“I believe that this impending Gutenberg-level shift in reading culture, along with the economic disasters of the last two years, render the challenges of present-day hard-copy publishing all the more agonizing, immediate, and dramatic.”
Tag: 09.14.09
Cultural Studies: So Much Promise, So Little Progress
“In the late 1980s and early 1990s, we heard (and I believed) that cultural studies would fan out across the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, inducing them to become at once more self-critical and more open to public engagement. … [But] over the past 25 years, there has been a great deal of cultural-studies triumphalism that now seems unwarranted and embarrassing.”
For Video-Sharing Sites, A Victory In The Copyright Wars
“In what is nothing short of a major win for the Safe Harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a federal judge has hamstrung Universal Music Group’s copyright infringement lawsuit against Veoh Networks. … The ruling is likely to have major ramifications in a billion-dollar lawsuit filed by Viacom against YouTube.”
Author Weighs In On His Advance-Copy Lending Library
Stephen Elliott let anyone who wanted to read an advance copy of his memoir, “The Adderall Diaries,” “do so, provided they forwarded the book within a week to the next reader.” Hundreds responded, and publicity ensued — but was it worth the effort?
Get Your Book On: A Line Of Literary Baseball Jerseys
Each shirt in the new line called Novel-T “features a vaguely symbolic number on the back and an insignia on the front – a tell-tale heart or raven for Edgar Allan Poe, a patch of grass for Walt Whitman, a circle with a slash through it for Bartleby the Scrivener, who would prefer not to.”
Tea-Baggers Of The World, Unite! Conservative Marchers’ Logo Used Old-Line Communist Imagery
The logo for the Tea Party Patriots’ Sept. 12 “Taxpayer March on DC” incorporated a line of raised fists straight out of 1920s Soviet agitprop. Surprising? It was deliberate, according to an internal e-mail.
The Ultimate ‘On Spec’ Building Design: 224-Story Skyscraper On Persian Gulf
The proposal by Santa Monica architect Tommy Landau “is envisioned for a man-made island in Abu Dhabi, if leaders of the oil-rich emirate decide they want to make a statement to rest of the world and perhaps one-up neighboring Dubai.” Contingent, of course, upon a revival of the collapsing real estate market in the Emirates.
Taking A Camera Deep Inside The Paris Opera Ballet
In his new film La Danse, the venerable documentary director Frederick Wiseman turns his famously stripped-down style – “no title cards, no voice-over narration, no talking-head interviews, no staged re-creations or archival clips” – to the working’s of the world’s most venerable (okay, oldest) ballet company.
Artists Brave Bombs, Bloodshed In Pakistan’s Culture Wars
In Pakistan, “even as violence spurs self-censorship and spreads fear, it’s also prompting some artists to push back, sometimes at great personal risk.”
The Formidable Staying Power Of Bertolt Brecht
“He was a communist whose mission was to peddle what is now a defunct ideology. His theories, once revered as theatrical scripture, seem patronising and dated today.” So why does Brecht still have such a hold on us?