Don’t forget to return your library books in Texas. This year an Austin man was arrested for failing to return a GED study guide that was three years overdue. Fines and arrest warrants are the new way to break even in towns with shrinking budgets. Other states, such as Iowa, Vermont, and Maine, are joining in.
Book ’em, Danno!
Bradbury’s Legacy
As Ray Bradbury’s 90th birthday approaches, Slate explores why his stories have seeped into the culture.
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The Long Birthday
On this day 124 years ago Raymond Chandler, hardest of the hard-boiled, was born. To celebrate the father of Philip Marlowe see these letters Chandler wrote to some of his contemporaries, listen to Chandler’s interview with Ian Fleming, and enjoy a couple classic Chandlerisms. Most importantly, read “The Simple Art of Murder,” the greatest essay about the mystery novel ever written.
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Renata Adler’s Dazzling Hurdles
Gary Indiana posits that “no current literary label appealingly describes the kind of narratives [Renata Adler’s] Speedboat and Pitch Dark are.” This might be true. However in the name of moving forward with discussion, perhaps we can all go with Matthew Spektor’s summation of Adler’s debut novel: “if it’s ‘like’ anything at all, a steeplechase of [dazzling] hurdles could be it.”
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‘NCIS’ To Cease Print Edition
“Longtime readers are already mourning the end of an era as CBS announced today that at the end of this month it would cease print operations of the popular drama NCIS.”
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Bread, Bread, Bread
From “Insufficient Milk And Restraint” to “Eating Berries While Pretending To Be A Monk To Make Hunger And Desperation Feel Like A Game,” here is every meal from Jane Eyre ranked in terms of severity.
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Hatchet Job
Cutting out large chunks of a book is pretty common, but cutting out 200 pages is a little unusual. While working on his latest novel, Joshua Ferris decided to abandon the elements drawn from crime fiction, which meant he had to toss out a huge portion of his draft. “Now that was a fun day,” he says.
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Alexandra Huynh Is Speaking On Her Own Terms
Newly appointed youth poet laureate Alexandra Huynh discusses the significance of her new role and the motivation behind her own poetry.
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I find this a very creepy scenario.
Recipe: a.) Increasingly powerful, well-funded lobbies for the corporate prison industry; b.) “criminalization” of the poor (which you already see in some of the tactics used by debt collectors and their use of warrants; c.) underfunded local and state government entities hungry for cash and collections. Result: a Perfect Storm situation for creating a huge new prison population and/or a way to squeeze money out of the families of these people to pay the costs to get them out of the pokey! Already, there are situations where people are billed for the cost of their jailing (after “failing to show” for court hearings, some of which they were never properly informed of). A neo-Debtor’s Prison system, when the rising cost of their bill keeps them imprisoned.
Even now, the criminal justice system is NOT one you want to get swept up in if you are even middle class, or, God forbid, broke. I REALLY
(broke comment)
I REALLY don’t like the idea of criminalizing this type of misbehavior.
And prisons cost taxpayers a fortune. It’s been famously estimated it would be cheaper to incarcerate prisoners in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. And when poor prisoners can’t pay for their imprisonment they will get locked up again, at everyone’s expense.
Imprisonment should not be used for non-violent crimes except in rare and serious cases.
Hello, it is now April 2014, four months after last comment, but I have been researching the pre-Reformation system of “paid” indulgences in the Catholic Church (something Martin Luther) railed against for a book project.
Apparently, the Catholic bishops would “strong arm” family members of the deceased to pay for indulgences for the “departed loved ones” and regale the terrified families of the torments that the old mother was suffering in Purgatory. Their Purgatory “jail term could, then, of course, could be shortened by their purchase of indulgences.
Wow, I am even more scared now about this article!
Moe Murphy
Nuns In Grammar School Sold Us Penny Candy, Said Each Piece Would Remove One Venial Sin