Oh, hi, Internet. Angus Croll: Writing online is so nearly effortless that reading (not to mention reflection, deliberation and thought) has become a chore in comparison. It’s easier to jot off a patronizing, indignant or self-aggrandizing missive than it is to take the trouble to read the whole article or give fair consideration to the …
Tag Archive: Writing
Mar 13 2013
A Phase of Incestuous Contraction
As a performing artist, here’s a thing I’ve definitely fretted over; doing art only for an audience of people who all do the same thing. Here’s Steve Almond at The New Republic writing from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference (AWP): But there’s a larger and more unsettling truth. . . one that …
Feb 17 2013
Me vs. the Western Canon
As part of a recent initiative of mine to read a bunch of the foundational classics that I’d so far missed, I finally got around to reading Machiavelli’s The Prince, maybe about a year ago. Though it’s something that has had a tremendous impact on political thought for centuries, I had somehow managed not to …
Jun 03 2012
The Tech Press and the Truth
I was rather angered by how the tech press handled the Mike Daisey affair. They seemed to me to be dancing with glee at the prospect of having their consciences somehow cleared because the man delivering the message of the treatment of workers at Foxconn had turned out to be something of a fabulist. Daisey …
Apr 16 2012
Formed by Boredom
This worries me a little (by Toby Litt in Granta): A couple of years ago, I spent three months playing World of Warcraft – partly as research for a short story I was writing, mostly because I became addicted to it. This convinced me of one thing: If the computer games which exist now had existed back in …
Dec 28 2011
Then Vonnegut Asked Caro, “Are We in the Same Trade?”
I’ve not yet read any of Robert Caro’s enormous Lyndon Johnson biographical series, even as he readies to release the latest volume that takes the subject up to his ascension to the presidency. I intend to read them, and the political world has a minor buzz to it because of this imminent release. In another …
Aug 16 2011
So Long, and Thanks for All the Text
The text stops here. My webby little heart is broken, as I have just read that author and scholar Alan Jacobs is retiring his blog Text Patterns. It’s hard for me to overstate Text Patterns’ influence on me and this blog. Jacobs opened up a whole new world of topics to cover in my own blog writing, helping me discover …
Jun 30 2011
Bloggy Relevance: Thoughts on What This Blog Is and Ought to Be
As long-time readers of this blog probably already know, I have at various times struggled over the identity of this blog, and my identity as a blogger or, really, as an “Internet personality.” I first began blogging in 2004 just to try and promote my first (and so far only) CD, Paul is Making Me Nervous. …
Jun 25 2011
A Natural Worshiper of Serendipity and Whim: Alan Jacobs’ “Pleasures of Reading”
Alan Jacobs, who readers of this blog (all ten of you) may know from previous references to his excellent blog TextPatterns, has recently released a wonderful book about reading that I simply can’t recommend highly enough. The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction is just the sort of pithy, sympathetic tract that our times demand — …
Jun 20 2011
Why We ‘Refudiate’ the Brasolaeliocattleya: Thoughts on ”The Lexicographer’s Dilemma”
Jack Lynch’s fascinating book, The Lexicographer’s Dilemma, is full of original insights, refreshing perspective, and delightful trivia about our mother tongue. It spans history and academia to lend understanding to what it means for a word to be considered an “official” part of the English language. The gist, as you might surmise, is that there is no such …
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