Tuesday, September 20, 2011
By LESLIE SCRIVENER [Toronto Star] – On Felton Place, a residential street in Madison, Wis., there is a very small library holding about 20 books. Not much bigger than a bird house, the little library is of rustic construction. A door adds to the charm and to the notion that the books are to be valued and protected.
It belongs to retired professor Marshall Cook and his wife Ellen. Within three kilometres of their house, there are a dozen more little libraries, each with an ever-changing assortment of books.
Look at the titles. There’s something for everyone. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I’m a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson, Pippi in the South Seas by Astrid Lindgren and even Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul IV.
It’s based on the pay it forward principle… Continue reading “• Shelf life: just check out these items.” »
Monday, September 19, 2011
By PAULA MARANTZ COHEN [Chronicle of Higher Education] – The case of Jack the Ripper has long captivated amateur true-crime enthusiasts. Now scholars too have become enthralled by him, but why?
Under the slayer’s sway ourselves, Fred J. Abbate, a philosopher, and I, a literary critic, wanted to find out. We took popular interest in Jack the Ripper to be a given. Buffs are everywhere, populating groups like the Whitechapel Society and Internet sites like the JTR Forums and Casebook: Jack the Ripper. Yet work on the case had long been dominated by these so-called Ripperologists, with academic involvement lagging behind. Despite some scholarly work going back 25 years, only in the past 10 (with two dissertations listed in the MLA Bibliography in the past three) has an academic literature begun to accumulate as the cultural turn in the humanities intersected with a widespread interest in true crime. Jack the Ripper is arguably the first publicly recognized “serial killer” (though the term was not coined until the 1970s), and the Whitechapel murders—as the Ripper case is decorously known—may be the first modern true-crime narrative. Continue reading “• Putting a scholarly value on a signed Ripper murder.” »
Friday, September 16, 2011
By LEROY HUIZENGA [First Things] – It’s an age of widespread cultural and ecclesial malaise: the State encroaches ever more into the affairs of the church; the clergy is indolent and ineffective, oft corrupt and unchaste; the laity is poorly catechized; and Gnosticism advances. It’s the twelfth century, into which a Teutonic prophetess stepped, prepared to confront the spirits of the age with visions from on high. Nihil sub sole novum, and thus it’s worth considering on the occasion of St. Hildegard of Bingen’s feast day (tomorrow, Saturday, September 17) how her sauce for medieval geese might go well with our modern ganders. Continue reading “• Hildegard of Bingen: nobody’s singing nun.” »
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
By JUSTIN McGUIRK [The Guardian] – With its deceptive surfaces and furniture that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to, postmodernism is not just the backdrop to but a metaphor for unbridled capitalism, where a plump balance sheet conceals all manner of sins and where marble-effect formica hides chipboard. But was postmodernism really so bad?
Already we’re in cliche territory. Continue reading “• The nice thing about cliché territory? It’s so modern!” »
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
By JEREMY WARNER [Daily Telegraph] – After the calamity of the past three years, it seems clear enough that something had to be done. It is also the case that bankers perhaps don’t deserve a hearing given the disastrous costs their recklessness has imposed on society. Yet I fear that in what is admittedly a perfectly understandable attempt to bulletproof the banking system against future crises, we are rushing headlong into an extreme regulatory over-reaction that will have some very negative long-term consequences for the UK economy.
Continue reading “• Regulating mad dogs and English bankers.” »
Sunday, September 11, 2011
By SUSAN RIFE [The Ticket/Sarasota Herald-Tribune] – Airplane Novel (Raw Dog Screaming Press, $14.95) tells the story of the destruction of the World Trade Center through the “eyes,” so to speak, of the South Tower, outlining the history and future of the Twin Towers to the moments of their collapse…
When it came to the writing, he “really felt more like an actor than a writer,” [Paul] Toth said. “I had to put myself in the zone of being a building. Once I got there, when I had to make a decision, it was almost as if the building answered them for me. I began to think not so much as a person, but at least subtract that as much as possible, which allowed some of the stranger aspects.”
Finding an identity for the South Tower came out of an interview Toth did with an architect who had worked on the towers.
Continue reading “• The South Tower: Cool, not disengaged, but slightly detached.” »
Friday, September 9, 2011
[From the official announcement release] – WE ARE PLEASED TO announce the winners of the 2011 Trollope Prize in its inaugural year at the University of Kansas.
