Helen DeWitt's Blog, page 51

the trials of fresh publication

The fact is that when she was at her peak, she was so prolific that she had a publishing backlog, and a lot of work got left behind. Once she had moved on, in theme and genre, she lost interest in the older manuscripts. But she carefully preserved the work, arranged for it to be lodged in archives, and she always had a literary executor named and primed to deal with it. She frequently mentioned that she had a generous store of unpublished work. She did draw up several tables of contents...

could try harder

Black children are being systematically marked down by their teachers who are unconsciously stereotyping them, it has been revealed.

Academics looked at the marks given to thousands of children at age 11. They compared their results in Sats, nationally set tests marked remotely, with the assessments made by teachers in the classroom and in internal tests. The findings suggest that low expectations are damaging children's prospects.

The study concludes that black pupils perform consistently...

a wonderful life

Economic fallacies are especially abundant in films designed to teach business to children (72, 125). In Mrs. Peabody's Beach (125) a group of eager teenagers help an elderly woman ration space on her "groovy" surfing beach. These burgeoning entrepreneurs raise prices several times during the film, but always after costs have gone up. Are we back to one blade of Marshall's famous scissors?

...

Children's filmmakers treat the inconveniences of barter with originality and good humor (22, 24, 54, ...

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5. Hurray to Barley Rice (꽁보리밥 만세) by Cho Gyu-Ik (조규익) (Age 15)

Hurray to Barley Rice is a collection of essays by Prof. Cho Gyu-Ik, who happened to be my father's friend. This book is not well-known at all; in fact, I would be surprised if there are more than 50 people in the world who read this book. I only read it because it was given to me for free from Prof. Cho himself.

But I loved this book. The essays are honest and humorous illustrations of Prof. Cho's childhood and everyday life...

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What quickly became notable, however, was the scarcity of fiction. To a degree, this was determined by Cowen's original list, but as the subject spread, the focus stayed relentlessly on non-fiction. Gradually, bloggers began to acknowledge the formative literature they had enjoyed as youngsters, so Tolkien and Asimov began making some appearances, as did the likes of Orwell and Conrad. Drama, meanwhile, was largely limited to Shakespeare, predictably enough.

If this trend had spread among...

off with their heads

Eight out of 15 of the Hefce board are university managers, the rest coming from business; nine out of 11 members of the research committee, ten out of 14 on the skills committee and 15 out of 18 on the access committee are senior university administrators. Working academics – teachers and researchers – are conspicuously absent. Hefce is, in reality, little more than a managerial oligarchy, and its power is extraordinary: no other country in the world hands out so much money (some £7 billion ...

observation

But in a person there lives a small observer – he takes part in neither actions nor sufferings – he is always cold-blooded and always the same. His employment is to see and to be a witness, but he has no vote [literally 'voice':] in the life of the person and it is not known why he, lonely, exists. This corner of a person's consciousness is illuminated day and night, like a doorman's room in a great house. For days on end this doorman sits awake in the entrance, he knows all the inhabitants...

why is this night different from all other nights

Came back to the motel early yesterday afternoon and found an e-mail from a reader in the Boston area, Leah Archibald, asking if I would like to come to a Seder that night. This sounded like a wonderful idea; I haven't been to a Seder since David and I separated. Leah very kindly agreed to pick me up at 5 when she got off work.

Leah works at a firm specialising in internet marketing. I say: Oh, that sounds interesting. Leah: You don't have to pretend. Sadly, perhaps, I am not pretending: ...

EHJC reveal some

There's an interview of Emily Horne and Joey Comeau (of A Softer World) at comicbookresources.com.[image error]

ttt

I'm in Boston, staying in a motel in Framingham. Was surprised to find that Framingham has a large Brazilian population - the taxi to the motel passed any number of Brazilian stores, and the driver said there was a large Brazilian community. Went into the Barnes & Noble in the mall across from the motel; went, as one does, to the languages section. Which had 12 shelves, at a guess, of books in Spanish, and none in Portuguese. Asked about this at Information: was stock decided on by head o...