Creative Writing

Elif Batuman, nuova e vigorosa voce della letteratura americana, critica i programmi di creative writing, partendo da un libro uscito recentemente, The Programme Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing, di Mark McGurl (Harvard UP). La tesi di Batuman è interessante e coglie un punto importante che avevo notato senza veramente riuscire a esprimerlo con chiarezza: la mancanza di cultura letteraria e storico letteraria dei programmi di scrittura creativa. "Like many aspiring writers in America, I enrolled in graduate school after college, but I went for a PhD rather than an MFA. I had high hopes that McGurl, who made the same choice, might explain to me the value of contemporary American fiction in a way I could understand, but was disappointed to find in The Programme Era traces of the quality I find most exasperating about programme writing itself: oversophistication combined with an air of autodidacticism, creating the impression of some hyperliterate author who has been tragically and systematically deprived of access to the masterpieces of Western literature, or any other sustained literary tradition. McGurl himself observes that a limited historical consciousness is 'endemic to the discipline of creative writing, whose ultimate commitment is not to knowledge but to what Donald Barthelme called 'Not-Knowing'. Formed in the shadow of New Criticism, the creative writing discourse still displays 'not a commitment to ignorance, exactly, but … a commitment to innocence'. This commitment, this sense of writing being produced in a knowledge vacuum, is what turned me off the programme to begin with. Contemporary fiction seldom refers to any of the literary developments of the past 20, 50 or a hundred years. It rarely refers to other books at all. Literary scholarship may not be an undiluted joy to its readers, but at least it's usually founded on an ideal of the collaborative accretion of human knowledge." LRB.

Buone abitudini di studio

Un interessante articolo illustra i risultati delle recenti ricerche della psicologia cognitivi sui migliori metodi di studio - che non sono quelli che di solito genitori e insegnanti predicano. "The findings ... directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they have not caught on. For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing". nyt.

Constitution Day

Oggi è Constitution Day, in onore della Costituzione americana, firmata a Filadelfia il 17 settembre 1787. In quest'occasione presso Welcome Books esce in edizione economica The Constitution of the United States of America, illustrata (con grande rispetto, ma anche molto humor) da Sam Fink.

Drive-By Shooting

L'America vista dalla strada (una delle prospettive migliori): dall'Interstate 69, un'autostrada controversa e non ancora completata la cui storia è raccontata in Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway (Scribner) da Matt Dellinger, che l'ha anche percorsa scattando belle foto.
E al Whitney Museum di NYC è in corso la mostra fotografica, "Lee Friedlander: America by Car".

Oxford Chinese Dictionary

Ieri è uscito un nuovo Oxford Chinese Dicionary per la Oxford University Press; ha 2064 pagine, 300.000 voci e costa 75 sterline.

Hipster Faith

Un indovinello, "A young man walks into a building. From the outside, it looks like a nondescript, run-down, abandoned warehouse. Inside he finds mood lighting, music with throbbing bass, and young people wearing skinny jeans and superfluous scarves. A bar off to the side offers drinks of some sort, and a frenetically lit stage is shrouded in fog. Jumbo screens display what appear to be music videos. Everywhere people text on their iPhones." Domanda: è un bar o una chiesa? Questo indovinello è proposto dalla rivista evangelica Christianity Today, all'inizio di un'indagine sulla chiesa "hipster". Sull'argomento è anche uscito un libro, Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide, di Brett McCracken (Baker Books). Ma questa non è una tendenza nuova. Negli anni Ottanta, quando risiedevo negli SU, ricordo di aver assistito a una messa rock, dove la comunione era costituita da panini lanciati dall'officiante ai presenti mentre tutti ballavano.

Ghe pensi mi, I’ll take care of it

Quel che pensa della situazione politica italiana  Ingrid D. Rowland, docente all'University of Notre Dame School of Architecture di Roma, "In any event, Berlusconi is no longer in control of Italy (it has been clear at least since his wife announced that she was divorcing him a year ago that he has lost control of himself); he may even have lost touch with his own times. Over the course of the summer, two brave, stubborn old-style statesman, the courtly President of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano - a former Communist - and the implacably cool Gianfranco Fini - a former Neofascist - have united to insist that Italy is a constitutional democracy rather than a populist circus, and that insistence (along with their very different but exceptional abilities to bide their time) has confounded a Prime Minister no longer accustomed to being confounded..." nyrb.

Il Grande Gigante non sempre Gentile

Donald Sturrock, Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl (Simon & Schuster). In occasione del trentesimo anniversario della morte del noto autore per bambini esce questa nuova biografia, che ne mette in luce anche gli aspetti tremendi, tipo, "But Dahl was also, much of the time, world-historically unpleasant. As a boy he wrapped his sister in pillows and shot BBs at her. As an adult he picked loud fights at dinner parties just to create a spectacle. He bullied editors, sold out friends, and insulted his children. ... He was, in many ways, a stereotypical mid-century wealthy imperial Brit - a bullhorn of prejudice and entitlement whose gaffes could be almost touchingly clueless. 'Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason,' he once said about Jews, while attempting to defend himself from accusations of anti-Semitism". nymag.

C di Tom McCarthy

Tom McCarthy, C (Knopf). "Un'inchiesta rigorosa sul significato del significato: il nostro bisogno di trovarlo nel mondo che ci circonda e di comunicarcelo, i metodi per farlo; le connessioni, le reti e i grovigli di interazione che ne risultato", dice la scrittrice Jennifer Egan sul nytbr. Serge, il protagonista del romanzo, cerca il messaggio dietro ogni messaggio: un segnale originario, primordiale, unificante.

Usalibri va in vacanza per una settimana

Dal 1 settembre al 9 usalibri è in vacanza.

Gli aggiornamenti riprenderanno il 10.

Arrivederci a presto.