Archives for June 2009
Giant knit rabbit on a hill in Italy by gelitin. Something similar from Florentijn Hofman in the Dushi show at Galerie West in The Hague.
“Anonymity can be useful not just to cloak your identity or to try to fool people. It allows people who might pass something along to not be too caught up in the question of ‘who’s behind this?’. Instead, the idea exists on its own terms, which makes people a little more inclined to actually press Forward on the email.” – Bill Wasik in an interview with The Bygone Bureau.
Kathryn Bigelow is finally getting her due (Steady Diet of Film, Slate, Salon, etc.) This month Harvard Film Archive has a retrospective of her work (see her in person July 2nd, introducing Hurt Locker.) In addition to Near Dark, Point Break, and Strange Days, among others, Bigeow also directed part of the prescient Scientology critique Wild Palms.
This article on Ray Bradbury is getting a lot of attention. I found it needlessly mocking. It is hard to believe Brandbury talked as much at length about Bo Derek as reported, and if he did, maybe it was at the reporter’s prompting. Another inexplicable reference that made it in the article was that Bradbury once watched the film “Pumping Iron.” Newsworthy! LA based Jennifer Steinhauer, who typically covers the govenator, seemed to have a lapse of judgement over what is worthy of inclusion. Bradbury, at 88, doesn’t have much time left to impart his wisdom, and I’m sure most of us, California residents or otherwise, find his views on the communities and libraries far more interesting than the celebrity fluff that padded the article. Sure he sounds like an old crank, but he’s an old crank who wrote Fahrenheit 451! Rather than fishing for goofy quotes, why not ask worthwhile followup questions about what he really thinks about higher education or the Internet? Here’s a far better profile of Yinka Shonibare MBE including a clip from an upcoming Art 21 episode on the artist.
Death of a Dystopian, my article on the life and work of J. G. Ballard is up on Reason. “His writing is obsessed with the territories where the organic meets the inorganic; it is absurdist, bleak, vivid, and awake to the psychological effects of media and manmade landscapes. In the words of the novelist Martin Amis, ‘Ballard is quite unlike anyone else; indeed, he seems to address a different—a disused—part of the reader’s brain.’”
Why Teenagers Read Better Than You
Renée Green, Partially Buried in Three Parts, 1996/97 (via Artdaily)
Asked to picture a reader — a passionate reader — many of us will think of ourselves when we were young. Tucked under covers with a flashlight, staying up until the morning, so desperate to see the story play out. Maybe you didn’t have friends to sit with during lunch period, so you hid in the library. Maybe your parents didn’t let you keep a TV in your bedroom — or maybe they did but you thought sitcoms were stupid. You needed solitude — to shut the door behind you and escape from the daily trials of childhood. Homework, hormones, teasing, rules, chores, boredom.
China Mieville, at his talk at the Harvard Bookstore a few weeks ago, said he wrote his YA book “Un Lun Dun” because he’s “jealous of the way [young people] read.” No matter how much he loves a book now, it’s never quite as intense an experience. Cynics might say his publishers encouraged him as young adult books are so profitable, but, “if it were a mercinary decision,” Mieville explained, he’d just write ten more Bas Lag sequels.
For all the alarmism in our dwindling newspaper book sections on how our collective declining attention spans make novel reading more and more impossible, one point is completely lost: who reads more than teenagers?
As I explained in my talk at the Media in Transition conference at MIT a few months back, YA book sales are rocketing. Young people, who learned T9 before long division, have no problem curling up with a good book. Sales of young adult lit remain high even in this economy. Why is it other than teenagers are the most passionate readers?
There are several reasons why so many teenagers are passionate readers. A book is a pathway inside another person’s head. When you are young, you have few deep relationships, maybe no real emotional connections with others at all. You connect in the text. At that age, it is a revelation to see an author has the same dreams and insecurities as you do. Plus, there is a confidence and conviction to a fiction narrative’s voice. You are eager for someone to look up to, but certainly not your parents, not your teachers. A novel is an opportunity to really listen to another human being.
The solitude, the sense of emotional connection, and the guidance of a novel are all appealing to teenagers who might otherwise busy themselves exclusively with videogames and the Internet. And it shows. For the most part, young adult sales continue to rise even while book publishing is experiencing a significant decline.
Industry experts will say sales reflect the new diversity in the young adult market. There is a Harry Potter gold rush of writers who might never otherwise consider the genre. These writers are pushing the boundries, introducing ideas and themes darker and wilder than ever before.
Certainly, the increasing quality of young adult books is a draw. But there are exceptional videogames, there are exceptional websites and exceptional television programs to fight for a teenager’s attention. So why are they still reading?
I think there is another reason why young adult novels are doing well, and it is less easy gauge. As of yet, there are no real studies determining this, but anecdotally, we all relate to it. A book is an opportunity to get “off the grid.” We read to break free of their digital tether. To experience what life was like before the net. To disconnect. To finally feel alone.
A book holds your hand in solitude and says, here you are alone in your room and everything is alright. You don’t need to call a friend or Twitter something. The world is still turning. If you go for a forty minute walk without your mobile, don’t worry, you’re not going to miss anything.
Previously: New Media in Fiction: Will There Ever Be an “iPhone Novel”?
Update 6/23/09: Paul Raven has a smart response “are we confusing marketing with markets” on Futurismic: “This is a mantra we heard over and over again during the massive YA genre fiction circle-jerk last year, and it’s always backed with the unvoiced assumption that only Young Adults read YA. I’ve worked in a library, and I can assure you that’s an observable falsehood; most genuinely popular YA is successful precisely because so many adult readers with an expendable income enjoy the same titles… I have no beef with YA fiction, or with those who choose to write it, or those who choose to read it. What I do have an issue with is the assumption that by marketing certain books as being for young adults we can treat their success as indicators of health in young adult reading specifically. The pedestal-mounting of YA as the saviour of modern fiction is dangerously misguided.”
More fake curators please. (Actually, the reason I picked the URL was because I hoped people would mistake it for a real place, as some physical location/organization/backing sponsorship grants a blogger immediate authority. From the start most of my google alerts were people’s “to do” lists and sometimes when I say the title of this site in my head I think of it as “Tomorrow: Museum”)
“In April, I gave 13 UW graduate students a simple challenge: make an exhibit that gets strangers to talk to each other. 10 weeks, $300, and a whole lot of post-it notes later, they succeeded.” – Nina Simon at Museum 2.0. More on bathroom wall annotation and going places alone.
Pretty much the best thing about being sick is the opportunity to explore things you always figured you’d like but didn’t have the hours sitting in one place to do so. For me this week it was The Wire (I know!) and the French Open. As for the email that piled up in the meantime — I’m on it.
The Tomorrow Museum is thrilled by its inclusion in The Morning News’ 2009 EDDYS. And hugely flattered by the category “Best Source for Making Sense of It All”! It’s a wonderful list of sites that are all worthy of space in your RSS reader.
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