NewPages Blog

Victorian novels helped us evolve into better people, say psychologists

A “team of evolutionary psychologists, led by Joseph Carroll at the University of Missouri in St Louis, applied Darwin’s theory of evolution to literature by asking 500 academics to fill in questionnaires on characters from 201 classic Victorian novels. The respondents were asked to define characters as protagonists or antagonists, rate their personality traits, and comment on their emotional response to the characters.”

See a summary of the results on Guardian.co.uk

Liu Xiaobo: On Writing and Freedom of Expression in China

On December 8, 2008, authorities arrested prominent PEN Member Dr. Liu Xiaobo after he co-authored Charter 08, a manifesto calling for greater freedoms and democracy in China. He is being held on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power.” If convicted, Liu could be sentenced to a minimum of three years in prison.

Writer, dissident, and former president and current board member of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, Liu Xiaobo can be viewed on a PEN video talking about writing and freedom of expression in China.

Assistant Professor in English (Creative Writing, Fiction/Non Fiction) Point Park University, Pittsburgh, PA. Karen McIntyre, Dean, School of Arts and Sciences.

Johnson State College full-time, tenure-track Assistant Professor of Writing and Literature to begin August 2009.

The University of Dubuque invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track position in the Department of English, beginning in August, 2009.

One-year appointment, beginning August 2009, for a creative writer who plans a career that involves college-level teaching, to teach three courses per semester, including Introduction to Creative Writing and an advanced course in the writer’s genre, as well as to assist with departmental writing activities. Mentorship for teaching and assistance in professional development provided. M.A., with a concentration in creative writing, M.F.A., or Ph.D. with creative dissertation, required. Teaching experience and literary magazine publications are essential. Competitive salary.
To apply, send letter of application, c.v., the names of three references, and a 5-10 page writing sample to Emerging Writer Lectureship, Department of English, Box 397, Gettysburg College, 300 N. Washington St., Gettysburg, PA 17325, postmarked by January 30, 2009. Electronic applications will not be accepted.

The Best and the Worst of Inaugural Speeches edited by Debra Hughes on Narrative.

Bravely done, C. Max Magee on The Millions blog has created a kind of annotated bibliography of the 2008 New Yorker fiction. The overarching theme identified? Those that focus on a kind of “surburban malaise (born out of “The Swimmer” and “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” among many others) and those that don’t.” Put that way, I’m tempted now to go back and read the very “New Yorker Fiction” I had long given up on as predictable and drab. Surburban malaise might be just what I needed to hear to appreciate it – some.

Wall Street bailout, car industry bailout, porn bailout – ? Government support for analog to digital media (aka TV) conversion? Wait a minute – where the heck was the bailout for literary publications when we’ve been bemoaning for years the steady decline in reading in this nation, and then the recent postal rate hikes that hammered the smaller subscription publications, and how about the ongoing independent bookstore closings (and now chain bookstore closings), and layoffs in the publishing business, and…and…?

Vitual Odyssey. It’s fun to see the wrong answers as much as the right ones, which then lead to further adventures.

From the blog Growing Great Writers from the Ground Up comes this unselfish advice for writers looking for new outlets and support resources:

Don’t Discount Yourself
Most of us writers come from humble backgrounds, which consist, more or less, of some training and a whole lot of heart. But in order for us to excel, we have to use the latter to increase — exponentially — the former. One way to train harder and smarter is to aggressively pursue fellowships.

What often stops us, however, is that humble background, which I call the Lowly Worm Complex. If you, too, suffer from I’m probably not good enough, get over it and start applying for the numerous creative writing fellowships.

The post goes on to look at why you should apply and some fellowship resources. A very generous post considering the competitive nature of fellowships. Proof positive that we are in this together and can look out for “our own.”

A Brief Interim of Sheer Possibility a conversation with Rachel Kushner on Littoral.

Rachel Kushner writes frequently for Artforum and coedits the literary, philosophy, and art journal Soft Targets, whose focus is political inquiry, poetry, and literature-in-translation. Her debut novel, Telex From Cuba, was nominated for the 2008 National Book Award.

In this interview, she speaks extensively about her connections with and political perceptions of Cuba, the focus of her novel, which takes place in Oriente Province and Havana, Cuba, during the 1950s.

Always fresh, every time I visit the Barrelhouse website, I can’t help but laugh out loud. (With them, not at them – or at least I’d like to think so.) Their latest: “Barrelhouse Invitational: Office Life Edition.”

Dave Housley, “One Fifth of the Barrelhouse Editorial Squadronand” writes: “we’re looking for fiction, poetry, nonfiction, whatever, about that wonderful, soul-sucking, red stapler obsessing world of the office. No entry fee or anything, and winners will be published in the special Office Life section of Barrelhouse 8, which will come out in June.”

