Category: words

“Eliot’s attitude toward popular art forms was more capacious and ambivalent than he’s often given credit for. … And it so happens that, well before detective stories came into vogue among [Edmund] Wilson’s cohort, Eliot had become one of the genre’s most passionate and discerning readers.”

“Depending on who you ask, the ‘Dark Web’ – the Internet’s mysterious undercurrent accessible only through specialized software – is either a libertarian utopia or a criminal hellscape run by cryptoanarchists trading stolen bitcoins. Now it’s more than either.” A Q&A with the founders of the new literary magazine The Torist.

The Académie Française introduced these changes – the elimination of some (not all) circumflexes and simplified spelling of some words – back in 1990, but they’re only now entering the school curriculum. And the French are protesting in (very Gallic) solidarity with their beloved diacritical mark.

“To arrive at those state-by-state breakdowns, the analytics firm Marchex used what it calls Call DNA technology—software that analyzes call recordings to determine things like rate of speech, density of speech, hold times, and silences—on a set of calls recorded between 2013 and 2015. (These are the recordings that result when a pleasant robo-voice informs you that “this call may be recorded.” Marchex’s analysis includes more than 4 million such calls.)”

“A person familiar with the dispute said that tensions flared during a recent meeting, when [editor Christopher] Cox presented his plans to redesign the magazine’s cover. [Publisher John R.] MacArthur opposed the change. … Harper’s, published monthly, is a nonprofit publication that is supported in large part by Mr. MacArthur’s personal wealth.”

Malcolm Jones, co-author of a volume of retold Brer Rabbit stories (minus the tar baby and Uncle Remus): “The book got good reviews and sold well enough to justify two sequels. If there was any protest, it never got back to me. Still I always felt like we’d gotten away with something, even if I wasn’t sure what. Because when you take a stroll through the territory of children’s literature, you’d better know where the land mines are buried.”

“Amazon already has one physical store that opened back in November. The Seattle store was dismissed as a “vanity project” when it was first announced, but apparently it worked out well enough that Amazon is willing to bet big money on it. It ain’t cheap to open 300-400 retail stores.”

” A writer can get mileage out of scorning the book trailer while also promulgating the book trailer. And if you must pander to viewers, you might as well simultaneously broadcast your movie-star friendships; and why not throw in the dog, too, seeing as you’ve already shown the requisite self-awareness?”

Claire Vaye Watkins: “We’re plod, plod, plodding along, one foot in front of the other, and the ash is grey – and it’s just the same emotional key struck again and again and again.”