By Mr. Fish, from Harper's.
About Me
- Roy Scranton
- Roy Scranton is learning to stop worrying and love the academy in Princeton, New Jersey. His stories, poems, and essays have been published in Boston Review, the New York Times, LIT, The Massachusetts Review, Theory & Event, and elsewhere. He is one of the editors of Fire and Forget, published by Da Capo press in February 2013.
18 March 2008
Blogs, huh, good God y'all, what are they good for?
So, people keep reading this, and I have to say thanks to both of you. I really feel connected, plugged-in, 2.0 and everything, and it's because of you.
It's good that I feel so connected, because the rest of my time is spent reading, writing, and trying to chill the fuck out. I'm revising the war novel to make it even more cynical and pessimistic, pooping out little bits of a newer, much less coherent novel, and doing work for classes. I'm writing two papers this semester that I hope to be able to turn into articles, one revisiting the "9/11 novel," and another one looking at the arguments of some of the liberal hawks who advocated war with Iraq. Thoughts will get posted as I go, but I've been too busy the last few weeks to write anything down here.
So, books. First, I read Thomas Edsall's The New Politics of Inequality, which is a superbly nitty-gritty account of the late '70s transformation of US government power from representative social-democracy to plutocracy. He looks at Congressional rule changes, ideological and strategic failures by the Democratic Party, the campaign by big business and the wealthy to redistribute income upwards, and the collapse of labor through its own weakness in the face of concerted assault. What is great about Edsall is that he makes such a compelling case based on concrete political and economic evidence and arguments that he makes unnecessary any appeal to fuzzy notions of zeitgeists, cultural shifts, or national psychology. It's an awesome read. Jared, if you're listening, check this shit out. I'm reading his most recent book now, Building Red America, and it's also great.
What else? Ken Kalfus' A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, which is hilarious and troubling. It is the best 9/11 book I think I've read so far. More on it later. Other 9/11 novels include Paul West's The Immensity of the Here and Now and Steve Alten's The Shell Game. More on these later. I also read Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism, which is an awful, stupid book that purports to offer a theory of how fascism gave birth to Islamic fundamentalism, and how the essential conflict in the modern world is between--you guessed it--Terror and Liberalism. This book should be shat on, burned, salted, then crammed down Paul Berman's idiotic throat. I also read Nadine Gordimer's novel The Pick-up, which was not very good. Simplistic, smug, and ultimately unconvincing, The Pick-up reads like a liberal fairy tale.
Also a bunch of essays and crap. Someday I'll finish rereading Ulysses, really I will. For now, back to work.
It's good that I feel so connected, because the rest of my time is spent reading, writing, and trying to chill the fuck out. I'm revising the war novel to make it even more cynical and pessimistic, pooping out little bits of a newer, much less coherent novel, and doing work for classes. I'm writing two papers this semester that I hope to be able to turn into articles, one revisiting the "9/11 novel," and another one looking at the arguments of some of the liberal hawks who advocated war with Iraq. Thoughts will get posted as I go, but I've been too busy the last few weeks to write anything down here.
So, books. First, I read Thomas Edsall's The New Politics of Inequality, which is a superbly nitty-gritty account of the late '70s transformation of US government power from representative social-democracy to plutocracy. He looks at Congressional rule changes, ideological and strategic failures by the Democratic Party, the campaign by big business and the wealthy to redistribute income upwards, and the collapse of labor through its own weakness in the face of concerted assault. What is great about Edsall is that he makes such a compelling case based on concrete political and economic evidence and arguments that he makes unnecessary any appeal to fuzzy notions of zeitgeists, cultural shifts, or national psychology. It's an awesome read. Jared, if you're listening, check this shit out. I'm reading his most recent book now, Building Red America, and it's also great.
What else? Ken Kalfus' A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, which is hilarious and troubling. It is the best 9/11 book I think I've read so far. More on it later. Other 9/11 novels include Paul West's The Immensity of the Here and Now and Steve Alten's The Shell Game. More on these later. I also read Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism, which is an awful, stupid book that purports to offer a theory of how fascism gave birth to Islamic fundamentalism, and how the essential conflict in the modern world is between--you guessed it--Terror and Liberalism. This book should be shat on, burned, salted, then crammed down Paul Berman's idiotic throat. I also read Nadine Gordimer's novel The Pick-up, which was not very good. Simplistic, smug, and ultimately unconvincing, The Pick-up reads like a liberal fairy tale.
Also a bunch of essays and crap. Someday I'll finish rereading Ulysses, really I will. For now, back to work.
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