[contextly_auto_sidebar id="wInG9qIiyZXfe5IWkw9gGzmkXV2eQ06T"] A COUPLE of decades into it, we're still figuring out what the Internet is doing to us, as individuals and as a society. A fascinating interview with the author of a new book, The End of Absence, get at this in a nuanced way. Author Michael Harris talks about the difference between the digital era and the age of Gutenberg, the … [Read more...]
Archives for September 2014
The Pixies and Cat Power at the Hollywood Bowl
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="nc1kP0QNXqToOtKKMBYEWF1PA492NXRw"] WELL, the Bowl's 2014 season ends with a show a lot of us had looked forward to for a long time. The Pixies are a band from the George H.W. Bush administration -- from before the indie-rock boom inaugurated by Nirvana's Nevermind -- and they've been tighter and more taught since their reunion. Their Bowl debut, then, did not take … [Read more...]
Philip Roth, Le Guin Take on Amazon
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="65McoqrzvnW78eClGabJ9zi1OijdJLHZ"] WRITERS and artists are notoriously difficult to corral; it's both built into the job description and something that keeps the creative class from asserting itself. But lately a number of scribes have united in an effort to resist the bullying of the online bookseller. The New York Times reports : Now, hundreds … [Read more...]
The Pleasures of Waiting
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="V6NmBVYqb2qdo87yWjeHN0SrNINzHk4V"] NO, this hasn't become an abstinence-themed blog while you were napping. But I'm struck today by a piece about the joys of waiting for culture, whether it's a weekly music newspaper or the new singles or LPs that those publications served to announce or assess. No matter what kind of culture you care about, you'll find something you … [Read more...]
Switching Sides in the Digital War
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="eJnmz4EFyiZtMYvvDKNPqiDekKwUDUR1"] DIDN'T we hear about how great it was going to be? Those early days, when we were told how funky and non-commercial and liberating the Web was going to be, now seem like ancient history. One writer who believed in the promise of the Internet in the early days has come to see what a much more complex issue the digital revolution … [Read more...]
The Roots of Author Jeff Hobbs
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="vsIAkFjrXusRtaqu8qZ48niChaYcVmTM"] ONE of the breakout books of the fall is Jeff Hobbs's new chronicle of his Yale roomate, a young black man who escaped the streets of Newark and found himself, in the end, pulled back down by some of the same old forces. I'm reading The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace now and amazed at how rich the detail is: It's powerful -- … [Read more...]
Musician Dean Wareham Raves on About Culture Crash the Book
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="vyqP11F1681n3YcQlEIIXhqmzlNi3MAa"] ONE of my favorite indie rock musicians -- a member of Galaxie 500, Luna, and Dean & Britta -- has endorsed my upcoming book. Here's what he says: I read Scott Timberg’s pieces every week without fail. It’s great to see his book Culture Crash debunk the mumbo jumbo about the long tail, file-sharing, free information, and … [Read more...]
Do Artists Embrace or Resist Technology?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="YYQ5BrKAlLhK2VSvLagOYij5KMvYrB2z"] WELL, both, and neither, I can hear someone out there growling. But what I mostly hear in the culture at large is that we -- citizens, worker bee, student, scribe -- need to "adjust" to the brave new world of digital technology. Some of us do. But as someone who's been to numerous exhibits and conferences on "art and tech," I've … [Read more...]
Who Broke Hollywood?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="aA6rMNBdTA1u43J91OGEfmvqLnJK7cWf"] WITH an awful and low-yielding summer movie season recently concluded, I've been meaning to try to make sense of the continued decline of grownup film, independent and otherwise. Two LA Times stories get at the problem, which is both economic and aesthetic. The first story, by Josh Rottenberg, takes the point of view of … [Read more...]
Was Adorno Right?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="6oJMFpFGim9R2BdzLisDHKzhOIShkqfL"] I WANT to go back for a minute to Alex Ross's wonderful piece, "The Naysayers," on the Frankfurt School. Ross drifts between interpretations here, but he comes up with a very resonant description of what's gone wrong with our culture over the last few decades: If Adorno were to look upon the cultural landscape of the twenty-first … [Read more...]