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 Wednesday, June 5, 2002
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Remember it? Is it gone? Some folks over at Flutterby are lamenting the cool visionary hope of the cyberpunk of their youth. Some great comments about the difference between the cyberpunk dreams of the 80s and early 90s and the reality we live in today. But they make it sound as if the whole genre died once the Internet went mainstream. While I admit I haven't seen anything I'd call "cyberpunk" published recently, I find it hard to believe no one's writing in this vein anymore. Technological advances have not ended, and the punk ethos of jamming the system has not lost any of its edge, as far as I'm concerned. The cyberpunk landscape of today's future might look a lot different than the landscape these folks are nostalgic for, but then, that's the point of cyberpunk, isn't it? [via markpasc.blog]
(Bonus: One of the comments on Flutterby mentions the Blink digital camera. Only 2 inches square and $39. How cool is that!? But will it work w/a Mac?) 10:08:55 PM 
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Bush and Co. are using the phrase ""the American people" quite a lot these days. Generally, it seems like the Bushies want to tell you what you know, think, understand or feel, which is really swell of them -- who wants to think for themselves anymore? Of course, I could be wrong. As Dana Millbank notes,
 The American people do not know for sure why the president keeps saying this. But the president and his aides have used some variation of the phrase hundreds of times, to defend the administration's policies on everything from the Middle East to income taxes.
This is no verbal tic. By invoking the American people (not the informal "Americans") when confronted with a thorny issue or a hostile question, Bush and his aides give the impression that the matter is some inside-the-Beltway intrigue that is out of step with public opinion.
"It's an effective shorthand," said Jeff Shesol, a former Clinton speechwriter who taught a course in presidential rhetoric at Princeton University this year. "It's suggesting that in fact you may have an argument but we've got the people." Shesol admits Clinton speechwriters used the phrase, too. "We're not proud of it, but the American people know our heart was in the right place," he said. 
I bet I could make a bunch of money if I trademark the phrase, then charged Bush and Co. (and all future public servants who want to express such presumptuous contempt for their constituents) a buck for every time they try to tell the American People (TM) what they think. If you want in on the deal, just let me know -- maybe we can make a deal. 9:51:59 PM
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One of the reasons so many people like The Matrix is that it "quotes" from so many different sources -- philosophy texts, other movies, and now, apparently, a comic. According to Bookslut (where the permalinks look like they're only for show), the artist behind The Invisibles is taking a hiatus because he's tired of people like the Wachowski brothers swiping his idears. Bookslut points to this by way of explanation...
9:35:28 PM
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As a followup to the comments below about "great" books, I've been reading more about Faulkner recently and just came across this from Twentieth-Century Southern Literature by J.A. Bryant Jr. (p. 78):
Faulkner, who had completed the bulk of his major work by the time of [Thomas] Wolfe's death in 1939, was only lightly regarded by the American public during that period. By 1945 only one his books, the notorious Sanctuary, remained in print, and he had alredy begun to slip into semiobscurity as a minor master of what was commonly called Southern Gothic.
Of course, Faulkner is now widely regarded as a master of 20th century American fiction. Why is that? It's not because his writing changed between the publication of his books in the 1920s and 30s and the time he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949; rather, what changed were his readers and the dominant ideology that determined "greatness." (Cleanth Brooks' books about Faulkner and his popularization of the "New Criticsm" certainly had something to do with this.) The point is that there's nothing inherent within a text that makes it "great"; a book's "greatness" will always depend on its readers. 9:51:02 AM
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In Hating "Great" Books I took Tom Bissell to task for not having read some books he "condemned." Bissell kindly read my comments, and posted his own. Below is my apology and correction.
Tom: You are absolutely correct -- your article did not condemn anyone. I apologize for mischaracterizing the main point I think you were trying to make (namely, not that these books are bad, but that you dislike reading them -- correct?). I got the list of writers you "condemn" from the letters responding to your piece. That was shoddy work, obviously. I had read your article days earlier, and didn't remember precisely which authors you singled out, other than Faulkner, of course. I really enjoyed your article, and I appreciate both your perspective and the fact that you're not afraid to express it to a "literary" audience that can, indeed, be "clerky" and immovable in its opinions about "literature." I'm near you in age, am also involved in the "literary" world, and have often felt a good deal of my own frustration (and shame) when books that are supposedly "great" don't seem so great to me. The title of my post ("Hating 'Great' Books") was actually intended to question the "greatness" of these books. Perhaps it wasn't part of your point, but I think the fact that the supposed brilliance of these texts is not available to a large number of readers suggests that they're not necessarily so "great" to begin with -- it's only that "clerky" literary establishment that deems them as such, so why should you, or anyone else, need to be ashamed if you disagree?
A more serious thought your article sparked in me was a comparison between what you call "a work of literature's temperament" to what Georg Lukacs has called a text's weltanschaung, or worldview. (See around page 19-20 of The Meaning of Contemporary Realism if you're interested in tracking the connection. Lukacs is often dismissed as a dogmatic old-school Marxist curmudgeon, but sometimes I wonder if critics who say that are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.) Of course, whereas your description of "the nearly cell-level sensation [a work of literature's] voice provokes in a reader" refers to an individual response to a text, Lukacs is talking about something I think he'd like to consider more universal, something available by anyone who reads a book. The real trouble is that no text says the same thing to everyone, which is really what your piece is saying. And that, I might add, is also what the letters responding to your piece (and my response here) also show: Readers simply cannot be trusted to "get" your intended meaning, no matter how hard you try to communicate clearly. Nevertheless, I apologize for misreading you in this case (although I assure you it was not "willful").
Anyway, thanks for reading this and I look forward to reading your future work. 9:12:46 AM
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Scripting News pointed to this academic who blogs. She gives several good pedagogical reasons for using blogs to teach writing. Some of these I've considered, others are fresh ideas for me. I'll be teaching a summer class beginning next week; between now and then I'll give more thought to how I might use blogs to teach "business and technical writing," but at this point I'm still thinking it might be more trouble than it's worth. (Battery dying, must run...) 8:26:51 AM
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David Watson pointed me to this page with instructions for adding a comment count to your comment links in Radio. I've been trying to figure this out for some time -- thanks David! If you use Radio and you see people with cool features on their pages that you'd like to implement in your own blog, check this list, which appears to be a central location for all of Dave Winer's new Radio features announcements.
I'm still contemplating a move to Moveable Type, but I dunno... If Radio would send me email every time someone made a comment about a post, I might be even less likely to switch. Does anyone know how to make Radio do that? 8:15:53 AM
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