About a boy

In his Seven Little Stories About Sex, Eric Freeze records a boy’s sexual encounters during seven different moments over the course of his lifetime. The stories chronicle a compelling metamorphosis, from delicate and heady awakening to frustrating, familiar longing. Intimate and personal, the brief but stirring vignettes, with all of the rapid build-up and satisfaction of sexual climax themselves, seem like the sporadic entries in someone’s life-long journal—and they are certainly a testament to the power of fiction’s first-person narrative, as Freeze makes a deft transition in illustrative lens and voice by which his character recalls experience. Our narrator’s means of expression from the prepubescent perspective of playgrounds and bunk beds is vivid and fragmented, true to the sensory overload, searing images and inability to interpret situation and emotion that characterizes childhood. The young boy’s earlier memories also bring a certain sexual isolation into relief- the very private way in which one comes to understand new urges and terrifying anatomical changes. As the boy grows older, his storytelling becomes more fluid, more analytical, and his sexual experiences are less defined by internalized confrontation and discovery, and rather direct exchange with the human incarnations of desire’s impetus and fire. Read the rest of this entry »

A Cause for Celebration at Boston Review!

Since 1966, the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) has distinguished excellence in magazine journalism with the annual National Magazine Awards. Recognized as the highest honor in magazine journalism, the Ellie award acknowledges superior reporting and “unparalleled service journalism.” This morning, ASME nominated Boston Review for an Ellie award in the Public Interest category.

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Putting Out Fires, Starting New Ones

The failure of government regulators to anticipate the financial crisis and their continued failure to deal with its fall-out has been a noted flashpoint for partisans on both sides of the aisle. The dominant narrative assumes that most observers were content to stand idly by and reap the benefits of corporate largesse while the “getting was good”. It’s true, some saw the signs and did their best to sound the alarm, but in the great tradition of American politics, these Cassandras went unheeded. And if the developments of the last year and a half are any indication, we’re no closer to fixing the problem than we were at the start of the crisis, because as of yet our leaders have been unwilling to make the hard decisions required of them. In the meantime, we suffer from record levels of unemployment, saddled by mounting debt, and with little hope that the culprits will actually be held accountable. All this begs the question, what lessons if any have we learned from this crisis? Former Governor Eliot Spitzer does just that in this month’s issue of the Review, in his piece for the New Democracy Forum, “The Rules.” Read the rest of this entry »

Reconsider after Reading

I first attempted to make sense of James Wallenstein’s Fine By Me in Intro to Psych, sandwiched between a varsity beefcake and foreign cat-lady, one of those incongruous, elderly scholars that show up in my classes every so often. It was an uninspiring, inglorious setting and I am a green, relatively unread intern set to reflect on, in beefcake terms, “some really deep @*%t,” and I have no doubt the result can only be offensive, it probably already is. So let me issue a disclaimer of inadequacy, and apologize for the silly, maybe unhelpful way I would like to begin thinking about Wallenstein’s article, an eloquent and erudite piece about a brilliant mind, heady and likely to swallow me at any moment. During Psych lecture I had Geoff on the brain, and because this was Lecture Three: The Brain, I had Geoff’s brain on the brain. As Professor Knudson walked us through the anatomy of the nervous system, I began to think about the folded surface area of Geoff’s cortical lobes. I saw a swelling hippocampus, aggressively nudging the mysterious cerebellum. I saw the sensitive amygdala, especially nervous today and pulsing against the thalamus. I saw all these hyperactive and oddly personified cogs in the cranial confines that must be Dyer’s head, working together to pull at the fabric of time and space, pushing at the definitions of then and now, and reimagining the nature of art and artistic production.

