Helen DeWitt's Blog, page 26

On Dec 1 I will be giving a talk on Language Games at the...

On Dec 1 I will be giving a talk on Language Games at the Center for Writers and Translators at the American University in Paris, details here.

meanwhile, over at asw . . .

Joey Comeau:

So, there a book called Outwitting Squirrels. The fact that there exists a guide to outwitting squirrels makes me happy in ways I can't even express. But even better? Customers who bought "Outwitting Squirrels" also bought Good to Go: Preparing for the end of life. You know, in case they don't manage to outwit the squirrels. They can make arrangements, let their families know what to do with their squirrel-ravaged bodies. 

Joey Comeau did come to New York, by the way.  It was kind of like hanging out with a friendly werewolf, which is what you naturally hope for in the writing half of A Softer World . . .  ASW today brought it all back.  I long to go to Toronto.

unendlich shameless self-promotion

Readers of pp will have noticed that the blog has dwindled to an outpost of the New Directions PR machine, not much happening apart from occasional announcements re the new career of Lightning Rods. This can't be very entertaining.  To the untutored eye, the position of pp would appear to be: We suffered for our art, now it's your turn.

A slight problem is that, as one goes through a succession of interviews and events, one puts forward ideas, one replies to questions, and each time someone or other decides that about 50% of the DeWitt offering is not what people are interested in.  You might think this is what blogs are for (ha HA), but it's chastening. No doubt we will recover our nerve in the fullness of time.  Meanwhile, the Man in the Machine, the unsurpassable Tom Roberge, has passed on links to some reviews.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/books/review/lightning-rods-by-helen-dewitt-book-review.html?_r=1

http://www.criticalmob.com/books/more/lightning_rods

http://vol1brooklyn.tumblr.com/post/12199303241/we-review-helen-dewitts-lightning-rods

The Winter issue of Bullett magazine has a story, That Ob...

The Winter issue of Bullett magazine has a story, That Obscure Object of Desire, of which my editor, Henry Giardina, says: The Turkish speakers in the office were very excited. 

You can read it online here, but the print edition is much nicer: Henry commissioned an illustration from Amelia Saul, a young designer whom I met in Berlin, so the piece is accompanied by a full-page detail from one of the extraordinary, obsessive works I first saw in Amelia's apartment.  It's a fabulous thing.

yet another interview . . .

with Elizabeth Gumport and Chris Glazek of n+1, here

the Guardian on my Senator

(Bernie Sanders of Vermont; formerly the only Socialist in Congress, now the only Socialist in the Senate . . .)



here

It's hard to be sane.Everywhere I look I seem to come acr...

It's hard to be sane.

Everywhere I look I seem to come across some new memorial issue of Steve Jobs.  Recurring themes: The perfectionism, the attention to detail. Design more important than function. No point asking consumers what they want, if you're going to do something really revolutionary they won't know what they want until they see it.


It seems safe to assume that the authors of these pieces did not spend the years 2000-2007 grappling with the new CJK GUI of OS X.  (Ah me ah me, what evil looks Had I from old and young, Instead of the cross the Albatross About my neck was hung . . .) 

It seems equally, sadly, safe to assume that the authors are not members of that elite band, the readership of paperpools.

If Time magazine can dust off old pieces on Steve Jobs, we at paperpools can do no less.  We link now to an early post, our tribute to the man who believed in us when we did not believe in ourselves. The man who believed that American Mac owners, attempting to input Chinese/Japanese/Korean on a nice new Mac, might once, thoughtlessly, have preferred Help in their mother tongue, but would recognize the value of something more revolutionary when they saw it (the chance to work on their Chinese/Japanese/Korean while deciphering Help written in the language in question).

yet another interview . . .

with Jenny Davidson at the Awl

Reading tonight with Dale Peck at le Poisson Rouge

I'll be doing a reading and Q&A tonight at le Poisson Rouge with Dale Peck of Mischief and Mayhem. Address: 158 Bleecker Street.  Time: 6:30 sharp.

Note - I seem to have mentioned this to various people and given the wrong time (7 pm), having found this on the Calendar of le Poisson Rouge.  It is in fact at 6:30 as a band will playing at 8, but if you turn up at 7 you will probably catch my reading anyway as I will be second.

Readers of pp will have noticed that not much is going on...

Readers of pp will have noticed that not much is going on around here these days.  I have been trying to compose answers to various interviews, so whenever I have access to the Internet and might otherwise fritter away time on a post I remember guiltily that I have not yet answered all the questions I have been sent . . .

The good news is that Joey Comeau of A Softer World may be coming to New York -- he says he will take the bus down from Toronto if he can find a sofa to sleep on.    (I was in the Barnes & Noble at 14th Street the other day and saw all three of Joey's books in stock, so maybe we should go down and do an impromptu event.)  If no sofa is forthcoming I may take a bus up to Toronto instead; this would cheer me up.

Meanwhile Elif Batuman has posted a couple of videos of the Lightning Rods reading at the Center for Fiction back in mid-September; one is of the reading, the other of a Q&A with me afterward.  It goes without saying that I think I look and sound extremely peculiar, and need to work on cutting down on nervous fillers (I seem to say 'you know' and 'um' an awful lot), but at any rate it's all here for those who missed it.