Reviews and News:
Ethan Epstein takes a look at how Rush Limbaugh’s Sandra Fluke comments in 2012 hurt – and is still hurting – talk radio: “The Wall Street Journal reported in 2015 that talk radio ad revenue was falling and that ‘advertising on talk stations now costs about half what it does on music stations, given comparable audience metrics.’ The Journal attributed this directly to the Media Matters campaign after the Fluke incident, with one radio executive saying that it ‘was enough to change the paradigm for all of talk radio.'”
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The novel voice of Hans Fallada: “Imagine Jean Genet with the soul of Ward Cleaver, and you’re getting close to the strangeness of Fallada’s literary voice. That contrast—and the sweetness of Fallada’s moral voice, the tenderness of it—give his work its lasting resonance and poignancy.
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The great emoji flood will “never stop!” “Michael Everson, a linguist living in Ireland, is responsible for helping the literary history of the human species survive in the digital age. He is also responsible for helping you give somebody the finger through your iPhone.”
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Will Dana Gioia be remembered in 50 years? A. M. Juster thinks so.
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Verdi’s simple pleasures.
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Was Johann Valentin Andreae’s 1616 The Chemical Wedding the first science fiction work?
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Essay of the Day:
T. H. Breen revisits the life of Benjamin Franklin in a review of two new biographies of the Founding Father in the Times Literary Supplement:
“Imagine the American Revolution never happened. Which of the celebrated Founding Fathers would even make an appearance in modern histories of the period? It is doubtful that we would pay attention to George Washington, a moderately successful planter from Virginia. John Adams would not fare much better. Had there been no imperial crisis, he would be remembered, if at all, as a talented provincial lawyer. It would be a stretch to argue that we would know much about Thomas Jefferson had he not drafted the Declaration of Independence and other documents associated with the Revolution. Not so Benjamin Franklin. Rising from humble social origins, he became one of the more acclaimed figures of the eighteenth century, a voice of the Enlightenment. Even if the revolution had not happened, historians would still honour his practical inventions and scientific discoveries; they would praise his voluminous writings for enduring wit and wisdom.
“About Franklin’s long and productive life (1706–90), we know a lot. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, a brilliantly edited collection of essays and correspondence, has reached more than forty volumes, and more are still to come. And, of course, Franklin wrote an Autobiography, a wonderfully readable account of how a talented, ambitious printer became wealthy by working hard and organizing his public behaviour around values designed largely to impress everyone he met. His Poor Richard Almanack offered homely aphorisms about how to achieve worldly success. To this day Americans still repeat: ‘Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise’.
“But however many source materials have survived, Franklin retains a curiously distant quality. His writings focus on appearances, on externalities, so that we learn a great deal about his meetings with famous people or about plans to reform colonial society, but little about Franklin’s core beliefs. The problem is made more difficult because he manipulated how he wanted others to see him. As he wrote in 1743, ‘Let all Men know thee, but no man know thee thoroughly’.”
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Image of the Day: 1870s London
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Poem: Marie Ponsot, “Fibonacci”
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