Version 7.0ish. Digital Humanities. Running. Pedagogy. Linux.

• The Reading Experience has another post about John Dewey up.

• One of my favorite pieces of Transformers fan fiction is A Chance In A Million. Now that I think about it, it might have been the first one I ever read too when I got back into the fandom in 1997.

• Scott over at Conversational Reading finds War & Peace to be a bit of a disappointment. I started reading it back in high school but never finished it. Maybe I will pick that up again this summer.

• It seems that I link to a Marjane Satrapi interview almost every week. This week’s interview is from Nerve:

I have to tell you something: I never felt as free as when I wrote Chicken with Plums. When I write about women, and obviously when I write about myself like in Persepolis people relate [the text] to me. In this book, the main character in is a man. I could hide behind him, yet in some ways, he is me. I can be very cynical, but I can also die of love.

• Incoming Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is interviewed over at Mother Jones:

Third, I want to take a look at some of the good things that are being done around the rest of the world that are almost never discussed in the United States. How often is it discussed that the American people work the longest hours of any industrialized country in the world? The two-week paid vacation is almost a thing of the past; meanwhile in Europe you get four to six weeks vacation, and maternity leave with pay. We don’t know about these things. I want to take a look around the world and see what workers are receiving, and compare that to the United States” from an educational point of view.

The loss of Gilbert Sorrentino is a great one. Like Scott over at Conversational Reading I also discovered Sorrentino via Litt blogs, namely his own and Derik at MadInkBeard. I’ve only read Aberration of Starlight, but I want to read more soon.

Updates

• The Reading Experience also has more coverage.

• Derik also has his own tribute posted now.

• Conversational Reading has linked to more obituaries.

• The Reading Experience has another follow up post.

I know I am really late on this one, but this is an easy one. I find the whole fiasco with James Frey to be totally hilarious. You mean to tell me an addict lied about something? No shit? I’m so shocked! Henry Rollins puts it best:

CNN was on today and I watched Anderson Cooper waste way too much time on James Frey and his book that lied. Uh, he’s a junkie and she’s a fucking day time talk show host. If you get your reading list from a fucking talk show host, you deserve any disappointment that comes your way.

But Oprah, as I’ve previously blogged about, is no saint either.  Meanwhile, Scott over at Conversational Reading also hits the nail on the head about Frey’s publisher:

What do we need stinkin fact-checkers for? This slightly frightening-looking former addict comes to us with a memoir and he sez it’s true, so it’s true. Shit! Next thing you’ll be asking us to check the authenticity of Scotter Libby’s memoir.

The whole thing is pretty pathetic and hilarious. I hate these “memoirs” that need to have these insane, totally fucked up, stories to sell a few more books. If these people would just write fiction with some truth and biographical stuff and sell it as fiction and not memoir none of this would happen.

The loss of science fiction writer Octavia Butler is, as Scott over at Conversational Reading puts it, a major loss. Butler has been one of my favorite writers for about four years now. I was first turned onto her via a professor who had us read Kindred for a class. Later that semester I wrote a paper on The Parable Of The Sower and have continued to enjoy her writing since.

Book Slut also has obituaries from many different places linked.