by Matt Creamer on August 16, 2010
Today Jonathan Franzen is getting all the attention, thanks to the Time magazine cover story that is unlinkable and probably unread behind Time’s paywall. That’s all ok, but the one writer with initials J.F. you need to know is Joshua Ferris, who wrote the awesome “Then We Came to the End” and the possibly even better “The Unnamed.” The former is about an ad agency as it unravels through round after round of layoffs. It’s written almost entirely in the first-person plural, a tact that could seem gimmicky but isn’t.
His second book is about a big-shot New York lawyer who comes down with a perplexing condition. He suffers from long bouts of being compelled by his body — or his mind maybe (it’s never clear) – to walk and walk and walk andwalkandwalkandwalkandwalkandwalkandwalkandwalkand walkandwalkandwalkandwalkandwalkandwalkandwalkandwalk. He walks until he can walk no longer and passes out wherever he is: a parking lot in Newark, a dumpster in Queens and so on. The only way to stop him from walking it to physically restrain him.
click to read an excerpt
by Matt Creamer on August 12, 2010
I haven’t read “Super Sad True Love Story,” Gary Shteyngart’s new and much buzzed-about novel, and I don’t know if I will. I do know that this trailer is kind of funny, even if it doesn’t really have anything to do with what I understand about the book. It gets bonus points for featuring James Franco, even though I’ve realized that James Franco is becoming a bit too ubiquitous for my tastes.
Video After Jump
by Matt Creamer on August 9, 2010
Usually Captchas make me feel visually- or cognitively-impaired. This one reminded me that, at some point, I’m going to die.
At least, I”ll be receiving Jason Hirschhorn’s media newsletter throughout the journey.
by Matt Creamer on August 2, 2010
As the series a small subset of white people likes hurtles toward 1965, it’s time to think about what shape the historical backdrop will take. (All dates are from Wikipedia and, thus, accepted without question.)
March 10: Goldie, a London Zoo golden eagle, is recaptured 12 days after her escape.
Don turns from his newspaper, picks an errant tobacco leaf off his tongue, gazes out his office window, and thinks birds should not be kept in cages. Then, tired, he moves to his couch for a nap.
April 9: Charlie Brown and the Peanuts Gang appear on the cover of Time Magazine.
Cooper calls his man at Time.
April 14: In Cold Blood killers Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, convicted of murdering 4 members of the Herbert Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, are executed by hanging at the Kansas State Penitentiary for Men in Lansing, Kansas.
Sally reads “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Glenn puts Betty’s lock of hair in the Draper mailbox.
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by Matt Creamer on July 31, 2010
by Matt Creamer on July 29, 2010
There are many, many things I like about Gawker Media: the journalistic aggressiveness of Nick Denton’s bloggers; their focus on original content, not rote aggregation; their broad and ever-shifting definition of “original” and refusing to define it as an endless cascade of lists and slideshows; its endless inventiveness that keeps alive a formula that should have grown stale long ago.
That admiration is why it hurts to say that Gawker’s latest journalism-as-PR-stunt is wide of the target. The former journalism student in me is far from offended by the idea of hiring a paparazzo to shadow Mark Zuckerberg for a few days, turning his mundane moments into a slideshow of photos. This is the world we live in and the private lives of celebrities have become fair game. And Zuck qualifies as a celebrity. I’m not sure what the official test is but I’m pretty sure that running one of the most important tech/media companies around and having a major motion picture made about your college years qualifies.
Gawker’s lofty notion of “turning the tables” on the guy who turned Facebook’s 500 million users’ “intimate moments into riches” is not a bad one. But there are a few problems with how it’s executed.
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