I read book reviews at work. There are pluses and minuses. One minus is reading reviews of baaaaad fiction. Reviews of mysteries get pretty repetitive; detectives are always running into old flames who mention some mysterious group or place or science project then are killed in bizarre accidents....BUT ARE THEY ACCIDENTS?? Yeah, well, probably not.
The best thing about reading book reviews is...well, maybe finding out about some poetry, which I'd never read previously to seeing reviews...but usually the best thing is reviews of good non-fiction.
A CASUAL glance at ANY major news source will show that the media is CLEARLY not leftist...
...thankfully, someone finally wrote about this. His name is Eric Alterman, and his book "What Liberal Bias?" has a sidebar-interview in Publisher's Weekly. Here is one quote that I wish I could plaster across every newspaper front page, and MSNBC, and get a skywriter to write above a few thousand cities:
interviewer - What does it matter who we call a conservative or a liberal? Why not just focus on the issues?
Alterman - It matters because what the right has been able to do since the early '80s is call people who are centrists, and even moderate conservatives, "liberals", and give them teh liberal place in a debate, so that genuine liberals are sort of laughed out of the room, not to be taken seriously. I'm a liberal. I'm not a socialist, I'm not even much of a leftist anymore, I'm just a liberal. But I am to the left of anyone who is included in the mainstream debate, with the exception maybe of Frank Rich and Paul Krugman...but I was on Crossfire once discussing a book of mine with Bob Novak, and he said I was to the left of Khruschev.
I feel like Alterman. I voted for McCain in the primary, who Bush tried to paint as "liberal" simply because he attraced sensible moderates and centrist liberals and conservatives. Ralph Nader, who actually IS leftist, didn't even get a say in the debates. Now, I voted for Al Gore, I've never voted Green...but hell, don't they at least deserve better than piddly media coverage, then to be BLASTED by bitter Democrats as a "wasted vote"?
...another NUTTY thing in this country now is the idea that you CAN'T mention a side of an issue. I saw a MSN.com story titled "Is It Un-patriotic to Oppose War with Iraq?" Tell me, WHAT IS THE POINT of a "democarcy" if you CAN'T ? ? ? ? ! ! !
...which brings me to another weird thing-- the idea that you CAN'T write about 9/11 in a story. The question was actually raised to Joyce Maynard in her sidebar-interview, in the same issue of PW. Joyce wrote a story about a girl who loses her mother in the WTC, then is torn from her step-family (her mother had divorced and remarried) to go live with her biological father in California. The story was inspired by a similar occurrence in real life:
interviewer - Do you think people might think that you are exploiting a national and personal tragedy?
Maynard - Yeah. I don't know. I thinkthat probably will happen. I've sort of accepted that people are going to say MANY things. To me, it's always a beter thing to talk about the hard experiences in my life than to maintain silences. I was raised with silences, and I lived with silence on a number of very important experiences in my life. I don't believe inthem. But I'mnot cramming this book down anyone's throat either. if soemone finds that experience to painful to relive it, there's a very simple solution: not to reenter it. We all experienced September 11, in the world, in this nation. There's a smaller group, that's New Yorkers, that experienced it in amuch more intense way than other parts of the country. And then there is the real core group who lost something. I would not presume to know how this book would be to them. I hope to hear."
My only misgiving with Maynard is that people around the world didn't necessarily feel much impact of 9/11. I read Kevin Murphy's book about travelling to various movie theaters that year. He was on a tiny Australian-area island on 9/99, and the natives there were very sympathetic...but I also read a column in the Washington City Paper, where their sports writer was in Italy. Their reaction was blase. They watched the news at a cafe, shrugged, and walked on. At the soccer game he attended, they did do a moment of silence before it for America...so there was SOME reaction, but not necessarily the same one here. It's important to remember that most countries have their OWN terrorism problems and have had them for YEARS (such as Italy's own Red Brigade bombings, and then you have Ireland and Israel, etc) so they aren't always thinking about America first cuz, well, they don't live here. They also didn't necessarily hear the figures of how many people died.
Trying to end on a positive note, I'll go back to the beginning here - poetry. Don't read much yourself? Go and check out some Billy Collins (he's ought to be in most libraries) and Nicholas Christopher (he won't be). They are great...perhaps I'll 'journal' some soon...
The best thing about reading book reviews is...well, maybe finding out about some poetry, which I'd never read previously to seeing reviews...but usually the best thing is reviews of good non-fiction.
A CASUAL glance at ANY major news source will show that the media is CLEARLY not leftist...
...thankfully, someone finally wrote about this. His name is Eric Alterman, and his book "What Liberal Bias?" has a sidebar-interview in Publisher's Weekly. Here is one quote that I wish I could plaster across every newspaper front page, and MSNBC, and get a skywriter to write above a few thousand cities:
interviewer - What does it matter who we call a conservative or a liberal? Why not just focus on the issues?
Alterman - It matters because what the right has been able to do since the early '80s is call people who are centrists, and even moderate conservatives, "liberals", and give them teh liberal place in a debate, so that genuine liberals are sort of laughed out of the room, not to be taken seriously. I'm a liberal. I'm not a socialist, I'm not even much of a leftist anymore, I'm just a liberal. But I am to the left of anyone who is included in the mainstream debate, with the exception maybe of Frank Rich and Paul Krugman...but I was on Crossfire once discussing a book of mine with Bob Novak, and he said I was to the left of Khruschev.
I feel like Alterman. I voted for McCain in the primary, who Bush tried to paint as "liberal" simply because he attraced sensible moderates and centrist liberals and conservatives. Ralph Nader, who actually IS leftist, didn't even get a say in the debates. Now, I voted for Al Gore, I've never voted Green...but hell, don't they at least deserve better than piddly media coverage, then to be BLASTED by bitter Democrats as a "wasted vote"?
...another NUTTY thing in this country now is the idea that you CAN'T mention a side of an issue. I saw a MSN.com story titled "Is It Un-patriotic to Oppose War with Iraq?" Tell me, WHAT IS THE POINT of a "democarcy" if you CAN'T ? ? ? ? ! ! !
...which brings me to another weird thing-- the idea that you CAN'T write about 9/11 in a story. The question was actually raised to Joyce Maynard in her sidebar-interview, in the same issue of PW. Joyce wrote a story about a girl who loses her mother in the WTC, then is torn from her step-family (her mother had divorced and remarried) to go live with her biological father in California. The story was inspired by a similar occurrence in real life:
interviewer - Do you think people might think that you are exploiting a national and personal tragedy?
Maynard - Yeah. I don't know. I thinkthat probably will happen. I've sort of accepted that people are going to say MANY things. To me, it's always a beter thing to talk about the hard experiences in my life than to maintain silences. I was raised with silences, and I lived with silence on a number of very important experiences in my life. I don't believe inthem. But I'mnot cramming this book down anyone's throat either. if soemone finds that experience to painful to relive it, there's a very simple solution: not to reenter it. We all experienced September 11, in the world, in this nation. There's a smaller group, that's New Yorkers, that experienced it in amuch more intense way than other parts of the country. And then there is the real core group who lost something. I would not presume to know how this book would be to them. I hope to hear."
My only misgiving with Maynard is that people around the world didn't necessarily feel much impact of 9/11. I read Kevin Murphy's book about travelling to various movie theaters that year. He was on a tiny Australian-area island on 9/99, and the natives there were very sympathetic...but I also read a column in the Washington City Paper, where their sports writer was in Italy. Their reaction was blase. They watched the news at a cafe, shrugged, and walked on. At the soccer game he attended, they did do a moment of silence before it for America...so there was SOME reaction, but not necessarily the same one here. It's important to remember that most countries have their OWN terrorism problems and have had them for YEARS (such as Italy's own Red Brigade bombings, and then you have Ireland and Israel, etc) so they aren't always thinking about America first cuz, well, they don't live here. They also didn't necessarily hear the figures of how many people died.
Trying to end on a positive note, I'll go back to the beginning here - poetry. Don't read much yourself? Go and check out some Billy Collins (he's ought to be in most libraries) and Nicholas Christopher (he won't be). They are great...perhaps I'll 'journal' some soon...
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Also, Love On The Run. What can I say? Truffaut, j'temme! J'temme! Another perfect Truffaut movie, ho hum. Is Truffaut god? Oui!