Farrago

There's a good deal of hubbub here (good stuff from this guy and this guy in particular, who are both smart) about this guy, who wrote this (pdf) and apparently didn't talk to the people he inferred he did, resulting in this. It smacks a lot of this, naturally, but also a little bit of this, because he also writes for this. Personally, I like the guy's writing style, and have enjoyed much of what I've read that he's written. And, just like any Breaking Story that involves whether or not someone told the Truth or not, most people are quick to label that person a liar without really knowing the facts, becuase that person doing the labeling would surely never lie like that, ever, at all. I got mad when Oprah used an entire one of her shows to bolster her nonexistent literary credibility by lambasting a crappy writer whose crappy book she actually admitted to liking in the first place. I have a feeling I will also get mad when people use this story as another opportunity to grandstand about ethics and true truth and what-not, when this is so obviously far from a high crime. It's a pop-trend piece written for a borderline-respectable (journalistically speaking) urban rag by a quirky Harvard Lampoon-alum humorist who has no real business doing this kind of reporting. Sure, he shouldn't attribute characteristics and quotes composited from several sources and attribute them to one person he never met with, but more importantly, his editor should never have put him in the place where he'd have the opportunity to do it. I'm an academic-style writer by trade, and I would never want to experience the pressure put on popular journalists---not by their peers or employers so much as by the public.

Meanwhile....

This here blog has become a frequent stop pour moi. I can only suspect that they write about musical type things for a living, but I do know that they are both much smarter and much better with the writings than I am, yet not afraid to dirty their sidebar with a link to yours truly.

This young man is a fine and up-and-coming video director, and would kindly like your attention. He is also one of my former pupils, and I take 100% credit for everything he will ever do.

WFMU, the all-time best ever freeform radio station, is doing the annual fund-drive thing. Give 'em your money, because it's worth it to you. There's a link somewhere over on the sidebar that makes it easy.

The NYT's take on the Toronto indie rock collective consciousness thing. If you're interested in what's really goin' down in the T.O., though, you go here and here, which you already do.

ESPN's Bill Simmons does the e-mail correspondence thing with the always interesting Malcolm Gladwell, who writes;

My point is its almost impossible to know where the person ends and their environment begins, and the longer someone is in a particular environment the blurrier that line gets. More specifically, you can't make definitive judgments about the personal characteristics of people who come from structured environments. What does it mean to say that a Marine is brave? It might mean that a Marine is an inherently brave person. It may also be that the culture of the Marine Corps is so powerful, and the training so intensive, and the supporting pressure of other Marines so empowering, that even a coward would behave bravely in that context.