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3.25.05
Culturally Speaking #58
By Sarah Stodola
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First, a Me Three note: You can now join the Me Three Yahoo Group in order to receive semi-frequent updates on Me Three happenings. Just enter your email below...
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Hmm, it's a little fishy that in this article, the New York Times plugs the real estate blog Curbed, while failing to point out the fact that it is now sponsoring the site. That is uncomfortably similiar to the news magazine shows doing features on things their parent company produces...
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Good point, I'd never thought of this before...but now that I think of it, I have at times been sitting in the doctor's office, wondering what their political affiliations are and how that affects their treatment of me.
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The numbers in the article ought to give writers everywhere hope...
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Michiko Kakutani doesn't seem to like Safran Foer's new novel, Extremely Loud and Inc
redibly Close, any more than I did when I heard him read from it a year or so ago. But some of our reason's are slightly different. Kakutani mentions in passing but doesn't really seem concerned with the novel's use of the World Trade Center attacks as a plot device. It's inevitable that novelists will write about September 11th, but there is something disquieting about the fact that Safran Foer seems to have begun this novel almost immediately after the attacks. It seems too easy, somehow...like a novelist should have to work a little harder to come up with a dramatic premise. And if they don't, they should at least have some seriously personal involvement in the event. I was in New York City on September 11th, too, so it's easy for me to say that I don't consider that to be enough. For me, this is the major flaw of the novel.
Another smaller disagreement: Kakutani says that it's "as though Mr. Foer were trying to sprinkle handfuls of Gabriel García Márquez's magical realism into his story without really understanding this sleight of hand." I don't think it's "as though." I think that's EXACTLY what he's doing.
She does, however, share my irritation with the novel's protagonist, who is a 9-year-old self-proclaimed genius. He's really annoying and for the most part not believable, and the fact that his father died in the World Trade Center attacks does not make the reader feel forgiving at all -- a blatant red flag.
I do feel as though I should back up and say that I do think that Safran Foer is a talented writer, and also that he seems like a good guy. It seems to me that with age and maturity, and might even become a "great." It's just going to take some time.
Update: Safran Foer's and his wife Nicole Krauss' novels are coming out within a month of each other and deal with strikingly similiar subject material and plot. Regardless of whose novel is better, which is what this article ends up focusing on, this is evidence of two people being way too wrapped up in each other. You guys got to get out more...with your friends and stuff, not with each other...
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Senator Jay Stevens is out with a vengeance. His goal? To spread a blanket of censorship over everything -- and I do mean everything -- that is broadcast into American homes. Even the Internet. This would be a terrible blow to the creativity that has flourished on cable television and to a certain extent over the Internet.
I bet the network channels are lobbying hard for his proposed measures. We on the other hand, should voice our opposition.
Let your senator know that you do not approve.
Click here for the last Culturally Speaking.
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Sarah Stodola is the Executive Editor of Me Three. She can be contacted here.
© 2005 Me Three