Archive for the “Uncategorized” category
Wholly Communion, 1965
by budparr on October 13, 2010
I just saw this video posted by City Lights on Facebook of a 1965 reading at Royal Albert Hall with 19 poets including Allen Ginsberg, who I think organized the event, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Andrei Voznesenski, Harry Fainlight, Ernst Jandl, William (…)
Make it New, or At Least Know that You’re Not: The Problem with MFAs
by budparr on September 15, 2010
Having no vested interest in MFA programs or the ‘state of fiction,’ I was free to be amused by Elif Batuman’s fairly far reaching article in the London Review of Books taking Mark McGurl to task for his defense of MFA (…)
VQR is the Smartest Magazine on the Planet and Has Embraced the Future of Magazines
by budparr on June 10, 2010
I only started reading The Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR) after they won the National Magazine Award in 2006. It’s a big fat journal, beautifully produced and smartly edited. The magazine is squarely aimed at a general audience with a wide (…)
What Web Media Can Learn from Print
by budparr on May 13, 2010
With the death throes of Newsweek there are a lot of Web publishers wallowing in schadenfreude as the scales are tipping in their direction. What Newsweek has shown is that there’s more to being successful on the Web than being there (…)
Blogs, Twitter, the Kindle: The Future of Reading at The PEN World Voices Festival
by budparr on May 11, 2010
PEN World Voices Festival“Blogs, Twitter, the Kindle: The Future of Reading” was the panel I went to at PEN World Voices Festival (video) that – If you happened to have followed my twitter stream during the event you know - (…)
My sentiments exactly: Max Magee on Book Reviews
by budparr on May 10, 2010
This is the sort of thing the Web does well. Max is a great editor who created his own site and quietly shakes things up by not just going along with the traditional idea of the book review. Instead of (…)
“The Black Minutes” at the PEN World Voices Festival
by budparr on May 7, 2010
We have a bunch of PEN World Voices Festival posts at Words Without Borders, including my post on discovering Martín Solares’s novel The Black Minutes. Read them all at Words Without Borders.
When Google Dominates the Way We (Find, Buy) Read E-books
by budparr on May 4, 2010
This morning Google announced – re-announced – that they will launch their foray into e-book selling as soon as this summer. Chris Palma, Google’s head of Strategic Partner Development, spoke this morning at the offices of Random House as part of (…)
It’s the End of Free As We Thought We Knew It
by budparr on April 16, 2010
When I worked on Wall Street the common wisdom was “fade the press” meaning that when Time and Newsweek, etc all led with stories of doom for the economy then it was time buy. This was an old and well (…)
iPad Kitsch
by budparr on April 14, 2010
There’s no other word for it but Kitsch, and it’s all over the iPad, from Apple’s own apps to the horrible AP News app. Hopefully this sort of thing will shake out, except that it seems that Apple is responsible (…)