All entries by this author

Put That Book Down and Join the Group

Oct 26th, 2003 6:47 pm | By

This is a hilarious bit of reading. (Which I would have missed, despite entrenched habit of perusing the Guardian, but for Norm Geras’ always-interesting site, where you can vote for your own favourite novels, to the tune of three.) Lashings of sarcasm and mockery in Catherine Bennett’s look at Jane Root, BBC2, and the Big Read.

To ignore books is easy. So is burning them. You just need a match. But to make independent reading sound dull and great books look stupid, to transform literature into a vehicle for celebrities, polls, lists, voting opportunities and confected rivalries, to get books confidently debated by experts who have never read them, to set up a competition between Winnie the Pooh and War

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Bad Writing

Oct 26th, 2003 | By

Ophelia Benson

It may seem like an exercise in administering corporal punishment to a deceased equine quadruped, to say harsh things about academic Bad Writing – but of course it’s not, for the cogent reason that the horse is not dead. Academic Bad Writing is indeed old news, and no secret. But it is also on-going: a thriving, flourishing, burgeoning industry with all too much product. The market is saturated, indeed the water is up over the second floor windows, but the rain keeps falling. The vampire keeps waking up every night to find fresh blood, so all we can do is keep pounding away on the stake through the heart.

Of course, one reason academic bad writing is evergreen … Read the rest



The Big Read *

Oct 26th, 2003 | Filed by

Ew, reading is solitary – quick, let’s get the group involved!… Read the rest



What the Mind Does *

Oct 26th, 2003 | Filed by

Consider the link between thinking and inferring.… Read the rest



A Credulous People *

Oct 26th, 2003 | Filed by

Only 5% of Americans realize there is no life after death.… Read the rest



Silly Ideas About Compensation *

Oct 26th, 2003 | Filed by

Paying executives 532 times as much as the bottom workers is not actually all that useful.… Read the rest



Spiked on Eagleton *

Oct 25th, 2003 | Filed by

He is fed up with cultural theory, but not quite fed up enough.… Read the rest



Ian Buruma on the Israeli Left *

Oct 24th, 2003 | Filed by

The Left is rich and Ashkenazi, the working class is Sephardic and religious – so the left dwindles.… Read the rest



Globalisation Means Americanisation *

Oct 24th, 2003 | Filed by

Sonja Hegasy has fallen for the Enlightenment myth, Mona Abaza says.… Read the rest



Fanonian Rhetoric on Globalisation *

Oct 24th, 2003 | Filed by

The wretched of the earth like new music and clothes, just as the rich do.… Read the rest



Difficulty

Oct 23rd, 2003 6:55 pm | By

A few more thoughts on ‘difficulty’ and bad writing. The result of reading another introduction, this one to the anthology Critical Terms for Literary Study. Thomas McLaughlin has some interestingly symptomatic things to say.

So the very project of theory is unsettling. It brings assumptions into question…And…it does so in what is often a forbidding and arcane style. Many readers are frightened off by the difficulty of theory, which they can then dismiss as an effort to cover up in an artifically difficult style the fact that it has nothing to say…Of course theory is difficult – sometimes for compelling reasons, sometimes because of offensive self-indulgence – but simply assuming that it is all empty rhetoric ultimately keeps you

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The Pope as an Absolute Monarch *

Oct 23rd, 2003 | Filed by

John Paul II reasserted and even amplified the doctrine of ‘Papal infallibility.’… Read the rest



Ma Teresa a Celebrity, Yes, But Not a Saint *

Oct 23rd, 2003 | Filed by

India’s Science and Rationalists’ Association held a demonstration to protest against the beatification… Read the rest



New University Subject: Underpaying Labour *

Oct 23rd, 2003 | Filed by

If administrators want to talk of truth and justice, they should talk about low wages for staff, too.… Read the rest



Vandalism Drives Scientists Out of UK *

Oct 23rd, 2003 | Filed by

Why would sub-Saharan Africa need drought-resistant plants, after all?… Read the rest



It Was Just as Bad For Me as it Was For You

Oct 22nd, 2003 7:14 pm | By

I enjoy coincidences. They make me feel like part of the Divine Plan. (That’s a joke, but actually there was a coincidence last week that made me feel tempted to go all New Agey. I resisted, though.) So it amused me a couple of days ago that I started the day reading a new collection of ‘theoretical’ articles (by which you are to understand articles written by people who once would have been called literary critics but who have now moved Up in the world) – articles of a badness, a pretension, a tortuously protracted emptiness, that has to be read to be believed, and then after I’d done that until I couldn’t stand it any more I got on … Read the rest



Terrorism for Humanity? *

Oct 22nd, 2003 | Filed by

Richard Wolin has suspicions about Ted Honderich’s acuity.… Read the rest



Buffy Yes, Philosophy No *

Oct 22nd, 2003 | Filed by

A set of pretty good essays about Buffy the Vampire-Slayer – but not about philosophy.… Read the rest



Official State Witch *

Oct 22nd, 2003 | Filed by

Good to know – there’s nonsense in Norway, too.… Read the rest



Muslims in India *

Oct 22nd, 2003 | Filed by

M J Akbar: ‘it is a myth that Islamic law is not amenable to re-interpretation.’… Read the rest