Overland literary journal

books that matter

The Washington Times offers a bleak assessment of literary culture on the US campuses:

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the best-selling titles on college campuses are mostly about hunky vampires or Barack Obama. Recently, Meyer and the president held six of the 10 top spots. In January, the most subversive book on the college bestseller list was "Our Dumb World," a collection of gags from the Onion. The top title that month was "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" by J.K. Rowling. College kids' favorite nonfiction book was Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers," about what makes successful individuals. And the only title that stakes a claim as a real novel for adults was Khaled Hosseini's "A Thousand Splendid Suns," the choice of a million splendid book clubs. ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 9-03-2009, 13 user comments

bushfires and climate change

Just stumbled on this piece from RealClimate, in which David Karoly from Melbourne Uni authoritatively spells out the connection between climate change and the recent bushfire catastrophes. For most people, his conclusion's probably not much of a surprise but given all the contortions the usual suspects went through to deny any link, it's worth reading. Here's the guts:

Although formal attribution studies quantifying the influence of climate change on the increased likelihood of extreme fire danger in south-east Australia have not yet been undertaken, it is very likely that there has been such an influence. Long-term increases in maximum temperature have been attributed to anthropogenic climate change. In addition, reduced rainfall and low relative humidity are expected in
southern Australia due to anthropogenic climate change. The FFDI for a number of sites in Victoria on 7 February reached unprecedented levels, ranging from 120 to 190, much higher than the fire weather conditions on Black Friday or Ash Wednesday, and well above the “catastrophic” fire danger rating (1). ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 7-03-2009, No comments

new Harper Collins imprint

From the New York Times:

Just a month after announcing a restructuring that led to layoffs and the shuttering of an entire division, HarperCollins Publishers hopes to jazz up its book lists by opening a new imprint.

This fall the company will publish 21 new hardcover and paperback original titles under the It Books imprint, focusing on pop culture, sports, style and content derived from the Internet, like a planned collection of Twitter posts called “Twitter Wit.”

One will resist the temptation to suggest that it will be a very thin volume.

More seriously, this seems an odd response to the problems faced by the industry. Sure, publishers need to take into account the online environment. But surely that means publishing that emphasise the strengths of books, not their weaknesses. A collection of funny Twitter posts might make an amusing website, I guess, but would you really want it on your bookshelf? Print is about permanency; it's about reflection; it's about a more in-depth engagement with ideas than the transitory experience offered by the web. If you wanted a 'replication of culture derived from the internet', wouldn't you, like, go to the internet? ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 7-03-2009, No comments

Jon Stewart

I really like Jon Stewart's Daily Show. He manages to combine incisive political commentary with comedy. There was a really good episode a couple of days ago on the media and the financial bailout in the US which you can catch here: http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=220250 But my all-time favourite video is of Stewart on the US debate show called Crossfire. Anyone on the left who has ever had to deal with the right-wing media on TV or radio knows how hard it is to unhinge the whole set-up. Everything is stacked against you (right down to the fact that they can cut your mike if they want) - which is what is so brilliant about Stewart's performance here. Where most of us might buy into the terms of the show, he just refuses to, and is able to control the terms of the debate from the start (see how he takes control from the first moment and holds on for almost the whole thing). It's from some years ago, but I could watch it again and again. Check it out:

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 6-03-2009, 2 user comments

the aestheticisation of politics

There's a clip floating about featuring a particularly odd exchange between snake-lipped hatemonger Ann Coulter and lunatic eliminationist Glen Beck about the Conservative Political Action Conference, a kind of Lollapolooza for right-wing Bedlamites.  'One thing that is overwhelming about CPAC is all of the hot babes,' Coulter says. 'I would be a conservative if we weren't so good looking. But wow, we have a lot of pulchritude on our side. [...] The males are pretty good looking. [...] OK. The other stations would find the dorkiest-looking person, the most empty room at the convention that had 9,000 participants and fixate on the one dorky-looking person.' Below, an actual poster from CPAC, which puts this bizarre exchange in context.
... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 5-03-2009, 2 user comments

such, such are the joys

Nice little spread in the Guardian with writers talking about how they feel about writing. The money quote comes from Hari Kunzru:

