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August 30, 2006
OGIC: Excuses, excuses
So Terry's got laryngitis and I've got my parents in town. Advantage Ms. OGIC, by a very large margin, but in terms of blogging output, nobody wins. I'll leave you, however, with a few good links:- Robert Archambeau is very acute, not to mention downright hilarious, dissecting audiences at poetry readings. Poetry readings get a bad rap, he admits; but "what if a big part of the problem with poetry readings isn't a matter of what's up on stage, but a matter of what's down in the seats?" (Via Dan Green).
- Peter Suderman argues that "classic TV" is not just a myth, and that the DVD medium overcomes the precise obstacles previously cited by my illustrious co-blogger to even the best series television attaniing the status of bona fide narrative art.
- Not a link but an observation. There's been much ado about Marisha Pessl's cause célèbre of a first novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, so I purchased a copy. Waiting one day for the oil to be changed in my car, I picked it up and read a few dozen pages. When my car was ready, I put it down. I'm not sure I'll pick it up again--it struck me as too clever by half, more than a little exhausting, and inferior to the book its breathless press reports kept reminding me of: Brian Hall's Saskiad, which is narrated by a younger precocious teenage girl but a vastly more compelling one. It's grossly unfair, I know, to pass judgment based on 44 pages of reading--but since I don't expect to get very much further anytime soon, I may as well report why not. (I will say, though, that I vastly prefer the book itself to its fatuous back-cover blurb from Jonathan Franzen: "Beneath the foam of this exuberant debut is a dark, strong drink.")
- Have we mentioned lately how much we love Outer Life? Nobody chronicles This Californian Life quite so well. Docents! Read the piece and you too will be repeating that word to yourself wonderingly for the rest of the day.
Happy Wednesday! (Docents!)
Posted August 30, 2006 2:19 AM
