Category Archives: Uncategorized

Daniel Bosch on Daisy Fried’s poem “Torment”

Here is a fine reading by Daniel Bosch of one of the best poems of the last few years, Daisy Fried’s “Torment,” from her Women’s Poetry: Poems and Advice (2013). I wonder, though, if Bosch is right? That is, is … Continue reading

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on Rilke’s Duino Elegies: the best translation in English

A Goodreads review on mine:

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Sharing an essay by Leigh Alexander, from the Gamasutra website: The tragedy of Grand Theft Auto V

Gamasutra – Opinion: The tragedy of Grand Theft Auto V. For my own much earlier piece on the bizarre metaphysics of video games, plus one way to think about video games’ links to early animated cartoons, see Gamer (1999).

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on Edward Hopper’s East Wind Over Weehawken being sold by PAFA

Click on the link below for a short piece on Edward Hopper’s East Wind Over Weehawken (1934), being sold by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to raise money to buy contemporary art. on Hopper’s East Wind Over Weehawken

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On “In Search of a Gay Aesthetic” in Fashion History, a NYTimes article about a show at the Fashion Institute of Technology

In Search of a Gay Aesthetic – NYTimes.com. Some key things you get to learn about in this sweet piece by Guy Trebay: 18th-century “molly” houses (yet where is the equally important invention, from even earlier, of the “fop”?); the … Continue reading

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Air Effects (on Proctor & Gamble Febreze TV ads)

Anyone else besides me creeped out by the Febreze air freshener commercials on TV, sponsored by Proctor & Gamble? Some of them feature various folks blindfolded and sequestered in gross spaces—ratty cars, moldy abandoned apartments with scuzzy old couches, etc. … Continue reading

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See my U.S. fiction class’s annotations to Gary Shteyngart’s satire _Super Sad True Love Story_ (2010)

Click on the Digital Humanities Projects link in the menu above, which will take you to the table of contents for the annotations and a link to the annotations themselves, in a pdf file. Enjoy! Based on work produced by … Continue reading

Posted in English 52B (U.S. Fiction 1950 to present), Literature, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Introduction for Zadie Smith’s talk at Swarthmore, Nov. 7 2012: “Why I Write.”

It’s an honor to introduce Zadie Smith.  I shouldn’t be nervous, because introductions are easy, right?  Zadie Smith, meet Swarthmore College and Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.  Swarthmore, Zadie Smith.  Yet introductions are really impossible, because more words need to be said but … Continue reading

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Tagging the Glass Essay poem (Anne Carson)

Sometimes ‘tagging’ texts to aid computer searches is utterly fatuous. Here are the tags the Poetry Foundation website uses to catalog the ‘subjects’ of Anne Carson’s magnificent poem “The Glass Essay.” The list below could easily be in a Carson … Continue reading

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Favorite epic novels published since WWII?

In response to Matt Schwartz’s question on his Facebook page, “What are some of your favorite sweeping historical brick-sized novels written since World War II, along the lines of Pynchon’s V. and Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke?”,  here’s my list: … Continue reading

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