Tag Archives: literature

from "The Test of Time" (William Gass)

"Groups squabble about literature because they have other than literary uses for the literary. The schools, which are busy finding ways to get the answers to the Test of Time smuggled to their chosen favoritism as coaches slip answers to … Continue reading

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Umbert Eco on Lists and List-Making

I’m an inveterate list-maker and reader of lists. My notebooks are full of lists of various kinds; my otherwise haphazard “productivity” system is based on lists; I love anaphoric poems; found lists are one of my favorite finds inside used-books… … Continue reading

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A Surfeit of Seeming

Ihab Hassan (who you might remember from a previous entry here) hits another one out of the park with this piece in The Georgia Review, “The Way We Have Become: A Surfeit of Seeming”. A good bit: Here I reveal … Continue reading

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more from “Procrustes and the Culture Wars” (Anne Fadiman)

Whenever I read Homer, I see ample evidence that women were treated abominably in ancient Greece, and I am very thankful that I live now and not then. In fact, I would rather pay a visit to Procrustes than marry … Continue reading

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from “Procrustes and the Culture Wars” (Anne Fadiman)

[…After this he put to death Procrustes, as he was called, who dwelt in what was known as Corydallus in Attica; this man compelled the travelers who passed by to lie down upon a bed, and if any were too … Continue reading

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Birkerts on Literary Blogging

Says Sven: “For as exciting as the blogosphere is as a supplement, as a place of provocation and response, it is too fluid in its nature ever to focus our widely diverging cultural energies. A hopscotch through the referential enormity … Continue reading

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Quick Study

Scott McLemee of Crooked Timber has a “real” blog now: Quick Study. Right now I have little time for reading things that aren’t directly related to work, but Quick Study is going on the shortlist.

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Hard Reading

“A novel is a two-way street, in which the labour required on either side is, in the end, equal. Reading, done properly, is every bit as tough as writing…” Read more from Zadie Smith’s look at literature’s ‘legacy of failure’…

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