Amber Sparks
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Words that say what I would like to say, but better than I could say it.
May 5, 2011 — 5 Comments
Junot Diaz on what disasters can teach us (the whole essay is amazing):
If, as Roethke writes, “in a dark time, the eye begins to see,” apocalypse is a darkness that gives us light.
But this is not an easy thing to do, this peering into darkness, this ruin-reading. It requires nuance, practice, and no small amount of heart. I cannot, however, endorse it enough. Given the state of our world—in which the very forces that place us in harm’s way often take advantage of the confusion brought by apocalyptic events to extend their power and in the process increase our vulnerability—becoming a ruin-reader might not be so bad a thing. It could in fact save your life.
Wonderful essay today on Pale Fire by Arthur Phillips. I feel exactly, exactly like this about Nabokov’s masterpiece. (more…)
Everyone should read this. Everyone.
February 7, 2011
Kudos to the New Yorker for this excellent piece of real, investigative journalism, and for making it available to everyone online–so that everyone can see for themselves what scary scammy fraudsters Scientologists really are. People laugh–and indeed their “beliefs” are laughable–but these people can be truly frightening as well. Glad to hear the FBI is investigating them and I hope they can finally shut this horrible cult (because yes, that’s what they are) down.
Interesting Archive: Best Magazine Articles Ever
July 29, 2010
Lots of good stuff to dig into here. Whoever put this together, incidentally, is clearly a big DFW fan.
New Blog Alert: Dave Weigel’s Right Now
April 8, 2010
If you’re interested in the Tea Party people, the conservative movement, or the Republican party, you have to check out Dave Weigel’s new blog at the Washington Post. Excellent coverage, from the (kind-of) moderate to the wingnuttiest.
From Dave about his goals for the blog:
…there’s no shortage of news about the right. There is, I think, a shortage of coverage that puts the movement in context. This is where “Right Now” comes in. I’ve spent most of my reporting career covering the conservative movement, from the we-had-it-coming midterms of 2006 through the “Ron Paul Revolution” of 2008 through Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-Mass.) upset victory this year. If you stayed close to conservative activists and strategists throughout that period, you knew that something like the Tea Party movement — some massive rejection of George W. Bush’s legacy, some force that drove the GOP further to the right — was inevitable. You weren’t surprised to hear people once again bashing the Federal Reserve rhetoric or talking about how the 10th Amendment could give states some defense against liberal policies.
The goal of this blog will be to explain what the right is doing, thinking, and planning as it hurtles toward the possible salvation of the 2010 midterm elections. That’s going to mean a lot of on-the-scene reporting, interviews with the people driving this movement, and close reading of the arguments making headway among the people trying to bring the Obama era to the quickest possible end.
He’s already got some great, timely posts up. Get over there and check ‘em out.
The Top 100 20th Century Works of Journalism in the US
April 6, 2010
This is a good list, chosen by (mostly) good solid journalists. Hiroshima and Slouching Toward Bethlehem would both be on my favorites list, too, as would Mencken’s reporting on the Scopes trial, Lincoln Steffens’ and Ida Tarbell’s muckraker reports on poverty and Standard Oil, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, The Souls of Black Folk, Silent Spring, Dispatches, Steinbeck’s reports on Okie migrant camp life, and the Fire Next Time.
I haven’t read a lot of these, though, and I intend to check a lot of the unread pieces out. They sound fascinating.
h/t Bookslut.
