Category: words

Ted Gioia: “Why write this way? Why compare tomato soup to totalitarian dictators? It’s fun. And it’s easy. There are no real stakes for describing bad food. For these pugilist reviewers, the worst outcome is a bored reader, and thus the sheer unimportance of the subject sanctions a degree of exuberant cruelty unmatched in any other branch of criticism.” – The New Republic

The writer of colour is thus trapped in a double bind. Racism must be investigated and challenged, but what does it mean if there is only one acceptable framework for addressing the issue? What does it mean if diversity initiatives laud only one kind of story? – The Walrus

“When Benjamin Day came up with the plan of selling newspapers to the poor in 1833, he did so with the ravenous maw of poverty threatening to swallow him up…. Within four months [of its first issue on September 3, 1833], The Sun‘s circulation was 5,000; within a year, 10,000. In two years, 19,000 copies of The Sun were sold every day, making it the best-selling newspaper in the world.” – The New York Review of Books

“Historically, book thieves have come in two varieties. First, there are the rogue custodians, those who exploit their privileged access to literary treasures. In June this year, Gregory Priore, an archivist at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, was convicted of stealing more than 300 rare books and other artefacts estimated to be worth around £6m over a 20-year period. Then there are the academics – or, at least, those who profess an academic interest in the texts they go on to steal.” – The Guardian

“François Desset has succeeded in deciphering Linear Elamite, a writing system used in Iran 4,400 years ago. In its archaic proto-Elamite version (from 3300 BC), it joins the two oldest writing systems known in the world, the proto-cuneiform of the Mesopotamians and the Egyptian hieroglyphics.” (in French; for Google Translate version, click here) – Sciences et Avenir (France)

By the end, we had identified the race or ethnicity of 3,471 authors.We guessed that most of the authors would be white, but we were shocked by the extent of the inequality once we analyzed the data. Of the 7,124 books for which we identified the author’s race, 95 percent were written by white people. – The New York Times

“Books remain the ultimate gift: easy to wrap, available in such a multifarious array that there’s truly something for everyone and, best of all, a desperately needed break from screens in the age of TikTok and Zoom. A book does not beep at you, spy on you, sell you out to marketers, interrupt with breaking news, suck you into a doomscrolling vortex, cease to function in a nor’easter, flood your eyes with melatonin-suppressing blue light or otherwise interrupt your already troubled sleep.” – The New York Times

The author, whose illustrated tales resonate with what seems like anyone online (the memes are legendary and numerous), basically went radio silent after the publication of Hyperbole and a Half. Seven years – and many traumas – went by. But her new book is hitting at a weirdly accurate time. “I didn’t know quarantine was going to happen when I wrote the material, but I do hope that the last chapter in particular—the one about being your own friend—could be helpful for people feeling a similar type of loneliness to what I was feeling when I wrote it. It was a deep, new kind of loneliness that I’d never felt before.” – Time

Who, of course, happens to be a woman, Gertrude Trevalyan. Her re-publisher: “I read it and I thought, ‘This is incredible.’ … If she was a bloke, she’d still be in print today, without question. All of Aldous Huxley’s books are still in print – some of them are amazing, some aren’t that great. He was doing interesting social commentary, and also experimental stuff. She was doing the same sort of thing and no one’s heard of her.” – The Guardian (UK)