Sony Reader

http://www.sony.co.uk/hub/reader-ebook The new eBook reader.

When language can hold the answer

When Language Can Hold the Answer Faced with pictures of odd clay creatures sporting prominent heads and pointy limbs, students at Carnegie Mellon were asked to identify which “aliens” were friendly and which were not. The students were not told that the aliens fell naturally into two groups, although the differences were subtle and not easy to describe. Some had somewhat lumpy, misshapen heads. Others had smoother domes. After students assigned each alien to a category, they were told whether they had guessed right or wrong, learning as they went that smooth heads were friendly and lumpy heads were not. The experimenter, Dr. Gary Lupyan, who is now doing postdoctoral research at Cornell, added a little item of information to one test group. He told the group that previous subjects had found it helpful to label the aliens, calling the friendly ones “leebish” and the unfriendly ones “grecious,” or vice versa. (more...)

The power of words

No man has a prosperity so high or firm, but that two or three words can dishearten it; and there is no calamity which right words will not begin to redress. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

This week's must-reads

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Novel Writing Made Easy

Want to write a novel? Learn the way to connect the dots from novel idea to novel sale. A published author takes you through the steps of turning your idea for a novel into a published book. Novel writing can be easy when you follow a blueprint plan.

In memory of David Foster Wallace

From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2008. http://scout.wisc.edu/

Friends, acquaintances, fellow writers, and others all offered memories of author David Foster Wallace this week in articles, online treatises, weblog posts, and editorials.

Wallace, who was perhaps best known for this sprawling masterwork “Infinite Jest”, was thoroughly catholic in his interests, and his work was peppered with references to everything from Continental philosophy to the behavior of cruise line passengers.

Writing in this Tuesday’s New York Times, fellow writer Verlyn Klinkenborg commented, “His writing could subsume the DNA of any language, any form it encountered, while remaining completely his own.”

During his 46 years, Wallace was awarded the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant”, and also taught at Illinois State University and Pomona College.

While many websites offer a way to comment on Wallace’s work and life, the “In Memoriam” site created by Pomona College provides a fine glimpse into the effect he had on those he taught and influenced. One comment offered by Sean Pollack is particularly poignant: “We mourn for a humane and generous teacher and lover of the language.”

The first link will take interested parties to the New York Times’ obituary for David Foster Wallace which appeared in print this Monday. The second link will lead visitors to a remembrance of Wallace from fellow writer David Lipsky. Moving on, the third link leads to a Syracuse Post-Standard piece from this Tuesday about Wallace’s time in Syracuse in the early 1990s. The fourth link leads to the previously mentioned Pomona College “In Memoriam” site created for Wallace. The fifth link leads to a special edition of “Politics of Culture” hosted by bookworm Michael Silverblatt. Joined by book critic Anthony Miller they discuss Wallace’s impact on fiction, his generation, and American culture. In addition, a collection of interviews with Wallace culled from the archives of KCRW’s “Bookworm” program is also available. In terms of celebrating Wallace’s life and writing, the sixth link is a very welcome find indeed. It contains links to many of his non-fiction pieces, including his very observant and wonderful take on a cruise-line adventure, “Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise”. The last and final link leads to a transcript of the honest and insightful commencement address that Wallace gave at Kenyon College in 2005.

David Foster Wallace, Influential Writer, Dies at 46 [Free registration may be required]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/books/15wallace.html

Wallace Invented ‘New Style, New Comedy’

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94629055

Author created ‘Jest’ in Syracusehttp://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf?/base/news-15/122155534751021.xml&coll=1

In Memoriam: David Foster Wallace [pdf]http://www.pomona.edu/ADWR/president/dfw1.shtml

Considering David Foster Wallace [iTunes]http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/pc/pc080916considering_david_fo David Foster Wallace: Harper’s Magazine [pdf]http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003557

David Foster Wallace: Commencement Speech at Kenyon Collegehttp://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html

Lincoln, Mark Twain & Lightning: Choice Words On Word Choice

by Ernest W. Nicastro "Eighty-seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation...." The Gettysburg Address Chances are your reaction to the above "quote" is something along the lines of, "No, no, no! You're wrong, wrong, wrong!" And, of course, you would be right. Because Lincoln was not only a great leader, he was a great writer. So instead of beginning his Gettysburg Address with a cold, lifeless number, he opens on a prayerful note with a turn of phrase adapted from the 90th Psalm of the King James Bible: "Four score and seven." (more ...)