The term “academic writing” is controversial, not least because it implies that academics have an odd and persnickety way of writing. In a blog post for The New Yorker, Joshua Rothman examines the genre, looking back on his time in grad school to argue that academic writing is a “fraught and mysterious thing.”
Neomysterativity
“That’s Just My Life and It Seems Quite Normal to Me.”
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The Struggles of Karl Ove Knausgaard
“But as anyone with the least knowledge of literature and writing—maybe art in general—will know, concealing what is shameful to you will never lead to anything of value,” Karl Ove Knausgaard said in an interview with Jesse Barron for The Paris Review. They discuss memory, personal crisis, artistic shame, and how he would burn My Struggle if there were less copies. Make sure to check out our review.
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Memory, Sorrow, Thorn, Etc.
Back in 1988, Tad Williams published the first book of the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series, which inspired George R.R. Martin to start writing A Song of Ice and Fire. Now, more than twenty years after publishing the last installment (and just as the new season of Game of Thrones begins), Williams announced that he’s writing a sequel, The Last King of Osten Ard. You could also read our own Janet Potter’s review of the first Game of Thrones book.
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The First Banned Book in America
Thomas Morton, an English businessman who had a knack for riling up Puritans, was the author of the first book explicitly banned in the United States.
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David Foster Wallace Syllabus
The Harry Ransom Center has scanned and uploaded the syllabus from David Foster Wallace‘s Fall 1994 section of English 102: Literary Analysis.
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Necesito Oscuridad
“Whenever the latest woe is me commercial came on hawking the newest painkiller, Mami commanded our attention: ‘That’s me!'” Go check out this piece of new fiction, “I Am A Rock,” by Ricardo Nuila at Guernica Magazine.
The Poet’s Novel
Do poets make great novelists? Naja Marie Aidt, a phenomenal poet-novelist herself, picks her favorite novels by poets, featuring Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station, and more.
Looking forward to reading this article to explore what seems a foreign land to me. I don’t have any personal experience with it, but from the stories I’ve heard about dissertations, to me it sounds nightmarish, especially the preliminary requirements of making sure you’ve read EVERYTHING ever written about your topic (e.g., Jane Austen’s elbow). I would fear a perpetual distraction that would lead me from Jane Austen’s elbow, to her lace sleeve, to a lace factory in Milan, to the current state of competition of Italian lace makers with China, to Chinese characters, thus to the art store to buy some new brushes and paint.
Thus goes the life of those who float along like tumbleweeds. Our ilk is best suited to (short) poetry as we lack the stern focus and iron spine of the academics. :)
Moe Murph
First Job Out Of School Working In Harvard School of Architecture Mailroom With 10th-Year PhD. in Irish Medieval Studies
Can’t resist. the 10th Year PhD in above message was a towering, broad woman with a shock of long, bright-read hair. She wore a purple cape, pinned with a Celtic medal pin that floated behind her as she strode the Yard to the architecture school.
She was in pitched battles with the Medieval Studies Department (who wanted her out if her paper wasn’t in that year), with her Advisor, and with the Administrator for the architecture school, where she ran the mailroom. She was a great pitcher of battles.
I don’t remember what she was writing about, could have been cloud patterns in Ulster or something, but I expected the difficulty may have been that Harvard, the department, and medieval Irish weather all refused to bend to her will. She told a great story about a professor who would stride into department events, sit down, and demand in a Falstaffian voice of the wait staff:
“Brrrriiinnnggggggg Me My Brie!”