"Karaoke Culture" by Dubravka Ugresic [Read This Next]
This week’s Read This Next title is Karaoke Culture by Dubravka Ugresic, which is translated from the Croatian by David Williams, Celia Hawkesworth, and Ellen Elias-Bursac, and is coming out from Open Letter at the end of the month. I’m really excited about this book—in my opinion, it’s one of the ...
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Karaoke Culture
To even write this review is to participate in the Karaoke Culture the Dubravka Ugresic criticizes. To be one of the voices the mass experiment in democratic culture is only one more example of a worldwide culture that is collapsing into parodies of itself as we all become yet another karaoke singer demanding our moment and ...
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Thank God, Bob Dylan Didn't Win
And this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature goes to Tomas Transtromer. From the “Guardian:”: Praised by the judges for “his condensed translucent images” which give us “fresh access to reality”, Tranströmer’s surreal explorations of the inner world and its relation to the ...
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The New Book I Can't Wait To Read
Scott Esposito’s been on about Daniel Sada for a while now, and I’ve heard nothing but fantastic things about his work, especially the “Joycean,” “Rabelaisian,” novel Almost Never, which wont he prestigious Herralde Prize for Fiction, and which Graywolf is bringing in April in Katherine ...
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Another Nobel Prize Odds Update
Bob Dylan is now listed at 5/1 making him the favorite for this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. I find this very confusing. Bob Dylan? Nobel Prize in Literature? I doubt he’ll win, but in a way, it would be awesomely fitting after all of the complaints over the past few years that a) Americans don’t win ...
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Today's Nobel Prize Odds Update + The Coolest Class Ever
So, following on yesterday’s post on the forthcoming announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature (supposed to happen on Thursday) and the current odds at Ladbrokes, I just want to point out that the big mover today is Bob Dylan, who shot up from 50/1 to 10/1. Interesting . . . * More interesting though is this ...
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"Reading Alberto Moravia in Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy"
This past weekend, the NY Times Book Review included this interesting essay by Rachel Donadio about reading Alberto Moravia: In its culture as in its politics, Italy lives under the shadow of Silvio Berlusconi. With his endless legal entanglements and sexual imbroglios and his colorful manner of governing (or not ...
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