February 2008

On Deck +

Contributors +

“Most disturbingly, users are locked in, too: anybody using an iPhone, an old version of Windows, any version of Linux, or any other operating system or device not supported by Silverlight will be unable to use the Library of Congress’ new website. How is that compatible with the principles of democracy or librarianship? It’s taxation without web presentation.”

- Casey Durfee at LibraryThing on the LOC’s

via Three Percent

“It’s a great crib, no doubt, but ‘one of the most prominent critics of our time’ should surely be doing a lot more than writing a kind of student’s guide to the novel.”

– Mark Thwaite on James Wood’s How Fiction Works

“By the time I reached the ending…I could do nothing but breathlessly close the book and sit thinking…and thinking…

Dissertations could be written about this novel.”

- amcorrea on Steve Erickson’s Zeroville

“MFA programs spend a lot of time going on about pedigree. It’s how they reward their students, it’s how they laud their faculty, it’s how they judge their applicants. But education, no matter how important it is to educators, doesn’t seem to impress so much in the outside world.”

Carolyn Kellogg

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“We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.”

- Zadie Smith on not finding a story worth of the Willesden Herald Short Story Competition.

“Futhermore, have you Facebook users ever actually read the privacy policy? It tells you that you don’t have much privacy. Facebook pretends to be about freedom, but isn’t it really more like an ideologically motivated virtual totalitarian regime with a population that will very soon exceed the UK’s? Thiel and the rest have created their own country, a country of consumers.”

– Tom Hodgkinson at the Guardian

“ How many current Bookforum readers/subscribers leaf through their copies and sigh, ‘If only they had more current events coverage’ (or sports coverage, or whatever) ? Surely almost none.”

- The Literary Saloon on Bookforum’s upcoming editorial changes. [FWIW: we heartily agree with the Saloon]

“She is the author of several books containing many words. Some people like to watch snuff movies, some people like to read Coulter.”

- Roger Miller



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