Andrew Hazlett discovers that following the keyword “humanities” on Twitter is not the best way to keep tabs on the discipline.
Oh, The Humanities
Juan Goytisolo: 1931-2017
The Washington Post reports that Spanish writer and Cervantes Prize winner Juan Goytisolo has died at age 86. Bruna Dantas Lobato wrote about Goytisolo’s 1970 novel of dispossession Count Julian for us, noting that “[j]ust like the nature of exile itself, the narrative offers no relief, no place of rest: just fragment after fragment of dry landscapes, lonely characters, and rooms in disarray.”
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Most Overrated Books
The Most Overrated Books of 2011 according to NY Daily News, and Steve Jobs is included?
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Mapping Short Story Titles
The B.O.M.M. blog looked at our recent item Best American Short Stories: By the Numbers, in which we crunched some numbers behind the Best American Short Stories series, and created a nifty word map of the short story titles that appeared in the series from 1978 to 2008. “The most frequent word for a title (not including articles and such)? Life. It has appeared 9 times.” If anyone else decides to mine some interesting discoveries from the B.A.S.S. data, let us know.
Tuesday New Release Day: Choi, Aw, Zambrano, Roth, Banville
New this week: My Education by Susan Choi, Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw, Loteria by Mario Alberto Zambrano, The Unknowns by Gabriel Roth, and a new edition of a previously hard to come by early collection of stories by John Banville, Long Lankin. Stay tuned for our big second-half preview with many, many more anticipated books, coming in less than a week.
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Hidden Libraries
Thanks to recent advancements in digital scanning technology, it looks like the Herculaneum scrolls will be made legible after some two thousand years. The new technique allows for close study of the scrolls without causing irreparable damage to the papyrus via exposure to the moisture in the air, an issue which had dogged scholars for centuries. If the impermanence and tenuousness of writing is more your speed, here’s a bit on Twitter, instead.
Hey, thanks for the notice! Big fan of The Millions (and the new design).
I don’t want to beat a dead (or dying) horse, but the “humanities” Twitter stream continues to crank out amusing/depressing commentary…
Case in point: “mann there supposed to be cute girls in humanities classes. the women look like chernobyl victims in here. this class must be hard. shit”
On the other hand, you also get kids tweeting things like: “Humanities is probably going to be the best class ever. :) I’m pumped!”
The thing that baffles me is that so many schools are apparently cramming everything from archaeology to philosophy to history to art criticism into *one* course. How the hell is that supposed to lead to anything worthwhile?