Today saw the publication of the last ever edition of the International Herald Tribune. The newspaper has been in print for 126 years. It is not going out of business, it is being renamed the International New York Times, to reflect its current owners. And as those owners are keen to stress, the paper has been renamed several times across its history, it was the Paris Herald, the Paris Herald Tribune, then the International Herald Tribune. Read the rest of this entry »
“Take, for example, an ad that calls itself an ad, makes fun of its own format, and attempts to lure its target market to laugh at and with it. It pre-emptively acknowledges its own failure to accomplish anything meaningful. No attack can be set against it, as it has already conquered itself. The ironic frame functions as a shield against criticism. The same goes for ironic living. Irony is the most self-defensive mode, as it allows a person to dodge responsibility for his or her choices, aesthetic and otherwise. To live ironically is to hide in public. It is flagrantly indirect, a form of subterfuge, which means etymologically to “secretly flee” (subter + fuge). Somehow, directness has become unbearable to us.”
How to Live Without Irony, Christy Walpole, New York Times
“Isn’t there supposed to be an irony, some grim humor, some sense of the peculiar human insistence on seeing past the larger madness into small and skewed practicalities, into off-shaded moments that help us consider a narrow hope?”
Here’s something interesting for you – the BBC transcript to be used in the event of a nuclear attack, that would have most likely been used if the bomb had been dropped on Britain in the seventies or eighties. It is chilling stuff, but also pretty sensible advice. I guess clarity, authority and calm would be of utmost importance, in the circumstances. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, I did a little catching up on the backlog of articles I’d allowed to build up on Instapaper. Reading Dan Kois’ piece for the New York Times, “Why Do Writers Abandon Novels?” helped kick my brain into some degree of action, to focus on some related issues that I’ve been mulling over for some time now. Why do we like peeking behind the curtain so much? Read the rest of this entry »
What is it about that old saying that everyone has a book in them? Why do we all believe it? Is it reassuring just to know that at any time we could depart from our mundane lives in order to write the Great (Insert Country of Origin Here) Novel? Is it almost enough to just know we could do it, without having to actually go through with the messy business? Read the rest of this entry »
Wait until next year 