I am intrigued by the number of people who answer the question "What do you read?" with: "I don't read [newspapers] [magazines] [books]. I get my news on the Internet."
If the question were "what do you read on paper"? that would be an answer.
This is, by the way, apparently, Sarah Pallin's excuse for why she couldn't answer Katie Couric's question about what magazines and newspapers she read. Mail delivery to Alaska is slow; so she has to read stories on her computer.
But the question really has nothing to do with whether you read a paper page or on a screen. The question is What not Where do you read.
You are really being asked: "What sources for news do you trust"?
If you get your news on the Web, do you click through on Google News headlines to articles from the Washington Post, CNN, Reuters, NYTimes, National Review, Atlantic Monthly, ABCNews, NPR?
If you do, then you are reading magazines and newspapers, and you even "read" TV news on their web sites.
And if you read news "free" on the Web, who pays the people who write it?
Monday, February 23, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
I strongly urge people to listen to the podcast of NPR's Connecticut program, "Where We Live" today, which was a discussion of the future of the book in a world of electronic media: http://www.cpbn.org/program/episode/wwl-future-book
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
The movie of Virginia Woolf's novel MRS. DALLOWAY is an amazing translation of book to film. British actor Eileen Atkins wrote a screenplay which uses the camera to follow the characters exactly as Woolf used her "stream of consciousness" method to describe one day in London. Probably the only significant difference in the adaptation is that Septimus is clearly shown to have PTSD flashbacks of combat, while in the novel he merely has paranoid delusions that he is “pock-marked with vice.” If you have read MRS. DALLOWAY and never quite understood why Septimus is ill, the movie will make that clear.
The parallels between shell-shocked WWI soldier Septimus Warren Smith and society hostess Clarissa Dalloway are intentionally subtle in both book and movie. There is no universal symbolism behind it all. They are a simple example of synchronicity, a random proximity between people or things that exists only because an outside observer notices the similarities. There is no deep, preordained reason these people meet, as there is the entire backdrop of the history of Ireland, the myth of the Wandering Jew, and the evolution of Catholic liturgy, when Joyce’s Stephen meets Bloom.
MRS. DALLOWAY is simply the story of one day in London when several old friends happen to reunite – and to reconcile -- after long separations. They end up together at a dinner party, where their hostess overhears a self-important doctor complain that he was late because an inconsiderate patient killed himself, and only we readers know the man was Septimus. As readers, we even know why he did, and we credit Clarissa for guessing why Dr. Bradshaw might drive a man to prefer suicide to treatment.
When I taught MRS. DALLOWAY to sophomores, the women would often ask how Clarissa could possibly be happy to have chosen Richard over Peter. They couldn’t imagine not preferring a romantic failure. They rarely noticed Clarissa had been at least as much in love with Sally. There are no meaningful coincidences as in a Dickens novel; Septimus is not revealed to be the son of the woodcutter who accidently killed Clarissa's sister, who was actually their bastard brother. Unlike a 21st-Century fantasy novel, Clarissa wasn't Septimus's lover in a previous life. Richard is not a secret Death Eater. Nor does Peter actually live in an alternate universe where Clarissa married him, and Septimus is the son they never had.
Sometimes the best plot is life as we live it.
The parallels between shell-shocked WWI soldier Septimus Warren Smith and society hostess Clarissa Dalloway are intentionally subtle in both book and movie. There is no universal symbolism behind it all. They are a simple example of synchronicity, a random proximity between people or things that exists only because an outside observer notices the similarities. There is no deep, preordained reason these people meet, as there is the entire backdrop of the history of Ireland, the myth of the Wandering Jew, and the evolution of Catholic liturgy, when Joyce’s Stephen meets Bloom.
MRS. DALLOWAY is simply the story of one day in London when several old friends happen to reunite – and to reconcile -- after long separations. They end up together at a dinner party, where their hostess overhears a self-important doctor complain that he was late because an inconsiderate patient killed himself, and only we readers know the man was Septimus. As readers, we even know why he did, and we credit Clarissa for guessing why Dr. Bradshaw might drive a man to prefer suicide to treatment.
When I taught MRS. DALLOWAY to sophomores, the women would often ask how Clarissa could possibly be happy to have chosen Richard over Peter. They couldn’t imagine not preferring a romantic failure. They rarely noticed Clarissa had been at least as much in love with Sally. There are no meaningful coincidences as in a Dickens novel; Septimus is not revealed to be the son of the woodcutter who accidently killed Clarissa's sister, who was actually their bastard brother. Unlike a 21st-Century fantasy novel, Clarissa wasn't Septimus's lover in a previous life. Richard is not a secret Death Eater. Nor does Peter actually live in an alternate universe where Clarissa married him, and Septimus is the son they never had.
Sometimes the best plot is life as we live it.
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