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
The Story Behind the Letter
Letters of Note posted an incredible letter from a former slave, and Kottke rounded up some more info he and others uncovered about the letter writer.
It’s Okay, I Guess
If your default mood hovers between melancholy and despair, you may be cheered (or at least made a bit less glum) by this argument that striving for happiness is bad for us in the long run. Mari Ruti makes the case that a “happy, balanced life” depends in large part on a kind of emotional numbness.
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Some Solutions
Over at the Literary Hub, Helen Phillips and Matthew Vollmer talk about the short story as a form. Pair with Paul Vidich’s Millions piece about the future of the short story.
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This Could Be Big
After winning a $100,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation, what do you do for an encore? How about staging "fifty days of lectures, discussions, and debates" about what the future ought to look like? How about enlisting the likes of Laurie Anderson, Samuel Delany, Rachel Kushner, and Norman Rush as ringmasters? How about having the entire thing take place in structures designed by artists José León Cerrillo and Adrián Villar Rojas? Triple Canopy's "Speculations" occupies MoMA's P.S. 1 this summer
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Holy Listicle Batman!
The Guardian has published a top ten list of superheros and it is official: Batman is the greatest. Would Spider-Man have been bumped up to number one if the latest movie had less Peter Parker, and more Jean-Ralphio?
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!”