In general, Morrison does not spend much time on characterization--her women especially run together. Nor does she provide much in the way of historical detail or sociological analysis. In creating the character of the Native American Lina, Morrison recalled in an interview, she briefly worried, "Oh God, now I’ve got to know all about these tribes," but then decided that the death of Lina's people by plague would save her the effort of research.

Morrison's few descriptions of Lina's traditions are either vague ("she cobbled together neglected rites, merged Europe medicine with native, scripture with lore, and recalled or invented the hidden meaning of things") or seem to be taken straight from the Dances With Wolves school of American Indian neo-hippie mysticism ("she wears bright blue beads and dances in secret at first light when the moon is small").

Such sloppiness is apparent throughout the novel. One knows A Mercy is set in the 17th century only because the characters helpfully announce the year every now
and then. ("1682 and Virginia was still a mess," frets Jacob, and later Lina points out, "Florens, . . . it’s 1690").

Labels: lit crit, shameless self-promotion

Labels: shameless self-promotion

That the Sun lasted the six-and-a-half years it did is something of a miracle. Times haven't exactly been favorable to newspapers, and a proudly right-wing paper in a liberal city — one already stuffed with newspapers — didn't seem like a winning proposition. If those weren't problems enough, the Sun had other issues. There were its soap-operaesque internal battles, chronicled with malicious glee by Gawker and the greater blogosphere. There were its occasionally wacky editorial stands, like its call for Brooklyn to secede, its undying love for the gold standard, its suggestion that political protesters be tried for treason. There were its pugnacious editors, Seth Lipsky and Ira Stoll, always spoiling for a fight and trash-talking the competition. The paper was perpetually short-staffed — its reporters regularly poached by larger papers. Yet somehow the small, harried staff of the Sun put out a consistently interesting paper, which included the best arts pages in the country, a crossword second only to the New York Times's, and lots of scoops.

Labels: journos, shameless self-promotion

Body Shopping describes a science that has become positively vampiric in its insatiable appetite for human tissue and organs, sometimes outright stealing the raw material it needs. A veritable black market in human flesh has been established, with each part individually appraised and priced: "Hand, $350-$850, Brain, $500-$600, Eviscerated torso, $1,100-$1,290." A whole cadaver can fetch up to $20,000. The uses to which this tissue is put are no less gruesome. Bone dust from stolen cadavers might be found in your dental work. The collagen used to plump a starlet's lips is likely derived from the cells of an infant's foreskin. The "secret ingredient" in the various beauty treatments marketed to Russian women? Aborted fetuses from Ukraine.

"One way or another someone makes money off the dead," one proud body snatcher declared, even as he pleaded guilty to over 60 counts of mutilation of human remains, and embezzlement. The entrepreneurial spirit cannot be tamed, it would seem, especially in so lucrative a venture as body shopping.

Labels: shameless self-promotion

It's no mystery why Maddow has become the darling of the progressive blogosphere: She's one of them. Aside from the minor fact that she doesn't actually have a blog, she otherwise fits the bill quite nicely. She's young. She wears those black hipster glasses (or did--before MSNBC's makeover squad got to her). She worked as a barista. And most importantly, she's an unabashed geek who loves talking (and arguing) about policy: Before taking up hosting duties on Air America, she wrote her dissertation about AIDS and served as a prison-reform activist. Meanwhile, her academic credentials are impeccable. Want to send a liberal into a swoon? Just start quoting from Maddow's resume. She got her B.A. from Stanford! She was a Rhodes Scholar! She has a doctorate in political science! From Oxford! (Trust me--no liberal can discuss Maddow without mentioning the D.Phil.)

How did American men get themselves into such a mess? And how do we get them to grow up already? (Or should we even try? For guys in crisis, the slacker man-children in Apatow's movies seem to be having an awful lot of fun.) No matter. It's time to put away childish things--and that includes the remote, the copy of Playboy, and the Wii. Or so say man's latest self-appointed saviors, columnist Kathleen Parker and sociologist Michael Kimmel. American masculinity is in crisis, both say, and something must be done.

Labels: gender wars, journos, shameless self-promotion

When most people think of vampires, they think of blood and guts, capes and fangs, and grisly, sexually-tinged violence. What they almost certainly don't think of are chaste teens, Jane Austen, and stay-at-home Mormon moms. Yet right now, the hottest name in vampire lit is Stephenie Meyer, mother of three and outspoken proponent of abstinence. Meyer is the creator of a vampire love saga, the Twilight series, with fans so intense they call themselves "Twilighters" or "Twi-hards." The final installment, Breaking Dawn, sold over a million copies on its first sales day, and Twilighters are already in a frenzy over the upcoming movie adaptation of Twilight, starring Kristin Stewart.

Labels: shameless self-promotion, the arts

When Eric Schwartzman went in for a medical exam six months before his wedding, he didn't expect to hear he was infertile. After the examination, the doctor suggested Schwartzman have a sperm-count test. Schwartzman thought nothing of it. Then the results came in. He was diagnosed with azoospermia, a condition in which the man produces virtually no sperm. "Don't plan on having kids naturally," his doctor told him. "You can just adopt."

