Click
here for info on the Print Journal
(and to purchase your copy)!
Culturally Speaking #31
By Sarah Stodola
-------------------------------------
I enthusiastically agree with this article, which expresses concern over the pigeonholing of minorities into writing about their ethnicity. This kind of writing is valuable and important, of course, but I believe that everyone should write about everything. And it gets old when you open the New Yorker or any other literary publication and as soon as you see an ethnic-sounding name of any kind, you are already tipped off as to what kind of story you have in front of you.
* * *
Interesting - and true - that reading is not necessarily an enriching experience. In this essay, Charles Taylor explains, among other things, that reading can be just as trashy as watching television. It really all depends on two things: the quality of the work and the level of engagement of the reader/watcher/listener. This has always nagged me. How can reading Danielle Steele be any better than watching Baywatch, just because the former is displayed on paper instead of on screen?
* * *
Will the graphic novel replace the literary novel? If it doesn't, this guy plays the fool...
* * *
Take a look at Me Three contributor Richard Grayson's piece in The Mississippi Review's Happiness Issue.
* * *
Jenna Bush is going to be a school teacher in Harlem.
* * *
* * *
Going to college in Bloomington, Indiana, one of our few claims to fame was the 1979 movie Breaking Away, which was filmed on and around the IU campus and featured the famous Little 500 bicycle race. Tonight, Open City is screening the movie, to be followed by a reading of screenwriter Steve Tesich's new posthumous novel, Karoo.
* * *
I would like to kindly ask the New York Observer to stop having that stupid window pop up every single time one goes to any page on the site whatsoever. It's understandable to have it pop up on the homepage, I guess, but past that it creates a bit of irritation.
* * *
Budapest is pretty.
Click here for the last Culturally Speaking.
---------------------------------------
Sarah Stodola is the Managing Editor of Me Three. She can be contacted here.
© 2004 Me Three