Although some adults (my parents) don’t even know how to send text messages, it seems that the Finnish foreign minister, Ilkka Kanerva, has become quite the textpert.
It seemed like any other night at the movies. To the left I spotted the requisite young couple on their first date alternating between watching previews and attempting awkward conversation. Down in front lounged the raucous band of teenagers brazenly … Read More
INTRODUCTION
With the unfortunate rise in popularity of such publication as InTouch, Us Weekly, Star and People, many adolescents hope to become celebrities to get their names strewn across these glossy rags.
What do you get when you take a group of gangly teenagers with teased-out hair and black eyeliner? Emo kids who let out their emotions through Good Charlotte? Well, yes – but that’s not all.
‘Reading,’ as describing a certain activity of eye-sliding-over-page, with eye recognizing ink blobs corresponding (by means of whatever neural calculus) either (1) to something like second-order phonemes, and therefore to certain aural centers and therefore to speech-parts of the brain, which ‘articulate’ meaning to other parts, or (2) to something like second-order morphemes, and therefore to certain visual centers, and therefore to picture-parts of the brains, which ‘project’ meanings to other parts, or (3) to some combination of (1) and (2)[1]—well, ignore that or bracket it, because I have 1,000 words and a little over, say, ten minutes to argue for long and arduous works of literature, their import and glory—and, specifically, for the particularly long and particularly arduous recent novels of Roberto Bolaño and David Foster Wallace.
Out of all the streets in the world stretching from Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg to Lombard Street in San Francisco, I have spent the most time traversing Witherspoon and Nassau here in my hometown of Princeton, watching the dynamic of businesses, the ebb and flow of success and decline.
It was a story of college rivalries, of angst, of failed attempts, and finally, of defeat. From the moment the curtain went up, the audience knew that Princeton was the underdog in Saturday night’s football game against Penn: their fans were more enthusiastic, their costumes more aesthetically appealing, heck, even their band was slightly more organized. Unlike the outcome in those heart-wrenching football movies where the team without a chance beats the ten-year state champions after an inspiring pep talk by some famous actor, however, this story did not have a feel-good ending.
