Literature

Bookslut is looking for a feminism/gender issues columnist. One of the reasons I have little to no respect for contemporary feminism is because feminists continue to behave as though those two topics somehow amount to the same thing.

“The Idea of Order at Key West” has traditionally been, if not an art object in itself, contained within an art object—a book, in fact. Books, along with films, are a special class of art object; they are copies without originals, and as such the “aura1” surrounding them is diffuse. No single copy of the book can be considered the single “authentic” copy, and neither can the manuscript (as it is a manuscript, not a book, and is therefore a different kind of art object), and so the aura of authenticity that would surround, say, a painting, must be diffused across all copies of the book, since all are equally authentic. A first edition would not be any more authentic than any subsequent edition, because any additional value it may be said to have is the result of it being a fetishized commodity, rather than an art object. That is… Continue Reading →

It’s honestly difficult for me to phrase it any other way. Take a look at this New Yorker article and try to tell me that you don’t agree. I have no doubts at all that Joyce-The-Mediocre sees himself as protecting the legacy of Joyce-The-Genius-and-His-Family, but I very much think what he’s really doing is placing his own mark—a mark he has no more earned the right to place than the scholars he so derides—on the work of a man whose shadow he grew up in and whose legacy has entirely failed to live up to. Stephen has made his presence felt on a much broader front. Most prickly literary estates are interested in suppressing unflattering or intrusive information, but no one combines tolltaker, brand enforcer, and arbiter of taste as relentlessly as Stephen does, and certainly not in such a personal way. In 2003, Eloise Knowlton, a Joycean and a… Continue Reading →

I am finally not the only one who can’t stand Douglas Coupland (except Microserfs, of course). This paragraph from the article says all that I could ever hope to say, in fewer words: Fellow stream-of-consciousness postmodernists including Irvine Welsh and Bret Easton Ellis are talented enough to sustain a book chockablock with tripe asides, but Coupland isn’t. He’s just not a very good writer. In fact, he’s a rather lazy, terrible writer, a one-trick gimmick artist badly in need of a software upgrade. If the book can be downloaded, don’t risk ruining your iPod with it.

For reasons I do not even remotely understand, Maisonneuve, one of the finest magazines to come out of Canada in a very, very long time, is changing its format to become a sort of Toronto Life for Montréal. In just two years, Maisonneuve has been nominated for fourteen National Magazine Awards and taken home four of these—including the prestigious Magazine of the Year in 2005. Looking to solidify its place in the market, Maisonneuve is transforming itself from a national arts magazine into a magazine of Montreal life and city culture. The “new” Maisonneuve will be launched at the end of September 2006. Can someone explain this nonsense to me?