Schwartzman and his wife were devastated. He offered to call off the wedding, but she refused. Instead, they went to a fertility clinic, where Schwartzman underwent two testicular biopsies to retrieve sperm for in vitro fertilization (IVF). As a backup, his doctor suggested the couple select a sperm donor, and they agreed without really taking the possibility seriously. But when two IVF cycles failed, he and his wife reconsidered.

Schwartzman is now the father of two "half-adopted" children, as he calls them, both conceived through donor insemination. Most of the time, he says, he focuses on day-to-day life--"getting them potty trained" and the like. But he sometimes wonders what effect their unusual beginnings will have on them.

Labels: repro tech, shameless self-promotion

Rock 'n' roll may never die, but that doesn't mean its practitioners won't grow old. So what happens then? Some aging guitar-slingers show up in rehab, others on VH1 reality shows; lately, though, many have ventured East to settle in an unlikely new home: Tennessee. "Nashville," reads a popular T-shirt, "Where Rock Stars Come to Die."

Labels: shameless self-promotion, the arts

Amy Alkon doesn't care if she hurts your feelings. Every week in "Ask the Advice Goddess," a column syndicated in over 100 papers across America, Alkon delivers hilariously hard-nosed counsel to thousands of clueless souls." For a man, it's the size of a woman's heart that counts--until her thighs approach the size of small Volkswagens," she tells one housewife who worries her husband no longer finds her attractive. To a guy who keeps dating the "wrong" girl, Alkon opines: "Mistakes do happen. If you make one, admit it, don't take it to the movies every Saturday night."

Labels: Doublethink, shameless self-promotion

Welcome to the Land of the Park Slope Stroller Mom, where every compliment is a veiled insult, and every choice no matter how mundane or personal - home birth vs. hospital, disposable vs. cloth diapers - is taken as a declaration of your progressive bona fides (or lack thereof). If you're not run down by a passing Bugaboo stroller, you'll likely soon be by the nonstop passive-aggressive sniping of the other mothers. "You let Baby Bjorn have non-organic carrot sticks? What kind of monster are you?"

Labels: gender wars, shameless self-promotion

In the days when American Jewish fiction was at the high-water mark of literary prestige, Bernard Malamud was universally acknowledged as one of its three leading figures (the other two being Saul Bellow and Philip Roth). From the mid-1950's through the late 60's, he was considered a master of the American short story, and taken with the utmost seriousness as a novelist. He received every major literary award in the United States, and achieved significant commercial success with his 1966 Pulitzer-prize-winning bestseller, The Fixer. Four decades later, however, Malamud's name is "fading, his readership and literary standing in danger of decline." These are the words of Philip Davis, whose Bernard Malamud: A Writer's Life is the first full-scale biography of, in Davis's estimation, a "major writer of the 20th century." Davis is a sensitive and intelligent researcher, and his book is a valiant effort at reclamation; but he does not answer the central issue he raises: why would the work of a major writer be at such risk of disappearing?

Labels: lit crit, shameless self-promotion

• James Kirchick on the return of Jeff Gannon
• Sonny Bunch travels to Hollywood to check out an adaptation of "Harrison Bergeron"
  
• Phoebe Maltz revisits The Israel Lobby controversy
• Laura Vanderkam on a new form of Catholic education
  
• Liam Julian talks to the Eduwonk, Andrew Rotherham
  
• And fiction by Eve Tushnet
  

Labels: Doublethink, shameless self-promotion

Surrogacy itself seems to have come out of the mommy closet, to judge from recent media coverage. The New York Times and the Boston Globe have both reported on the practice of outsourcing wombs to poor Indian women. On a recent cover of Newsweek, the abdomen of a pregnant woman appeared with the words "Womb for Rent" emblazoned upon it. The issue's lead story, "The Curious Lives of Surrogates," ignited a small media frenzy with its sensationalistic revelations about military wives cashing in as surrogates -- in part by bilking their government-provided health plans.

The attention has rekindled the debate over the morality of renting wombs. While most people are reluctant to stand in the way of women who want to use modern medicine to help them conceive, others are more wary. Jennifer Lahl, the director of the California-based Center for Bioethics and Culture says "The surrogate isn't seen or treated as the patient. She's the cow, the womb."

Labels: shameless self-promotion, third-party repro

Labels: shameless self-promotion

Labels: Doublethink, shameless self-promotion

Labels: Doublethink, shameless self-promotion

[Benjamin] Franklin is a curious bird: a witty writer, skilled diplomat and a genius who invented lightning conductors--and yet, one can't help imagining, slightly irritating. "He seems like the type of guy," writes the blogger Rita, "who might have a lot of Facebook friends who, upon further questioning, would admit they accepted his friend request only because they didn't want to offend him."

• Nicholas Desai on "interesting economics" at George Mason University
• Sean Higgins on Reason correspondent Ron Bailey's turnaround on global warming
  
• Ashley Parker on young, conservative speechwriters
• James Poulos on ten years of Radiohead
• David Donadio on Ron Paul communications director, Jesse Benton
  

Labels: Doublethink, shameless self-promotion

Labels: I heart EW, shameless self-promotion