January 2012
19 posts
“Foer said, ‘What makes things memorable is that they are meaningful, significant, colorful.’ Data is weightless and characterless and takes up very little space. The more of it we save, the more we lose the ability to differentiate it, to assign significance and meaning.”
—Carina Chocano on losing data, physical objects, and “The Dilemma of Being a Cyborg.”
On Being an Object →
finslippy.com
Alice Bradley, an author of multiple things, on gender harassment and age:
“To be a young woman in our culture means that you exist, from an alarmingly young age, for the appreciation of others. Therefore, your every feature is fair game for public appraisal.”
Also:
“There were other incidents, too; so many incidents. Every one underscored the message that I wasn’t safe, that I deserved whatever was coming to me, because I was young and a woman and that was how it was and also I should appreciate it. I tried to look unapproachable, but I don’t think my face works that way; I just looked sad and then men barked at me to cheer up, to give them a smile. I wanted to look hard and angry. Lord knows I wanted to be intimidating. It just didn’t work.
These days I feel like I’m off the hook. Like I’m free. I still do want to be intimidating, though. There are days when I want to be terrifying.”
The end of Canada's gay bookstores? →
xtra.ca
“Glad Day Bookshop, Canada’s oldest gay bookstore, now makes just eight sales a day.
Owner John Scythes wants to make one more: he recently announced that the store is for sale.
‘I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be here,’ Scythes says. He hasn’t been able to pay himself in two months.”
“
Interviewer: Do you think you would have been so happy if you had not been a writer?
Wodehouse: No. I think a writer’s life is the ideal life. I can never understand these fellows like Evelyn Waugh who did not always have the idea of being a writer. I always wanted to be a writer.
Interviewer: Do you always enjoy writing?
Wodehouse: Oh, yes. I love writing. I never feel really comfortable unless I am either actually writing or have a story going. I could not stop writing.
” —A 1975 interview with P.G. Wodehouse, conducted one month before his death, in the Paris Review.
Heroine Chic →
lareviewofbooks.org
In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Evie Nagy discusses Tarpé Mills & Miss Fury: Sensational Sundays 1944–1949, a collection of Miss Fury, the first female superhero, strips:
Contrary to common belief, Wonder Woman was not the first female superhero. She was preceded by more than half a year by Miss Fury, who starred in her own Sunday comic strip for 10 years beginning in April 1941. Miss Fury was created, written, and drawn by a woman, June Tarpé Mills, who published under the more sexually ambiguous Tarpé Mills. Had Miss Fury entered an enduring canon like DC’s, it’s possible that the template for female superheroes, as well as for superhero comic readership, would have depended more on the influence and perspective of actual women.
Play
“Often real life is boring and problematic. I love the edited version of it.”
—Terry Gross, in a 1998 interview with Salon Magazine.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Lisbeth Salander by Any Other Name →
autostraddle.com
With better production values, a more fluid plot, and several more believable characters, the American adaptation of “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” should be a definite improvement on the Swedish one. But it isn’t. With everything else aside, the main difference between the two is this: in the Swedish film, Lisbeth Salander is angry, purposeful, and smoldering. In the American film, she is fragile, alienated, and, at times, apologetic. […] She does seem different, or at least out of place. But she isn’t scaring anyone. She just isn’t badass enough.
