James Franco is interviewed in The Panorama Book Review in McSweeney’s 33.
James Franco has a short story in The Panorama Book Review in McSweeney’s 33.
Filed under: reading
December 10, 2009 • 8:17 am 0
Five Good Books I Read This Year
Without any ordering.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace
I started and haven’t finished Infinite Jest. I will. This book gave me a lot this year. So did David Foster Wallace. Rigorous, humble, light. This is a good book. It tells you lots of things about cruises, tennis, David Lynch, state fairs, and David Foster Wallace. It shows you how to write well.
Vacation, Deb Olin Unferth
Surprises and not-irritating circumlocutions. A man suspects his wife. A wife suspects her husband. Someone else is caught in the middle. This sounds very thrillery but this is not what it is. It is only in this description that I have ever thought about it as a thriller. It is Austerian. It is austere. It made me think about things differently. It is sympathetic, compassionate.
Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs, Ellen Kennedy
I won this from Tao Lin in a Twitter competition. I also really liked Shoplifting from American Apparel but it would seem like I did it because I won a competition to put this on here? Probably not. Ellen Kennedy is daring and honest in her poetry. These are cliches. Her poetry makes me smile.
Like Life, Lorrie Moore
More surprises, but old ones. Lorrie Moore is someone whose name I’d heard a lot but through, well, Tao Lin, I decided to read her when I found this book in a secondhand store. This is also about compassion, but less so than, say, Richard Yates. Her characters make me laugh because they say things like I think I might.
Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
I don’t like Catcher in the Rye anymore. I like this. It is startlingly good. It is a period piece, now. I read this very quickly. The people in it make me sad, but the book does not.
Filed under: reading
November 24, 2009 • 11:13 pm 2
I Went to See Slavoj Zizek Talk Tonight
Or, “Skate Philosophy”. This is a subtle joke. Or maybe not so subtle now that I have highlighted it.
I went to see Zizek speak at the RSA tonight.
Filed under: miscellaneous
November 10, 2009 • 11:52 am 0
On Lecturing and Teaching
I think the secret is to have notes in front of you but to make it seem as if you are speaking from memory. I am getting better at this. It is good to speak slowly, to let your mind spool an autocue in your head. I actually had AD LIB in the column of my notes today. I knew that I could talk at length on the subject — it was how a US Congresswoman Michele Bachmann exemplifies the Republican appropriation of the rhetoric of the founding documents of America — and so I just had her name and I knew that this would come out naturally. I didn’t know as much about the linguistic strategies of Thomas Paine, though. I knew that this was the weakest section of my lecture. I felt a bit bad about it because I could’ve done more prep for it but I didn’t motivate myself properly over the weekend and it perhaps showed today. Most of the lecture was good, though, so I felt OK. I paced back and forwards a lot.
Filed under: teaching
November 8, 2009 • 10:15 pm 0
Liveblogging Die Hard 4.0 and a lecture on the American Revolution
This guy is talking about the oppressive nature of the media. A truck controlled by some people with computers crashes into Bruce Willis and the guy. They change the traffic lights. Does this mean he is right? Are we supposed to distrust the media now? What kind of ideology is it advocating? What image of America does it represent?
Filed under: miscellaneous