Text is never separate from its context, and the historical moment of inception is every bit as important as the biography of its artist, and yet, Dyer’s writing does not just defy genre and category, it defies our standard notion of time in regards to artistic creation. In his article, Wallenstein explains Dyer’s conception of art as an act of creation reliant on previous artistic endeavor as its library, fodder and future all at once. I agree, art is always reacting to, critiquing and borrowing from its predecessors, but Dyer’s writing actively recognizes its part in this never-ending, universal dialectic, conscious of its self-reflexive relationship to what has come before it. An “organized synesthesia” and meta-layers of recognition within his writing itself lift art from our human timeline’s plotted sense of progression, as if his is a conversation between artists and art unaware of the passage of time. In many ways, Wallenstein references a sort of dissolution of temporality in Dyer’s work, works made possible by the relationship between the past and present but very good at leaving the distinction between the two blurry in its wake. Mark Twain once said about the ancient city of Varanasi, the languid destination for an ambiguous narrator in part two of Dyer’s newest novel, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, “Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together.” Dyer’s mystical setting, ancient but suspended in time, provides an appropriate stage for both his character and the story’s introspective treatment of art.

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Counterterrorism for Kids

As I prepare to bid this internship adieu, I leave you with a disturbing image: the National Counterterrorism Center, a U.S. government agency, has a website designed specifically for children. Not only that, but it provides links to kids’ pages from other agencies, such as the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Administration. With the aid of the cartoon characters Little Lady Liberty and Beaker the Eagle, the Counterterrorism page explains–not in kid-friendly language, mind you–the mission and history of U.S. counterterrorism. Consider the following gem:

The story of NCTC began on January 28, 2003. During his State of the Union address to the country, President George W. Bush directed that the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) be created. All terrorist threat information analysis was to be merged into one center using the resources from many organizations. On May 1 of the same year TTIC was formally stood up and became the central hub for terrorist threat related information.

Instead of encouraging kids to “say something” if they “see something,” the only activity on the website is coloring in line drawings of Beaker and Lady Liberty. For this I am a bit relieved, but still, if the government is going to the trouble of providing propaganda for kids, shouldn’t they consult childhood educators and create it in language kids can understand?

To this end the FBI does a much better job, with age-appropriate links on its similarly cartoonish home page. However, the (illustrated) Special Agents all appear to be white–which I suppose they were in 1908, but as I was momentarily confused (and this is meant for K-5th graders who may not pause to read the text), the illustration seems misleading. Click over to the easily-accessible “adult” links, and the “Quick Facts” page features a photograph of a SWAT team marching through a leaf-strewn neighborhood in New Orleans while carrying large guns. The caption explains that the FBI SWAT team is helping local law enforcement following Hurricane Katrina. I am tongue-tied. The image is frightening and, provided the context, outrageous. Does this help our kids feel safe?

I encourage you to explore these pages on your own, but in sum, the Defense Intelligence Agency greets visitors with a male soldier in camo, standing at ease, next to links to “Missions” such as Hangman and Air Combat with a promise of “More to come!” Finally, the NSA page, titled “CryptoKids,” encourages “future codemakers and codebreakers” to make their own secret code. The gender-specific CryptoCat (a tiny, navel-baring kitten) and Decipher Dog (a much taller, burly pooch) are statements in themselves.

It would be interesting to look at statistics for how many visits these sites receive, and to find out whether any schools utilize the provided curriculum. Short of a complete overhaul, it would be nice if the government would at least update biased language; consider the following from the FBI page about bomb-sniffing dogs:

You ask, “What is a working dog?” “Is it a dog that does more than hang out at the house all day and bark at the mailman?” “Is it a dog that gets in the car like Mom and Dad and goes to the office?”

Whatever happened to women mail carriers, or all the kids from single-parent families, or with same-sex parents?  As with much in life–especially pertaining to government–I am not surprised, merely disappointed.

C.P. Cavafy and the Art of Good Translation

In reading A Distant Pleasure, Keith Taylor’s discussion of Daniel Mendelsohn’s new translations of the poems of C.P. Cavafy, one is reminded that every translated poem is always largely a novel construction. A good translator must be almost impossibly nuanced in her attempt to faithfully translate a poem, delicately balancing her consideration for rhythm, meaning, connotation, and many other elements. For the famous modern Greek poet who put so much of his own desire into his poetry that he prompted fellow poet Goerge Seferis to remark that “outside his poems Cavafy does not exist,” the question of translation seems particularly pertinant.

