These Are The Books That Would Have Been In The Public Domain In 2014 (But Won’t Be)

“No published works will enter our public domain until 2019. The laws in Canada and the EU are different – thousands of works are entering their public domains on January 1. What books and plays would be entering the public domain if we had the pre-1978 copyright laws? You might recognize some of the titles.”

There’s No Such Thing As Standard English Anymore (So Why Do We Pretend There Is?)

“Non-standard English is linguistically the equal of the standard version – in fact, dialects tend to be more sophisticated grammatically than standard (as in the plural “youse” of many non-standard dialects where standard has just one confusing form). Yet standard continues – even now – to be prized as the “correct” form, and any deviation is considered to be wrong, lazy, corrupt or ignorant.”

How Truth Is Getting Lost In The New Publishing Reality

“The media has long had its struggles with the truth–that’s nothing new. What is new is that we’re barely even apologizing for increasingly considering the truth optional. In fact, the mistakes, and the falsehoods, and the hoaxes are a big part of a business plan driven by the belief that big traffic absolves all sins, that success is a primary virtue.”

The Myth Of The Great American Novel

“Hardly anyone talks about the Great American Novel without a tincture of irony these days. But as Lawrence Buell shows in The Dream of the Great American Novel, his comprehensive and illuminating new study, that is nothing new: American writers have always held the phrase at arm’s length, recognizing in it a kind of hubris, if not mere boosterism.”