Over at HTMLGiant, A D Jameson offers summary and analysis of Viktor Shklovsky’s literary theory. The piece then invited some additional words from Helen Stuhr-Rommereim.
Theory of Blog Posts
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The word “whom” appears “just 53 times out of every million [spoken] words,” according to the Corpus of Contemporary American English. This does not bode well for members of future generations – some of whom may be fond of formality.
●
●
A Conservative Estimate
While makers of the graph admit that it’s no substitute for a real poll, according to a heatmap of political books purchased on Amazon in the United States, conservative books are more popular than their left-wing rivals. Another heatmap of note: a firm tracked the use of the F-bomb on twitter over the course of a day to see where America’s foulest mouths are concentrated.
●
●
Standing on the Bridge of Grief
Over at Catapult, Benjamin Wood writes about his eulogy for his grandfather, which led to his writing of The Ecliptic. As he puts it, “Or maybe, in this time of grieving, I was thinking only with my heart until my head began to listen. Today, it seems as though the entirety of The Ecliptic was held within my consciousness before I ever glimpsed a piece of it, and grief was what enabled me to notice.” Pair with Nagihan Haliloğlu’s Millions review of the novel.
●
●
A Separatist Syllabus
How do readers recover from an abominable weekend but with a reading list, in this case one suggested on Twitter by Jay Varner, a writer and instructor based in Charlottesville. Varner links out to 12 articles about “why so many continue to believe an unequivocally false historical narrative surrounding the Confederacy,” including pieces by New Orleans’ mayor Mitch Landrieu, Slate‘s Jamelle Bouie, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose Between the World and Me made our roundup from last year of the best political fiction (yes, we do realize it’s decidedly not fiction).
●
●
The Vulture Circles
New York magazine’s Vulture Reading Room series, featuring Sam Anderson and others, dares to take on Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. The verdict? Brown’s stylistic overreach is still good comic fodder for discerning readers.
●
●
Whitman Passes Away
George Whitman, owner of the storied Parisian English-language bookstore Shakespeare & Company, died this week at the age of 98.