ellefsens

martinjm oppsummerer nærmeste fremtid i litteratur-kbh.

Nye tekster hos Audiatur bokhandel.

NY GJESTEREDAKTØR

Kari Jegerstedt. Litteraturviter og postdoktor ved Senter for kvinne- og kjønnsforskning, Universitetet i Bergen. Medforfatter/medredaktør av boka Kjønnsteori (Gyldendal, 2008). Har det siste halve året vært gjesteforsker ved University of Cape Town, Sør-Afrika.

Les alle Karis anbefalinger.

NYE OMTALER

Audun Lindholm intervjuer Steinar Lone

Brian Kim Stefans om Kim Rosenfields re:evolution

Østenstads avhandling om Solstad fremstår betydelig vassere i et intervju i Bok i P2 24. februar.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza on White House mechanic and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in The New Yorker:

Emanuel laughed as he recounted the final sticking point in the negotiations. It was not, as many people have thought, an argument between the five centrist senators—Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Collins, Snowe, and Specter—and the House but a debate among the centrists themselves. The dispute was over a formula for how Medicaid funds in the bill would be allocated to the states. In the House version of the legislation, fifty per cent of the funds would go to all states and fifty per cent would go to states with high unemployment. In the Senate, where rural interests are more dominant, the formula was 80-20. A deal had been reached between the two chambers to split the difference and make the formula 65-35. “Everybody signed except for Ben Nelson,” Emanuel said. “He wants 72-28, or seventy-two and a half, and he says, ‘I’m not signing this deal.’ Specter says, ‘Well, I am not agreeing with you.’ ” Without Nelson, Collins wasn’t likely to vote for the deal, either.

“Collins and Snowe are kind of like, at this point, looking at their shoes,” Emanuel went on, “because Specter says, ‘Well, why make it seventy-two? What do you mean? We all have it at sixty-five, in the middle.’ ” Emanuel politely declared that the formula would stay at 65-35. He then asked Nelson to step out of the room with him. After a brief conversation in the hallway, they returned, and Nelson agreed to the stimulus package.

Emanuel stood up and removed his tie as he finished the story, making it clear that he was ready to leave for the airport. He seemed more cheerful, knowing that he was that much closer to seeing his family. I asked him what he promised Nelson to persuade him to drop his objections. Emanuel just smiled. “Everything is going to be O.K.,” he said, in a mock-soothing voice. “America is going to be a great place.”

Nypoesi er oppdatert og tilskuddet er et intervju med Johan Jönson.

Morsom parodi på (min helt) James Wood:

There is a line in that story that has remained with me. One might say it left the porch light on—in my psyche. Our protagonist, Gus, has had his shifts at the Uni-Mart cut by half. It’s not clear where the money for Sadie’s dental work will come from this month, and this causes yet another blowout with Doris, who has just been let go by the beauty salon for excessive cussing. A bad week on the new American frontier! We know Gus is thirsty; for pages Carver has created a matrix of connotation, employing such language as “parched,” “dried-up,” and “really frickin’ thirsty” to describe him. In short, Gus needs a drink. Once Doris slams the rickety screen door behind her—as she has done so many times before, but we suspect this time may be the last—Gus goes to the sink. As Carver puts it, channeling the sublime:

He lifted the cup.

Aha! cries the famished reader. This is minimalism at its well-marbled finest. The language is clear, bracing. You do not ask, What did this character do? (He lifted.) We do not wonder, What is he acting upon? (The cup.) So often in today’s fiction, we’re left to make our way through the muddle of the author’s hysterical wordplay. It is a false show. Writers confuse the encyclopedic for the illuminating and the meaningful, mistake the exuberance of frenetic language for that which addresses the higher self. When you return to a master like Carver at the end of a long day, it’s a refreshing tonic. This sentence is short, not because it is brief—which it is—but because it has few words.

Les hele hos Harper’s.

The Onion melder at Norge går tilbake til plyndring som viktigste næringsvei i forbindelse med finanskrisen:

Anna Bache-Wiig anmeldt i Morgenbladet. Samtidig, et annet sted: Åpninger, boken om Hanne Ørstaviks forfatterskap, anmeldt i Norsk litteraturvitenskapelig tidsskrift 1/09.

Woody Allen on Ingmar Bergman.
Part I:

Part II: