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| ARTICLES
AND ESSAYS |
 AUGUST,
2008: IF YOU LOVE A BOOK, SET IT FREE
Tracking the History of a Book and Its Readers
(Part One)
I
had no idea if these seven women were all friends sharing
the same book or if they were strangers. The romantic
in me was inclined to believe the latter, though; the
idea of sending a book out into the world to be discovered
by others felt as magical as [Aimee] Bender's book itself.
[Full
article]
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 JULY,
2008: IT
FELT LIKE THIS CITY WAS THE END OF THE WORLD
A Look at No Wave New York
By MARIE MUNDACA
I
enviously watched the angular college-age hipsters—usually
sitting sullenly through songs by the Teardrop Explodes
and the Yachts, drinking and smoking and glaring through
curtains of slick hair—jump up and danced in a spasmodic
frenzy when Medium Medium's "Hungry So Angry" would play.
I could never be as cool as those thin white dukes and
duchesses of nihilism.
[Full article] |
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ARCHIVES
 JUNE,
2008: MOVING
DAY
An Adventure in Materialism Leading to Insight About Oneself
By
KYLE OLSON
I
suppose I was on a high from reading Gravity's Rainbow
and Infinite Jest in one year, and I felt I could
take on any of history's forbiddingly hefty books. Of
course, then I tried to read Ulysses, which slapped
me around like it caught me groping its daughter.
[Full
article]
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 MAY,
2008: ONE
OF US
Reflecting
on Personal Geekery with Benjamin Nugent's American
Nerd
By MARIE MUNDACA
After
high school, I found that some of my college friends (all
male, by the way) had a quixotic relationship with the
idea of autism. "I think I'm autistic," they would muse
misty-eyed, like someone who just realized that he found
the love of his life.
[Full
article]
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 APRIL,
2008: THE
QUIET PLEASURES OF BARBARA PYM
By
AIKO AKERS
Was the truly mundane, everyday world where
we spend the vast majority of our time unworthy of being
captured in writing? Or was its subtle beauty too elusive,
like some exotic flower that, as soon as it's plucked,
droops and fades before one's eyes into a sad, wilted
little weed?
[Full article]
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APRIL
FOOLS, 2008: THE
AMAZON CANDLE™
Amazon
Announces Yet Another New High-Tech Reading Device
By
CHRIS MACKOWSKI
"When
we say 'revolutionary,' we really mean 'Revolution-era,'"
said Amazon CEO Jeffery Bezos. "This technology has been
around for centuries. We've made some significant improvements
by capitalizing the 'C' and adding a trademark symbol."
[Full article]
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 APRIL,
2008: A SWEET VALLEY HIGH REUNION
The Wakefield Twins Are Back—and
Now They're Armed with Cell Phones!
By YENNIE CHEUNG
I'd
like to believe that if Rick Andover attempted to carjack
one of my female students and take her on a drunken joyride,
she'd take the heel of her strappy sandal and ram it through
his ear canal. Elizabeth and Jessica? They buckled
up. And screamed for help. To the football team.
It's kind of pathetic.
[Full article]
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 MARCH,
2008: FRANKENSTEIN'S
LEGACY
How Mary Shelley's Famous Story Manages to Stay Alive
After All These Years
By
CHRIS MACKOWSKI
By
adapting the story, does the process of derivation rob
it of the very thing that makes it so powerful in the
first place? The question becomes the very question [Mary]
Shelley asks: What is a soul, and can an artificial creation
have one? Is the soul of Shelley's story still present
in these adaptations?
[Full article]
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 JANUARY,
2008: POETRY FOR A PROSAIC WORLD: THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES
By BRIAN HURLEY
Roberto
Bolaño's characters use poetry to classify the
world in their own terms. For people who are mired in
poverty, political oppression, or sexual repression, the
ability to do this can mean the difference between life
and death.
[Full article]
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 DECEMBER,
2007:
EXERCISES
IN LEARNING TO LOVE YOU MORE
By THE HBC STAFF
Holocaust
tear-jerkers, hand-holding strangers, a non-Orwellian
1984, and Aerosmith van art. The HBC tackles a few of
Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July's assignments in creativity.
[Full article] |
 OCTOBER,
2007:
LESS SUB, MORE TEXT
A Queer Tale of Buffy Fandom and Fan Fiction
By JULIA WATSON
What
started as a bit of musing about how Willow and Tara might
have consummated their relationship quickly turned into
twenty or so pages of Tara teasing and tempting Willow
to get over her sexual "shyness." Yes, she used magic.
But she used sexier magic, and she used wiles and wickedness,
too.
[Full article] |
 OCTOBER,
2007: THE
PRESENCE OF THE OTHER
A History of LGBT Themes in Science Fiction/Fantasy Writing
By TRACI CASTLEBERRY
Some fifteen percent of queer folk find out what it means
to be queer through the written word, and considering
that fewer people are reading these days, that's a significant
percentage. Looking back on it, I like to blame Mercedes
Lackey for the fact that all my own books and stories
have gay protagonists.
[Full article]
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 SEPTEMBER,
2007: I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT BOOKS—BUT MANY PEOPLE
CAN
By CHRIS
MACKOWSKI
People
who don't read miss out on a book's ability to stimulate
thinking, to explore new perspectives, to inspire the
imagination. Saddest of all, they don't even know the
pleasure they're missing (even if they think they do).
[Full
article]
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 SEPTEMBER,
2007: WHY I'M JEALOUS OF STEPHENIE MEYER
By YENNIE CHEUNG
Suddenly disconcerted, I felt as if I had something to
prove. I began to change my storyline so that it would
not seem so similar to Meyer's, thus breaking a major
rule of good storytelling: Don't be influenced by the
works of other writers.
[Full
article] |
 JULY,
2007: AN URBAN FAIRY WONDERLAND
The
Books of Francesca Lia Block
By BRI LAFOND
Francesca Lia Block weaves the elements of urban LA reality
with her own magic touch to create a City of Angels that
feels more real to this California native than most attempts
to capture the real.
[Full article] |
 JUNE,
2007: TRUE LIFE TALES OF FANDOM, PORNOGRAPHY, AND ATTEMPTED
VIOLENCE!
Read on, true believers, for a walk down memory lane rife
with action, adventure, and numerous Spider-Man references!
By KYLE OLSON
I
was no longer "too old" for comics, as there were a wealth
of them out there that were either not written with children
in mind or were of a nature that most parents would do
their damnedest to keep out of their child's hands.
[Full article]
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 APRIL,
2007: AN ESSAY IN WHICH KURT VONNEGUT REMAINS DEAD
By JOE DAVENPORT
Even this fresh, brilliant writer was torn apart by his
critics. He famously remarked that critics tended to confuse
the science fiction drawer for a urinal, so I can't imagine
how he managed to keep creating through the rising flood
of piss.
[Full article] |
 MARCH,
2007: IN THE CEMETERY WHERE AL JOLSON IS BURIED
By YENNIE CHEUNG
The
discovery of Wolfson's grave called to question the metaphors
that literature experts find in the story's title. Can
one truly call Al Jolson's role in the story symbolic
if the woman really is buried in the cemetery where Al
Jolson is buried?
[Full
article] |
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