Friday, April 04, 2003

Michael Kelly, Washington Post columnist and Atlantic Monthly editor, was killed Thursday in an accident in Iraq.  I will try to be sensitive in that this is a human being, but I cannot honestly say that I will miss his work.  As they say, hate the game, not the player. - Marcus-Marcus 2:08:10 PM    comment []

Stanford Students Take on the Dread Hoover Institution For those who don't know, the Hoover Institution is the godfather of right wing think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Aryan Nations(OK, OK, so that's not technically a GOP think tank, so sue me). Currently 8 Hoover fellows sit on the Defense Policy Board, famous as the romper room of the deeply flawed Richard Perle. Some students at Stanford have been trying to separate their school from this nest of vipers, but with little success so far; their efforts have been blithely dismissed as "an interesting intellectual exercise." You have to look far to find a university that looks with disfavor upon "intellectual exercises" - isn't that the point of college? -Consider Arms 11:29:43 AM    comment []

No Way is Support for War Linked to Lack of Education 11:22:43 AM    comment []

TODAY'S TOP FIVE Five posts, five snarky commentaries, but fifty ways to leave your lover. You Thought It Was All Over It will never be over. Freedom fries will continue to spread, as this Long Island newspaper article shows, until all menus everywhere have been liberated. Also today: A club in Connecticut sponsoring an exhibit of French Impressionist art has decided not to serve croissants, and an "April in Paris" night at the University of Texas has been postponed indefinitely, according to The Daily Texan. Dixie Chicks Fear for Safety in Wake of Backlash In addition to the expected death threats, someone smashed in the gate at one of the band members' homes. On the bright side, their album is still in the Number One slot on Billboard's Country chart and at a CD-smashing event in Natalie Maines' hometown of Lubbock, Texas, only six people showed up. Taking Susan McNerney's suggestion of a Dixie Chicks/Pearl Jam tour to heart, I say that if they're still getting threats when they start their US tour on May 1, the Chicks should have Social Distortion open up for them. Support for War Linked to Lack of Education Surprise at this finding has also been linked to a lack of education. The War on Dissent Here's a well-done blog that includes good reporting on the ongoing war against dissenters. US Special Forces in Iraq Use Schools, Residential Neighborhoods for Cover Hey, didn't Donald Rumsfeld say that was a war crime? Oh, never mind. -Consider Arms 11:19:14 AM    comment []

Who Killed the Short Story? (I apologize in advance for this post. I promise I will get back to mocking the President as soon as I'm finished here) Here's an interesting article from Slate about that new McSweeney's anthology, a celebration of genre fiction by both genre writers (Stephen King, Elmore Leonard) and mainstream writers (Rick Moody, Nick Hornby). The introduction to the collection, written by Michael Chabon, makes the point that since 1950 or so, the vast diversity of short fiction (ghost stories, detective stories, etc.) was replaced by the hegemon we all know and dread from creative writing classes: "the contemporary, quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story," better known as the "New Yorker short story." I agree with Chabon, even if I quibble with some of his specific comments (who says Stephen King is the "last master of the plotted short story"? I could name a dozen living writers - starting with Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Thomas Ligotti, Christopher Fowler, and the mighty Ted Klein - who write better short fiction than King). I don't know if the shift occurred around 1950 or so, but contemporary short fiction is not only boring, it's insulting. I'm glad to see growing acceptance in mainstream literary circles that good stories can have things like plot, real characters, and (ye gods!) a beginning, middle, and end. Witness the appearance in The New Yorker of Stephen King stories for confirmation. This Slate article, however, makes the point that the "New Yorker short story" isn't as much of a culprit in killing contemporary short fiction as the hyper-ironic McSweeney's short story, but that's another tale for another time. -Consider Arms, Man of Letters 10:36:24 AM    comment []

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