Posted in Jog Log, Writing & Reading on Mar 19th, 2009 3 Comments »
I would be the first to admit it: my rote memory skills are abysmal. As Achilles’ heels go, this may seem a trivial defect. Nonetheless, my inept memory forms a tripwire, stretching across every scholastic threshold I long to cross.
In the literary context, I chaff against that tripwire when I attempt to apply the technique [...]
Posted in Marginalia, Pop Culture, Writing & Reading on Feb 25th, 2009 7 Comments »
Horrid pessimism threatens the liberal arts as much as any economic downturn. Profs no longer scare potential applicants away with tales of sweat, poverty, and misery. Instead, they prophecy the demise of a certain “American Dream,” one involving humanist ambitions: “The truth is, chances of acceptance in your field are slim, 5% to be exact.” [...]
Posted in Marginalia, Pop Culture, Words, Writing & Reading on Feb 18th, 2009 No Comments »
When cutting-edge technology and incorrigible youth collide, language reinvents itself. Desperate British parents, take heart: you can soon reference Collins English Dictionary in order to decode what your teen’s “stunting” about being “shifted” really means. Of course, American parents can take refuge in any one of a number of online shortlists of SMS vocabulary, [...]
Posted in Marginalia, Writing & Reading on Feb 1st, 2009 No Comments »
1. Realize that you are not the only one with gaping holes in your literary knowledge.
2. Realize that you are not the only one to sheepishly question that author’s “greatness”; by the same token, you will probably not be the only to look back and find yourself prone to misplaced, hypercritical disillusionment in sundry times [...]
Posted in American Literature, Writing & Reading on Nov 25th, 2008 No Comments »
I’m a faithless Internet surfer “visited on a lunar basis by these great unspecific waves” of bloglust. And that is all I can say in defense of such a belated response to Lionel Shriver’s WSJ article, “Missing the Mark.” Shriver’s opening argument explains why I think a rebuttal is still worth dishing out:
Literature is not [...]
