In photographs at Vanity Fair.
Obituaries in the Washington Post and the Guardian.
Christopher Buckley’s remembrance at the New Yorker.
Slate’s tribute.
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Tag Archives: slate
Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011
Posted in Reading
Tagged christopher buckley, christopher hitchens, guardian, new yorker, obituary, slate, vanity fair, washington post
The Ax Fell Hard
Chris Rovzar of New York Magazine notes layoffs at Slate.
Posted in Writing
Tagged ann hulbert, chris rovzar, jack shafer, juliet lapidos, june thomas, mike steinberger, new york magazine, slate, timothy noah
Provocative Strings
At Slate Michael Agger reviews Are You Serious? by Lee Siegel.
What Siegel sees in Updike’s story is an anxiety about the state of the novel: Updikean seriousness stood in contrast to the decline of the novel’s seriousness—its loss of cultural importance. We are still serious about movies and music, in the sense that people are moved to discuss and debate them, but less so about literature. Siegel’s challenge: Name a novel that has moved you in the last year as a novel did in high school or college. The new generation’s disdain for Updike was given more fuel by his dimissal of the Internet, which he called an “electronic anthill.” The pounding that Updike took belied a deeper concern: It’s easier to criticize a fogey-ish stance than it is to reinvigorate the novel—to make it serious again.
Posted in Reading
Tagged book review, criticism, culture, internet, lee siegel, michael agger, slate
Irritating Rich People
It is as if a quantity of fresh mulch has doused an insurance fire at a candied-orange factory—inside your mouth.
For Slate Troy Patterson offers further kind words about the main ingredient of “the established tipple of posh summer sport.”
Posted in Education
Tagged drink, kingsley amis, slate, troy patterson, william carlos williams
Segregated Enclaves of Privilege
Most education researchers, though, recognize that Rhee’s simple vision of heroic teachers saving American education is a fantasy, and that her dramatic, often authoritarian, style is ill-suited for education. If the ability to fire bad teachers and pay great teachers more were the key missing ingredient in education reform, why haven’t charter schools, 88% of which are nonunionized and have that flexibility, lit the education world on fire? Why did the nation’s most comprehensive study of charter schools, conducted by Stanford University researchers and sponsored by pro-charter foundations, conclude that charters outperformed regular public schools only 17 percent of the time, and actually did significantly worse 37 percent of the time? Why don’t Southern states, which have weak teachers’ unions, or none at all, outperform other parts of the country?
Slate has Richard D. Kahlenberg’s disquisition (disguised as a review of Richard Whitmire’s The Bee Eater) on Michelle Rhee.
Posted in Education
Tagged michelle rhee, politics, richard d kahlenberg, richard whitmire, slate, teaching
Be Wary
At Slate Farhad Manjoo covers Apple’s electronic publishing extortion attempt.
Posted in Reading
Tagged apple, bookselling, ebooks, farhad manjoo, publishing, slate
Modest but Genuine Power
At Slate Adam Kirsch reviews Günter Grass’s fictional memoir.
The conceit of The Box is that, rather than write directly about his experience of fatherhood, Grass allows his children to speak on their own behalf. In each chapter, he imagines a group of his offspring getting together for a meal and talking into a tape recorder about their early lives. The voices come out in a jumble, usually unattributed, without quotation marks; as a result, it is hard to disentangle their individual stories. They become “the children,” a chorus or jury, setting down evidence and passing judgment on their famous father.
Posted in Reading
Tagged adam kirsch, book review, germany, gunter grass, slate, usa
Seriousness and Erudition
At Slate Jack Shafer claims that the status of books is in decline.
By making books commodities, the modern market has stripped them of much of their romantic charm. I like the smell of a moldy book as much as the next bibliophile, but not as much as I once did. And while I’ve yet to purchase a Kindle or iPad, which make buying books in a store or online seem like hard work, I keep some titles on my netbook and iPod and can see myself making a fuller transition to e-books. And as I do, I’ll become even less romantic about books—just as I became progressively less romantic about music as my collection has shifted from vinyl to CDs to mp3s. Holding an LP cover or even a CD jacket used to anchor the listener to something corporeal. But not anymore. The same is happening to books. The ancient ceremony of reading by turning its pages being disrupted by the e-book’s clicks and swipes. In the process it distances us from the old magic conjured by books. Books are being replaced by reading.
Posted in Reading
Tagged ebooks, jack shafer, publishing, slate, usa