[Illustration by SARAHATLEE] A.O. SCOTT: What’s true of writers’ lives is also, surely, true of their deaths. The temptation to regard Mr. Wallace’s suicide last weekend as anything other than a private tragedy must be resisted. But the strength of the temptation should nonetheless be acknowledged. […] The moods that Mr. Wallace distilled so vividly on the page — the gradations of sadness and madness embedded in the obsessive, recursive, exhausting prose style that characterized both his journalism and his fiction — crystallized an unhappy collective consciousness. And it came through most vividly in his voice. Hyperarticulate, plaintive, self-mocking, diffident, […]
OBAMA/BIDEN: Back In The Saddle
CNN: Sen. Barack Obama has widened his lead over Sen. John McCain, according to CNN’s latest “poll of polls.” Sen. Barack Obama leads Sen. John McCain by 3 percentage points, according to CNN’s “poll of polls.” The senator from Illinois is ahead of McCain in national polls by 3 percentage points, 47 percent to 44 percent. Obama was up by 2 points in the poll of polls released earlier Thursday. McCain led in national polls last week, but by the weekend, the candidates were tied. Obama recaptured the lead for the first time in 10 days Wednesday. The latest poll […]
MOTHER: Will The Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE EMINEM’S MOTHER TELLS ALL IN A MUCH-ANTICIPATED MEMOIR: My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem: Setting the Record Straight on My Life As Eminem’s Mother By Debbie Nelson, with Annette Witheridge BEVERLY HILLS, CA—September 16, 2008—Eminem is the Elvis Presley of the new century. His fans are legion and loyal. Tens of millions of his albums have flown off the shelves. His music videos—even the older ones—have tallied millions of hits on YouTube. His relevance is undisputed. And his mother wants to set the record straight. In MY SON MARSHALL, MY SON EMINEM, Debbie Nelson reveals the truth […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Acclaimed novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace, 46, was found dead in his home Sept. 12; reports attribute his death to suicide. His 1996 novel Infinite Jest was a critical and popular success, while in recent years he has written short-stories and nonfiction. And he wrote a celebrated Rolling Stone profile of John McCain in 2000; it was revised and this year as McCain’s Promise: Aboard the Straight Talk Express With John McCain and a Whole Bunch of Actual Reporters, Thinking About Hope. Wallace was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant in 1997. Fresh Air remembers him with an […]
INFINITE JEST: David Foster Wallace Kills Self
NEW YORK TIMES: David Foster Wallace, whose darkly ironic novels, essays and short stories garnered him a large following and made him one of the most influential writers of his generation, was found dead in his California home on Friday, after apparently committing suicide, the authorities said. Mr. Wallace, 46, best known for his sprawling 1,079-page novel “Infinite Jest,” was discovered by his wife, Karen Green, who returned home to find that he had hanged himself, a spokesman for the Claremont, Calif., police said Saturday evening. MORE NEW YORK TIMES: David Foster Wallace used his prodigious gifts as a writer […]
TRADING SPACES: 30 Year Old Poe House Exhibit To Be Upgraded To State Of The Tell-Tale Art
KYW: Just in time of the bicentennial of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth, his Philadelphia home is getting a new look. The house is just a few blocks from downtown Philadelphia. Edgar Allan Poe lived there for about 18 months in the early 1840s. The current exhibits are 30 years old — and interpretive program specialist Mary Jenkins says it’s time for a change. Jenkins says visitors will see Poe’s influence on world literature and on popular culture. Poe penned classics including “The Telltale Heart” and “The Black Cat” while living in the Philadelphia house. It closes December 1 and reopen […]
MOTHER: John Lennon’s Oedipus Wreck
THE SUN: JOHN LENNON fantasised about having sex with his mother Julia, according to a leaked audio diary which it is claimed he recorded a year before his death. His widow YOKO ONO and BEATLES bandmate PAUL McCARTNEY are furious about forthcoming book John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman, which makes the lurid accusation. However on the tape – which you can listen to by clicking here – a voice alleged to be John’s can be heard noting: “I was just remembering the time I had my hand on my mother’s t*t in 1 Blomfield Road. “It was when […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When Bush Can’t
FRESH AIR Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a retired Army colonel, discusses his new book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. He argues that pragmatic realism has always been the core of American foreign policy, and current politicians would do well to remember that. Excerpt: ‘The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism’ by Andrew J. Bacevich Chapter One The Crisis of Profligacy Today, no less than in 1776, a passion for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness remains at the center of America’s civic theology. […]
GAYDAR: Livin’ La Dolce Musto
BY AARON STELLA Amidst the revelry of the Mr. Gay Philadelphia pageant, I was able to finagle a future interview out of Michael Musto, famed gay-celeb columnist for the Village Voice in NYC. So a couple of weeks later, I hopped on the Chinatown bus headed for Village Voice’s headquarters in NYC. Musto, dressed in a crisp black and white vertical-striped shirt and baggy black slacks, (and of course, wearing his trademark Sally Jesse Raphaels) explained to me that the Voice was moving. Most everything was packed in boxes and hardly anyone was in the newsroom. We found a quiet […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Conventional wisdom has it you can tell a lot about a person by the company he or she keeps. But, what if posterity makes a big mistake in judging a famous somebody’s friends; wouldn’t that blunder then trigger a huge misreading of the chief person of interest? There you have the reasoning underlying Brenda Wineapple‘s fascinating new book, White Heat, that explores the relationship between Emily Dickinson and one of her closest confidants, Thomas Wentworth Higginson. For decades, Higginson has been derided by Dickinson scholars and fans as a kindly oaf; a Victorian man of minor letters damned […]
RECONSIDER THIS: Don DeLillo’s Underworld
BY DAVE ALLEN Not long after Don DeLillo’s Underworld was published in 1997, it was canonized by critics and readers alike as the Next Great American Novel, and a 2006 survey in the New York Times cemented its cornerstone status among modern American letters. The praise, whether long-passed or more recent, is justified: DeLillo unseals nearly 50 years of American history from the stifling amber of nostalgia, while the narrative spans both coasts and the vast spaces between them without leeching the intimacies that connect them. In short, it contains multitudes. Many of the characters, after dissipating their energies through […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Though John McCain and Barack Obama agree that America’s health care system needs reform, the candidates differ markedly in their vision of the remedy. Political scientist Jonathan Oberlander offers an in-depth comparison of the Obama and McCain health proposals. Oberlander compared the candidates in his report, “The Partisan Divide — The McCain and Obama Plans for U.S. Health Care Reform,” which was published Aug. 21, 2008 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Oberlander is an associate professor of social medicine and health policy and administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. RADIO TIMES Lowering […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: With God On Our Side
FRESH AIR Both John McCain and Barack Obama are courting the religious vote, but whose campaign will be more effective? Journalist Dan Gilgoff, the politics editor for Beliefnet.com, discusses the candidates’ tactics. Gilgoff is a former political correspondent for U.S. News & World Report and the author of The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America are Winning the Culture War. His blog, the God-O-Meter, measures the rate of God-talk among the candidates. ALSO, Journalist Ryan Lizza says it’s no accident that the Democrats picked Denver as the site of their National Convention. Lizza discusses […]