Weekly Reader
2009 February 14
- The Institute For The Future Of The Book sums up my ill feelings about John Updike:
His death is, in a sense, another nail in the coffin of a kind of literary vanguard. I can understand why this blog’s readership might relish, openly or in private, the extinction of these writers, particularly given the old school’s knee-jerk aversion to new methodologies and shifting boundaries. By 2006, as the sensationally-titled “The End of Authorship” attests, it seemed that Updike opposed progress in the humanities more than he furthered it. The voguish sentiment, for better or worse, was disdain for his belletristic ways.
- This surreal story from Rolling Stone about the fallout of a sexual relationship between a student and teacher is equal parts surreal, disturbing in ways that get worse with each page, but also not surprising.
- Henry Jenkins on creating fan fiction with Twitter. I am a lot more enthusiastic about it than he is, having been following the Twitter characters created for the excellent Mad Men series he mentions for awhile now. This reminds me a lot of the, based in Livejournal, AIM accounts a number of fans created for Buffy The Vampire Slayer characters. They were fun to interact with and stayed in character really well. Twitter is a much more interesting medium for this sort of thing.
- The new issue of Game Studies is now out.
- Jane McGonigal on why she is not a game evangelist.
This week’s video is Black Flag from the same show the Saccharine Trust footage was taken from. You’ll want to especially pay attention to Greg Ginn’s ridiculous guitar playing.
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