future by Hamida Ghafour. 

A review of Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws’ Bloody Reign by Stephan Talty; The Sack of Panama: Captain Morgan and the Battle for the Caribbean by Peter Earle; and The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down by Colin Woodard. A review of Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire and the Birth of Europe by William Rosen. A review of The Eye: A Natural History by Simon Ings and Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture by Stuart Clark. A review of A Guinea Pig's History of Biology: The Plants and Animals Who Taught Us the Facts of Life by Jim Endersby. A review of The Neddiad: How Neddie Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization by Daniel Manus Pinkwater.