Most of our discussions about changing the canon revolve around adding onetime marginalized writers. But there’s a flipside to this — who do we need to eject? In a Bookends column for the Times, James Parker and Francine Prose pick greats that are no longer great.
A Bit Rusty
How 3d Projectors Make 2d Movies Worse
Roger Ebert explains how the time-consuming process of changing the lenses on complicated new 3d projectors is diminishing the theater-going experience.
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DeLillo and Trance States
Charles Baxter notes, “If you have read several books by Don DeLillo, sooner or later you will have a Don DeLillo moment.” For Baxter, these are often “trance states,” of which DeLillo’s newest collection, The Angel Esmeralda, contains many.
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The Game is the Game
“The appropriate term for what both [David Foster] Wallace and [Roger] Federer did, however, perhaps isn’t synthesis; more apt would be the Hegelian term, aufheben, which can mean a great many things – to lift up, to abolish, to cancel, to suspend, to sublate, to preserve, to transcend – all at once, where two existing terms are abolished, sublated, transcended by way of the orchestration of a collision between them, out of which a new term emerges, which then itself goes in search of a partner with which to collide.” A really fantastic review of David Foster Wallace’s String Theory from 3:AM Magazine.
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Here’s Johnny!
There might be a prequel to The Shining in the works. I wonder if it’ll be more like this.
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Your a Real Jerk
“It’s somewhat surprising that typos and grammatical errors hold this much power given the speed and frequency of written communication that characterizes the digital age. Despite our ‘sent from my iPhone’ disclaimers, it appears we should still be diligent about avoiding written mistakes. Especially if were writing to a conscientious introvert whose not very agreeable. Their the wrst.” On proving something that we all suspected to be true: less agreeable people care the most about grammar.
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