Lev Raphael's Blog, page 51

Choking on the News

Is the U.S. a police state? Sometimes it feels it's headed that way. Reading the news about the Eric Garner grand jury decision coming so soon after the Ferguson grand jury farce left me breathless and shocked.



The police have felt out of control for years. There are 45,000 SWAT team raids every year in this country -- many of them doing what used to be ordinary police work: serving warrants. Groups on the left and the right think this is a major problem. Police killings of American citizens c...

When Did Writing Become a War?

Lately I've been feeling like writing is a battlefield -- not for me, but for thousands of writers across the Internet.



I'm not talking about NaNoWriMo; I'm talking about ordinary writers who seem frantic because they're not writing fast enough every single day, as if they were queen bees in a hive squeezing out their quota of eggs and the hive might collapse if they didn't keep producing.



I read cries for help from writers begging someone, anyone, to offer ways they can write more than 500 wor...

Being Polite in France Isn't Complicated, But It's Crucial

In a response to a recent article by Pamela Druckerman in the New York Times about "being French," someone wrote about his experiences bumming cigarettes when he was broke during his last six weeks in Paris:

The phrase "Puis-je prendre une cigarette," made certain people look like my question made them nauseous. Then an even clumsier "Avez-vous une cigarette?" often brought derisive laughter. Finally, "Bonjour, Madame/M'sieu; puis-je vous déranger d'une cigarette?" brought infallibly good resu...

Why You Should Care if George Bush's Book is "Fake"

I recently posted a HuffPostblog where I talked about the likelihood that George Bush didn't write the biography of his father that's being reviewed across the country.



I reminded people of Bush's strange and juvenile relationship with reading via his competition with Karl Rove to see who could read more, physically bigger books faster. Was it likely a man like that could write a book at all, let alone a book being praised for its writing style?



But I wasn't singling out Bush as the only celebr...

Why You Should Care About George Bush's New Book

I recently posted a HuffPostblog where I talked about the likelihood that George Bush didn't write the biography of his father that's being reviewed across the country.



I reminded people of Bush's strange and juvenile relationship with reading via his competition with Karl Rove to see who could read more, physically bigger books faster. Was it likely a man like that could write a book at all, let alone a book being praised for its writing style?



But I wasn't singling out Bush as the only celebr...

Does a Museum Visit Really Require Homework?

That's what The Washington Post recently advised in a long article that was supposed to take the anxiety out of art:

Our response to art is directly proportional to our knowledge of it. In this sense, art is the opposite of popular entertainment, which becomes more insipid with greater familiarity. So study up. Even 10 minutes on Wikipedia can help orient you and fundamentally transform the experience...When visiting special exhibitions, always read the catalogue, or at least the main catalogu...

4 Fake Quotes by Famous Authors to Watch Out For

A lot of people swear by Goodreads. I swear at it. Often. It's a font of unsourced quotations, some of them fake, just like Wikiquotes. Take the line that tops the list of George Eliot quotes: "It is never too late to be what you might have been."



There's no proof she ever said it. None whatsoever. Nobody has found that line in her letters, journals, stories, novels, or even discovered anyone who knew her claiming that she said it.







The first time I saw it on Goodreads (and Facebook, that othe...

3 Fake Quotes by Famous Authors to Watch Out For

A lot of people swear by Goodreads. I swear at it. Often. It's a font of unsourced quotations, some of them fake, just like Wikiquotes. Take the line that tops the list of George Eliot quotes: "It is never too late to be what you might have been."



There's no proof she ever said it. None whatsoever. Nobody has found that line in her letters, journals, stories, novels, or even discovered anyone who knew her claiming that she said it.







The first time I saw it on Goodreads (and Facebook, that othe...

Did George Bush Really Write That Book About His Father?

All over the country, newspaper reviewers are wasting space reviewing George Bush's biography about his father. Whether they pan it or praise it, they'll say over and over, as Michiko Kakutani recently did in The New York Times, things like "he writes--" or "he says--"



Does he?



I reviewed for the The Detroit Free Press, The Washington Post, The Jerusalem Report and other print outlets for well over a decade, but I avoided celebrity-authored bios or memoirs for a simple reason. They were almost...

What's in a Name? Plenty--and Don't You Forget It!

"Lev" isn't a common name in Michigan so I'm used to people not hearing it correctly and asking in person if it's "Les." Over the phone they might think I said "Len" or even "Lez." Seriously.



Lately, though, I've been confronted by an even more annoying name problem. I'll check into an office or a pharmacy where I'm picking up a prescription and when they ask me my name I do what everyone else in the country does and is expected to do. I give them my last name: Raphael.



But I get the brainles...