“Good TV is not merely good TV (i.e. better-than-average TV), but TV that is so good it deserves to be taken as seriously as great films and even great Literature (yes, with a capital ‘L’). As such, watching Good TV and discussing Good TV are qualitatively different than watching and talking about other kinds of TV. The emergence of Good TV is a rather big deal in the recent history of American culture. It may well be one of the top two or three cultural developments of this still-young century.” Todd Hasak-Lowy dissects the TV revolution. (Pair with: our own Michael Bourne on the new age of cable and Broadway.) (h/t The Rumpus)
Capital G
Paying Hommage
There’s a new literary magazine on the digital shelves. The Neu Jorker is “an hommage d’triomphe” to a magazine with an eerily similar name.
Goodreads Debut Author Discussion
At Goodreads, join debut novelists Malena Watrous, Peter Bognanni, Emily Gray Tedrowe, and Sonya Chung for a meaty and candid discussion, including confessions about procrastination and the fact that we all actually really enjoy writing. Moderated by Katrina Kittle. Click here to join.
●
●
Rona Jaffe Winners Announced
For close to two decades now, the Rona Jaffe Foundation has honored “women writers of exceptional talent in the early stages of their careers” with annual Writers’ Awards worth $30,000 each. This year, the winners are Tiffany Briere (fiction/nonfiction); Ashlee Crews (fiction); Kristen Dombek (nonfiction); Margaree Little (poetry); Kirsten Valdez Quade (fiction); and Jill Sisson Quinn (nonfiction). The winners accepted their awards in a private ceremony on the 19th.
●
●
One comment:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Two Davids and The Bone Clocks
Recommended listening: David Naimon interviews David Mitchell about “time, maps, cats,” and The Bone Clocks (which we reviewed here) for Between the Covers.
Smith Wins Bailey’s
Ali Smith‘s How to Be Both has won the Bailey’s Prize for women’s fiction, placing her in the same ranks as Zadie Smith and Lionel Shriver. If you’re not too familiar with Smith’s work, Jonathan Russell Clark wrote about her for The Millions last year.
●
●
Debatable, To Say the Least
Researchers at Google have analyzed “audiovisual patterns,” “title, description and tags,” “words associated with amusement” in user comments, “emoticons,” and even the number of o’s in the average “LOL” in various YouTube videos in order to identify the funniest content on the web. Then they set up an algorithm to rank their findings, and subjected those findings to an audience vote (which you can join over here). Based on their calculations so far, this was the funniest video of all time. What do you think?
●
●
Got tired of hearing people talk about Breaking Bad so I finally gave in and watched it and I have no idea what anyone is talking about. It’s just more of the same. People crying and screaming at each other and guns and violence and sturm and drang and so on and so on. Same shit, different decade. You all can have your television shows and binge all you want and then try and convince everyone who doesn’t watch what you watch that what you watch is better than anything else if that makes you feel good about your television addiction.