The winner of the graduate competition is “The Intensive and Extensive Worlds of Anthony Trollope’s Framley Parsonage,” written by Lucy Sheehan, a graduate student at Columbia University. Sheehan will receive a $2000 honorarium as well as a hardback copy of one of Trollope’s novels. In addition, her essay will be published by The Fortnightly Review, which has also provided an additional monetary reward. The judges noted that Sheehan’s essay successfully “enters the current critical conversation about the nature and effects of space and place in Victorian literary texts, especially how portrayals of space represent or embody ethical positions,” and praised it as a “well-researched, readable, and insightful” text. Continue reading “• First Trollope Prize-winning essays announced.” »
Friday, September 9, 2011
By WILL WILES [Cabinet Magazine] – How do you design a utopia? In 1972, John B. Calhoun detailed the specifications of his Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice: a practical utopia built in the laboratory. Every aspect of Universe 25—as this particular model was called—was pitched to cater for the well-being of its rodent residents and increase their lifespan. The Universe took the form of a tank, 101 inches square, enclosed by walls 54 inches high. The first 37 inches of wall was structured so the mice could climb up, but they were prevented from escaping by 17 inches of bare wall above. Each wall had sixteen vertical mesh tunnels—call them stairwells—soldered to it. Four horizontal corridors opened off each stairwell, each leading to four nesting boxes. That means 256 boxes in total, each capable of housing fifteen mice. There was abundant clean food, water, and nesting material. The Universe was cleaned every four to eight weeks. There were no predators, the temperature was kept at a steady 68°F, and the mice were a disease-free elite selected from the National Institutes of Health’s breeding colony. Heaven.
Continue reading “• To solve the problem of overpopulation, you have to go beyond density to imagination.” »
Thursday, September 8, 2011
By CLAYTON LORD [Arts Journal Blogs] – This research, one of the most comprehensive surveys of social media use in arts organizations ever conducted, is fascinating in that it provides a valuable snapshot of how the arts and cultural center is using social media to engage artsgoing audiences across the country…
Top-level findings from the research include:
• All told, the 207 arts organizations in the study utilize over twenty networking platforms. Continue reading “• The fine art of the engaging tweet.” »
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
[Official announcement] – Julian Barnes, Carol Birch, Patrick deWitt, Esi Edugyan, Stephen Kelman and A.D. Miller are today, Tuesday 6 September, announced as the six shortlisted authors for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
Continue reading “• Why no one shortlists Man Booker’s official announcements.” »
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
By SIMON NIXON [Wall Street Journal] – Germany and its Northern European allies believe only intense market pressure can force weak economies to cut spending and improve competitiveness. But Greece has learned that whenever the crisis in Europe’s periphery threatens to overwhelm the core, Europe will ignore previous broken promises and step up with a fresh bailout.
Continue reading “• Italian politicians fizzle while Brussels burns.” »
Sunday, September 4, 2011
By THE CRIMSON STAFF [Editorial, Harvard Crimson] – It really was sweet of you to switch Harvard College email accounts to Google’s email client. However, upon further reflection, it seems to us that this shift will only result in more inconveniences for the daily life of the average Harvard student, an already overburdened and drastically underappreciated demographic.
Continue reading “• The passion of Harvard students forced to bear the cross of Gmail.” »
Friday, September 2, 2011
A POETRY READING, in conjunction with the exhibition ‘Abstraction’, will be staged at The Room, London N17, at 7:30pm on 17 September 2011. The poets reading: Vincent Dachy, Fiona Templeton, and Anthony Howell. The exhibition includes work by Bonvin/Eden, Anthony McCall, Stephen Mallaghan, Yuko Shiraishi, Paul Sibbering, Amikam Toren, Gera Urkom and Mark Williams.
Continue reading “• Event: Poetry reading at The Room, London N17, 17 September 2011.” »
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
By ANNA BRENNAN [Arma Virumque] – This year, we [SAT] test-takers were presented with the following question:
Do people benefit from forms of entertainment that show so-called reality, or are such forms of entertainment harmful?
According to the College Board website, all questions that appear on the SAT are subject to a “careful review process” in which each question is “reviewed by a team of experts to make sure it reflects what most college-bound students are learning in school.” Furthermore, the College Board claims to ensure that tests are fair to all students, regardless of their background or ethnicity.
Continue reading “• Are teenage book-readers for real? The College Board wants to know.” »
By ANDREW LAMBIRTH [The Spectator] – I must admit I’d never heard of the Methodist Art Collection, so when I discovered it was temporarily on show at St Peter’s Church in Sudbury (until 21 August), I hastened along. The collection was inaugurated in the early 1960s by a Methodist layman, Dr John Morel Gibbs, who had noticed the generally poor quality of religious art and church furnishings, and who hoped that a more imaginative approach could be encouraged by a top-quality art collection. To this end Dr Gibbs approached the Revd Douglas Wollen to purchase works of art, and the resulting collection travelled the country in the mid-1960s. In 1978 the works were installed at Southlands College of Education and inevitably became less visible. After various vicissitudes, the collection ended up on loan at Westminster College, Oxford, and an exhibition programme — as well as an acquisitions policy — was organised.
Continue reading “• How to describe the Crucifixion, even in Methodist art?” »