Beginning is daunting; being in the middle makes you feel like Sisyphus; ending sometimes comes with the disappointment that this finite collection of words is all that remains of your infinitely rich idea. Along the way, there are the pitfalls of self-disgust, boredom, disorientation and a lingering sense of inadequacy, occasionally alternating with episodes of hysterical self-congratulation as you fleetingly believe you've nailed that particular sentence and are surely destined to join the ranks of the immortals, only to be confronted the next morning with an appalling farrago of clichés that no sane human could read without vomiting. ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 3-03-2009, 8 user comments

not demonic, creative

A bunch of the regular commentators here have noted the weird word combinations thrown up by the Recaptcha anti-spam filter -- I remember on one occasion it made me type 'vodka hag'. The general consensus was that Recaptcha was possessed by Satan. The truth, however, could not be more different. It turns out that every time you copy the Recaptcha phrases you are helping digitalise out of copyright texts.

Walrus magazine explains:

Now a growing number of websites, from e-commerce (Ticketmaster) to social networking (Facebook) to blogging (Wordpress), have implemented the precocious professor’s new tool, dubbed recaptcha. If you’ve visited those sites, your squiggly-letter- reading ability has been harnessed for a massive project that aims to scan and make freely available every out-of- copyright book in the world, by deciphering words from old texts that have stumped scanning software. [snip] ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 3-03-2009, 3 user comments

another world

From Salon's account of the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual jamboree for the entirely unhinged:

But by far the strangest moment at the podium came during a panel on "Conservative Victories in the 2008 Elections." (Yes, really.) Nineteen people -- with names like Flagg Youngblood, Spear Lancaster and Smoot Carter -- sat at the dais, and each one dashed up to the mics, delivered a two-minute speech full of right-wing clichés, and sat down again. "We are the future, fellow young conservatives," one speaker declared. "The future is the present. The present is now." True wisdom -- and also a fine mashup of "Buckaroo Banzai" and "Atlas Shrugged." ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 3-03-2009, No comments

twitter and the class struggle

A couple of weeks ago, the media was full of stories about the glorious future Twitter represented. This week, to coincide with the establishment of the Overland Twitter feed (we're like the kid who took up hula-hooping just as everyone else got a yo-yo), it's been all backlash, all the time. Here's a sample:

When I read about news anchor David Gregory of NBC plunging into the world of Twittering to tell us he is eating a bagel or ABC’s Terry Moran ripping off a Tweet as he boards a plane, geez—I wonder—who are these people on their hand-held devices or home computers glued to this cliff-hanging action? ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 3-03-2009, 7 user comments

triumph over barberism

I love barbershops for the banter and cruisy atmosphere that seems to go with the territory. This morning before work though, I walked into a barbershop in central Melbourne and had an exchange which damaged this love affair considerably. It went something like this:
Me: Can I please get a buzz cut? (to the three barbers sitting around chatting to the one customer)
Barber 1: No. We don’t do women’s haircuts
Me: Okay. I just wondered if you would give me a buzz cut
Barber 1: (looking at me like I’m deranged) I said we don’t do women’s haircuts
Me: (pointing to the one customer) Isn’t he getting a buzz cut?
Barber 1: He’s a man
Me: But you don’t look very busy. Could you please give me the same cut as him, on a blade two? (Here it’s worth noting that a blade two buzz is my normal monthly haircut, and my current cut, while this exchange was going on, was about a grade five blade all over)
Barber 2: Umm… he said we don’t do women’s cuts. ... read more

Written by Maxine Clarke on 2-03-2009, 5 user comments

why the Right likes Orwell

Julian Barnes' essay in the New York Review of Books gives a pretty good account of Orwell and, without turning into one of those Stalinist hatchet jobs you still see from time to time (they never forgave him for Homage to Catalonia), helps explain why he's become so palatable to the Christopher Hitchenses of the world:

Orwell is profoundly English in even more ways than these. He is deeply untheoretical and wary of general conclusions that do not come from specific experiences. He is a moralist and a puritan, one who, for all his populism and working-class sympathies, is squeamish about dirt, disgusted by corporal and fecal odors. He is caricatural of Jews to the point of anti-Semitism, and routinely homophobic, using "the pansy left" and "nancy poets" as if they were accepted sociological terms. He dislikes foreign food, and thinks the French know nothing about cooking; while the sight of a gazelle in Morocco makes him dream of mint sauce. He lays down stern rules about how to make and drink tea, and in a rare sentimental flight imagines the perfect pub. [snip] ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 1-03-2009, 1 user comment