Taylor traces his own beloved relationship with Cavafy’s poems. He expresses admiration for Mendelsohn’s new translation of both Cavafy’s completed works and recently-found unfinished ones, appreciating how Mendelsohn conveys the rhythmic cadences absent in previous translations. Taylor both compliments and criticizes Mendelsohn’s attempt to reflect Cavafy’s interplay of vernacular Greek diction with “high” official language imposed on the populace after the collapse of Ottoman rule, reinforcing how translation is endlessly political because languages are so invariably wedded to history. Most of all though, what A Distant Pleasure conveys is how a new translation of a poet’s work can can help the reader approach the poet’s original intentions, imbuing old and beloved poems with new meaning that at once strengthens old affections and offers novel perspectives. As James Longenbach suggests in his own laudatory review in the Times Sunday Book Review, Mendelsohn seems to possess a profound understanding of the essence of Cavafy’s work and to have distilled this essence in his translations.

Terror Trials in New York – a Crucible for the Criminal Justice System

In a highly anticipated news conference on Friday, November 13th, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed – 9/11 mastermind – along with four of his co-conspirators, would be tried in a federal courtroom in Manhattan, mere blocks from Ground Zero and nearly eight years after the deaths of his some 3,000 victims. Although a recent Marist poll of native New Yorkers puts approval for the venue at 45%, with disapproval at 41%, the announcement has drawn fire from both sides of the isle, with Republican leadership accusing the President and AG Holder of playing into the hands of “liberal special interest groups” at the expense of the American people, unnecessarily placing them in harm’s way while potentially exonerating the defendants, as well as critics on the left who lament the continued use of ‘modified’ military commissions for an additional five detainees. The caucus’ more conservative members, like Senator Jim Webb (D-WV), fear the trials will invite untoward disclosure of privileged information. Despite assurances from Holder that the administration will have sufficient authority to keep state secrets classified, critics remain unconvinced. Read the rest of this entry »

The Original of Laura: An almost-novel we weren’t supposed to read.

In his article, Last Wishes, Leland de la Durantaye considers the controversial publication of Vladimir Nabokov’s final unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. While the article offers literary critique of the fragmented notes, Durantaye’s most provocative point concerns the ethics of their publication. While tracing the echo of Lolita and Ada in the repackaged scraps of Nabokov’s imagination, we are also forced to recognize that the painstaking writer and editor never wanted us to read the novel. The questionable circumstance of the book’s birth prompts a moral and philosophical reflection upon the nature of intellectual property; how much of The Original of Laura really belongs to the deceased Nabokov, or does it at all?

In a radio interview with Brian Boyd, Nabokov’s biographer, de la Durantaye admits that left to him, The Original of Laura would have burnt per Nabokov’s request, but at no point in his article does he impose some sweeping, moral verdict in regards to its publication. In fact, he almost undermines the contention of Dmitri Nabokov’s decision to publish his father’s work, claiming that the edited compilation of notes will neither tarnish the writer’s name nor bring new meaning to what he has written before. Tom Roberge comes to the same sort of unsatisfying conclusion in his article on The Original of Laura for Boldtype Magazine, writing, “dead men make no complaints.” While I do not share Dmitri’s “supernatural connection” with the shade of his father, nor do I envision some tormented, ghostly Nabokov wringing his hands beyond the grave, I still wish de la Durantaye had taken a subjective moment to say, “This is wrong.”  So why am I offended? As the daughter of an intellectual property rights attorney, I accept the legality of Dmitri’s inherited possession and his decision to publish.  And yet, I can’t help but feel that despite Nabokov’s inability to teach at Cornell or eat a ham sandwich, his creative undertakings are still his. Having said this, artistic creation is always at the mercy of whomever it comes into contact with – words inevitably lend themselves to gray areas and interpretative freedom. In writing something, you somehow relinquish control over both its meaning and its fate, and regardless of the “should” or “should nots,” nothing ever belongs to its artist alone. While I find the publication disquieting, I am also disturbed by the thought of such rich, if not polished, material sitting in a Swiss deposit box somewhere or burning into tiny particles of nothing. Perhaps The Original of Laura was no one but Nabokov’s to give, but it is now ours for the taking. Here it is, an author’s involuntary gift and our public domain, and the least we can do is read into a writer’s need to destroy drafts and his contemplation of intellectual effacement with the delicacy such a tantalizing parallel deserves.