But for full entertainment effect, you have to visit the site and view the accompanying pdf memo, or my favorite,the PowerPoint presentation, with its effective use of bullets, arrows, and inclusion of a clear and concise mission statement, timeline, and measurable and desired outcomes. For anyone who has ever worked in an office environment or with admin hierarchies, you can’t help but cringe and laugh at the same time.

A January 04, 2009 article by Alana Semuels in the Southern Oregon’s Mail Tribune, “Children’s literature has growth potential for e-books,” explores beyond the monetary gains by considering the learning losses:

[. . .] Kids are more likely than adults to interact with material on the Web, said Diane Naughton, vice president of marketing at HarperCollins Children’s Books. That publishing house has made 25,000 titles such as Lemony Snicket’s The Lump of Coal available digitally. Readers can browse them online or in some cases read them in full free.

There is some evidence that younger children learn less when they’re reading books in electronic form. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University, studied parents who read digital books with their children and found that young children don’t get meaning from what they’re reading when they’re playing with gadgets and distracted by all the bells and whistles of technology.

“We have to be careful that electronic media is not a substitute for hands-on,” she said.

Kids who spend too much time staring at screens instead of imagining fanciful stories in their heads or playing with friends miss out on hands-on creative play, an essential part of a child’s development, said Susan Linn, a psychologist and associate director of the media center at Boston’s Judge Baker Children’s Center.

“It’s a problem because it means they’re not exploring the world themselves,” she said.

Publishers counter that digital books can attract kids to titles they otherwise might not see.

In any case, with the publishing industry weak, digital books are unlikely to go away because they are generating revenue [. . .]

Read the full article here.

Anne E. Fernald, author of Virgina Woolf: Feminism and the Reader is looking to I want to feature some creative writers who will talk about Woolf’s influence, for good and ill, on their work, at the 19th Annual International Virginia Woolf Conference (June 4-7, 2009, Fordham University, Lincoln Center). She “especially wants those writers to not be all nice white women.” Click here for more information.

With the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature going to J. M. G. Le Cl

“Welcome to Aristotelian bastardization, a Derrida slum, and anon sense” the homepage read. The effort of Goddard MFA poet Cara Benson, Sous Rature “features work of erasure, inadequacy, and otherwise. Poems, prose, cross. Also, images and art.” It is, as ,Benson states, “a necessary endeavor.”

The second issue (or “2ssue”) includes: Bernadette Mayer, Nico Vassilakis, Brooklyn Copeland, Maria Williams-Russell, Peter Ciccariello, William Allegrezza, David-Baptiste Chirot, Rodrigo Toscano, Christophe Casamassima, James Sanders, Barry Schwabsky, Michelle Naka Pierce w/ Sue Hammond West, Alexander Jorgensen, Celina Su, Matina Stamatakis, Amy King, Bill Marsh, Brenda Hillman, Charles Bernstein, Samit Roy, Stacy Szymaszek, Paul Hoover, Sawako Nakayasu, Thomas Devaney, and Sparrow.

Looking to fine tune the literary skills of future novelists and poets, the sole creative writing Master of Fine Arts program offered in San Bernardino County will launch at Cal State San Bernardino in fall 2009. The new writing program is accepting applications through April 1, 2009. General applications for admission to the university run through March 1.

When Does It or You Begin? (Memory as Innovation)
Writing, Performance, & Video Festival
Links Hall, Chicago

Curated by Amina Cain and Jennifer Karmin,
Links Hall Artistic Associates

Featuring local, national, and international writers and artists
January 9 – February 1, 2009

A thoughtful commentary on the life of a great poet and true community activist, this is excerpted from a listserv post by Jamie Reid, Wednesday, January 7, 2009:

Billy was an early alumnus of the SUNYAB project, one of at least four Americans related to the literary movement associated with the New American Poetry anthology, who migrated to Canada in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Robin Blase, Stan Persky and George Stanley have each made remarkable contributions to the life of the poetry community in Vancouver, and so has Billy Little.

Billy was raised in New York and served his apprenticeship in poetry at the Poetry Project in New York City. He then shuffled off to Buffalo where he was one of the early students in the SUNYAB program, where he met Robert Creeley, Jack Clarke, Ed Dorn, Leslie Fiedler and other luminaries, including an entire contingent of Canadian poets who had travelled to Buffalo to learn especially from Olson and Creeley. Billy came to Vancouver as a second generation partisan of the New American Poetry, as many others had done before him, including those who attended and presided over the Vancouver Poetry Conference of 1963, including Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Allan Ginsberg, Philip Whalen and others.

