The American Scholar's Attack
Gawker reported that there's a totally insane assault on Brooklyn writers…! Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss and even the Brooklyn writers who actually live in Manhattan, such as Ben Kunkel—in the Autumn issue of the American Scholar. It's notable for the sheer intensity of its hatred.
"Brooklyn principles can be found anywhere that young people gather to share their search for love and meaning, a search that they alone are qualified to pursue by virtue of their pristine vision of the deep oneness of things. Whereas physical danger or emotional grief leaves most people lonely or ruined or dead, they triumph over adversity.... [The resulting books are] kitsch, which Milan Kundera defined as 'the translation of the stupidity of received ideas into the language of beauty and feeling [that] moves us to tears of compassion for ourselves, for the banality of what we think and feel.'"
The full article, Wonder Bread, Come with us to a place called Brooklyn where the stories are half-baked and their endings bland and soft, can be read here.
James Frey Book Deal
The New York Times reported that James Frey, the author who admitted making up portions of his best-selling memoir “A Million Little Pieces,” has signed a new book deal for his novel “Bright Shiny Morning,” with HarperCollins. The dollar figure was not disclosed, but is now rumored to be in excess of one million according to Gawker.
Moveon.org Times Ad
The Hill reported that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) said Thursday that he is asking The New York Times for the “same heavily discounted rate they gave MoveOn.org” for his campaign to run an ad in Friday’s paper.
Giuliani, calling MoveOn.org’s controversial “General Betray Us” ad “abominable,” said his campaign is asking the paper for a comparable rate for an ad to run following President Bush’s speech on Iraq.
The former mayor said his ad “will obviously take the opposite view” from MoveOn.org, which argued in its ad that Gen. David Petraeus is “cooking the books” on Iraq and cherry-picking facts that support his recommendation to keep a large number of troops in Iraq for some time.
4oo Bar Exams!
The New York Law Journal reported that the essays of 400 law students who took the July New York bar exam were incompletely reported.
Software Secure, who was contracted by the NY Board of Law Examiners, determined that the software errors occurred in response to students toggling between answer tabs during the exam. The missing portions of the exams may be recoverable from computer backups.
According to the NY Board of Law Examiners, it is still too early to tell if the software problems will cause a delay in grading the July exam, which is scheduled to be completed in November. (Out of the Jungle)
Statue of Liberty Crown
The crown has been closed to the public since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and there have been numerous calls to reopen it since Liberty Island was reopened on Aug. 3, 2004.
"Our primary concerns about public access to the Statue of Liberty's crown are safety and health concerns, not terrorism," Wenk told the committee.
He said the narrow, winding staircase was originally designed for maintenance workers, and not thousands of tourists.
"A key danger is that once a visitor begins the climb, turning back before reaching the crown is nearly impossible. Each person is blocked by hundreds of people in front and behind," he said.
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