The Charms and Troubles of Wikipeda

In Edit This Page, Evgeny Morozov recounts the history and evolution of Wikipedia as discussed by Andrew Lih in his book, “The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia”. With compliments to Lih’s book, Morozov offers an insightful explanation of Wikipedia’s transition from the unfettered democracy of its early days to its current to a much more bureaucratic form, an inevitable transition, Morozov suggests, as the site grew and attracted a larger more diverse set of editors (not to mention many “vandals”). Yet he goes on to criticize Lih for failing to give a comprehensive philosophical explanation of why Wikipedia works. He then criticizes the site itself for an administrative structure that forces “subject experts . . . to engage in pointless intellectual debates with Wikipedia’s bureaucratic guardians, many of whom are persuaded only by hyperlinks, not cogent arguments.”

Morozov’s admonishment of Lih’s philosophical failings may be only a foil for his own failure to grasp the unique nature of Wikipedia. In his article The Charms of Wikipedia published in the New York Review of Books, Nicholson Baker captures the idiosyncrasies of Wikipedia and describes how it is precisely these idiosyncrasies that make the site such a dynamic and vital resource. Proving that one man’s flaws are another man’s charms, Baker explains that on Wikipedia “any inelegance, or typo, or relic of vandalism reminds you that this gigantic encyclopedia isn’t a commercial product.” This is not to say that Wikipedia’s founders did not aim to create an accurate source, they did. And while the information on Wikipedia is far from perfect, it is not so far from perfect to justify critics’ complaints (in her article on Wikipedia in the New Yorker, Stacy Schiff cites a Nature survey that found that Wikipedia had four errors for every three of Encyclopedia Britannica’s). Yet to focus too heavily on the question of Wikipedia’s accuracy distracts from the real beauty of Wikipedia, its cultural import. While Morozov may bemoan the insufficiency of the entry on nouvelle vague-director Claude Chabrol compared to that ofTransformers-director Michael Bay, he can’t deny the fact that most people in this country would probably rather watch a film starring Megan fox than Jean-Paul Belmondo. Yet with 13 million articles, Wikipedia is also a repository for people’s diverse and obscure interests. The cite could never be as extensive or as relevant as it is if it were bound to the same restrictive methodologies as more traditional encyclopedias. By preferencing online sources rather than library tomes, Wikipedia both reflects and perpetuates the fact the internet has spawned a generative, fundamentally populist form of knowledge-creation, one that is presently our greatest epistemological tool. To lament this fact as Morozov does is to be sorely out of touch with the contemporary society that Wikipedia reflects with both its methodology and its flaws.

Free Books and One Laptop Per Child

Brewster Kahle recently announced at the Boston Bookfair that his organization, the Internet Archive, was collaborating with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Foundation to provide the Internet Archive’s collection of 1.6 million e-books to users of the OLPC laptop at no cost. On May 15^th, 2008 the director of the OLPC announced that the organization would no longer only be using a distribution of the open-source operating system, Linux, but would instead be shipping some versions of the OLPC laptop with Windows as well. The decision prompted controversy within the organization, which had previously been committed to open-source software—that is, software whose code is available for public inspection, and which can be shared, altered, and re-distributed. Richard Stallman argued in the Boston Review’s 2008 Winter edition, that the inclusion of Windows constituted a violation of the organization’s commitment to open-source software. Read the rest of this entry »