‘Wilde in America,’ by David M. Friedman By LIESL SCHILLINGERDEC. 5, 2014 Chances are you’ll never have a conversation as scintillating as the one Oscar Wilde was overheard conducting at a gathering in San Francisco in 1882. At the time, the 27-year-old Irish upstart had yet to write any of the works that would earn … Continue reading
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Required Reading – “The Reign of Terror”
Tomis Kapitan of the New York Times writes, When President Barack Obama spoke to the public in September about his decision to use American military force against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria he used familiar language. ISIS (or ISIL as the White House and others refer to the group), the president said, “is … Continue reading
Required Reading: How the Novel Made the Modern World
WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ writes: And how the modern world unmade the novel Martin Amis once remarked, apropos of the idea of writing a book about America, that you might as well try to write one about people, or life. Or, he might have said, the English novel. Yet here we have the fruits of such an enterprise in … Continue reading
Required Reading – Who, What, Why: When did we start saying ‘blah, blah, blah’?
The BBC reports: A Xerox ad from 1995 used the term to show off colour printing: A row erupted during a question-and-answer session by a local newspaper in Oregon when a politician took exception to a reporter writing “blah blah blah” in a notebook. How did these words become part of the lexicon, asks Kate … Continue reading
Required Reading – The Utopian Origins of Restroom Symbols
Steven Heller writes, Navigating through sprawling airports and massive sports stadiums is frustrating enough with them, and traversing through such a labyrinthine world is unimaginable without them. I refer to those minimal pictographs of man, woman, child, car, sink, toilet, etc., that—like the five famous musical notes used to communicate with aliens in Close Encounters of … Continue reading
Required Reading – Richard Nixon was Jay Gatsby
“The lawn and drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his corruption – and he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby *** John Aloysius Farrell writes: IIn April 1974, Richard Nixon went to the movies. His presidency was collapsing, a … Continue reading
Required Reading – English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet
Megan Garber writes, Let’s start with the dull stuff, because pragmatism. The word “because,” in standard English usage, is a subordinating conjunction, which means that it connects two parts of a sentence in which one (the subordinate) explains the other. In that capacity, “because” has two distinct forms. It can be followed either by a finite clause (I’m … Continue reading
Required Reading – A Brief History of Dude
J.J. Gould writes, Contemplate this, dude: that when I call you dude, there’s a whole range of things I might mean—you’ll understand me from my intonation and the overall context—but each time, I’m also reinforcing a specific kind of social relationship. No matter how I use the word, it always implies the same thing: solidarity without … Continue reading
Required Reading – Oxford Dictionary Adds “twerk,” “derp,” “selfie,” “phablet,” and more voguish vocabulary”
Siraj Datoo writes, Oxford Dictionaries Online (ODO) is adding a slew of words that only recently came into general usage, many driven by fast-moving trends in technology and culture. Yes, “twerk” is now in the dictionary. The most relevant addition to the dictionary for Quartz readers is probably “phablet,” a portmanteau of “phone” and “tablet” used to … Continue reading
21st Century Buchanans
Even though it is merely mentioned in passing, Maureen Dowd’s article contains one of the most thought-provoking allusions I’ve seen in awhile. Dowd compares the Clintons to the Buchanans of The Great Gatsby. The two couples don’t strike me as having very similar personas (Hillary Clinton, especially, does not exude the same naivete or even … Continue reading
What Alana Found 