On his arrival in Vancouver in 1972, Billy fell in immediately with the local contingent of poets and began a residence that lasted for more than 30 years, in which he became a familiar and welcome figure in literary gatherings in the city. He performed remarkable deeds for the poetry community of Vancouver, for which not only the poets of the city, but the citizens themselves should be grateful. In his profession as a second-hand book seller, and as a genuine and non-sectarian expert in North American poetry in general, along with his partners in the book trade, he made available to Vancouverites a range of poetry publications and knowledge which might otherwise have been inaccessible.

At Octopus Books and later at R2B2 Books, he was a co- organizer of one of the longest lasting poetry reading series in the city, providing a forum for “outside” poets throughout North America, and also a gathering-ground for the local poetry contingent. When he worked at the Special Collections Library at Simon Fraser University (incidentally, one of the most complete collections related to the poets associated with the New American Poetry), he undertook the task of cataloguing the extensive ouevre of the revered Canadian poet, bpNichol available at SCL, a genuine service to posterity.

He was an indefatigable publisher of samizdat style literature, consistent with his belief that poetry should be a kind of action which might help to make a better world. In this role, he was an ardent publicist and promoter of our local poets. All this apart from his wonderful store of poetry lore and knowledge, second to none in the city, which made his influence on the local scene truly incalculable.

During his final years he lived on the idyllic Hornby Island, just off the coast. The island has been one of the unknown havens of some of Canada’s finest artists, some well-known, like Jack Shadbolt and Wayne Ngan; others, like Jerry Pethick and Gordon Payne, barely discovered, or waiting to be discovered. Billy was their friend and sometimes advisor, because he knew and understood a lot.

Typically, Billy left his life with a jest, a protest, leaving behind his own obituary:

obituary

after decades of passion, dedication to world peace and justice, powerful frindships, recognition, being loved undeservedly by extraordinary women, a close and powerful relationship with a strong, handsome, capable, thoughtful son Matt, a never ending stream of amusing ideas, affections shared with a wide range of creative men and women, a long residence in the paradisical landscape of hornby island, sucess after sucess in the book trade, fabulous meals, unmeasurable inebriation, dancing beyond exhaustion, satori after satori, billy little regrets he’s unable to schmooze today. in lieu of flowers please send a humongous donation to the war resisters league.

I’d like my tombstone to read:

billy little
poet
hydro is too expensive

but I’d like my mortal remains to be set adrift on a flaming raft off chrome island

Full-time English faculty at Silver Lake College, Manitowoc, WI. Jan Graunke, Human Resources. Feb 16

Columbia College Chicago Elma Stuckey Liberal Arts and Sciences Emerging Poet-in-Residence. Annual, one-year nonrenewable position: starts August 2009. Feb 15

The Brown Graduate Program in Literary Arts and Thomas J. Watson Institute for International Studies seek applications and nominations for the 2009-2010 International Writers Project Fellowship.

Minnesota State University, Mankato is seeking applications for an Assistant Professor, probationary/tenure-track position in Creative Writing – Fiction. Start: August 24, 2009. Jan 23

Seton Hill University seeks published novelist of popular fiction (preferably mystery/suspense), to teach and to mentor novel-length theses in the graduate low-residency Writing Popular Fiction program (half-load), and to teach undergraduate courses in creative writing and first-year composition. Dr. John Spurlock, Chair Humanities Division. Feb 15

“NYC area poets needed tout de suite to help review poetry entries for this year’s PEN Prison Writing Contest.” Contact Cara Benson: cbenson67-at-yahoo.com

It was just a matter of time: “Narrative, the first and only literary magazine on Kindle, was selected by Amazon for its technological leadership in literary publishing and for its first-class value in reading entertainment.” How long before others follow this lead? Is the readership there? Right now, only Narrative can tell that story…

1. 150,000 words in Zone, by Mathias Enard (published in French in 2008)

2. 40,000 words in Gates of Paradise, by Jerzy Andrzejewski (Polish, 1960)

3. 30,000 words in Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age, by Bohumil Hrabal (Czech, 1964)

4. 13,995 words in The Rotters’ Club by Jonathan Coe (English, 2001)

Read the rest of what Patrick T. Reardon of the Chicago Tribune (12/28) has to say on the matter, including why The Blah Story by Nigel Tomm is not considered.

Yes, that fun instant-spit-the-film-out party camera is, well, about to be spit out of circulation, for good. In his New York Times commentary (12/27) “The Polaroid: Imperfect, Yet Magical,” Michale Kimmelman gives a historical overview of artists closely associated with the use of the camera and its imperfect yet captivating style. Also linked from the article is an online community out to do what they can to Save Polaroid.