CRITICAL REVIEW OF BLOGS
Time to update the sidebar links with some sites I’ve been reading lately.
Dispatches from the Culture Wars
Ed Brayton enjoys writing highly rational, systematic refutations of religious fundamentalism, neoconservatism and other absurdities. Like Sisyphus rolling the boulder uphill, you have to admire his fortitude, but even watching it gets tiresome quickly. Still, I keep going back for the well-informed political commentary from someone I mostly agree with.
Sometimes he writes about poker, but I don’t read those posts. I like poker, but you kinda have to be there.
I got hooked on this one after reading this very authoritative post on the reformation and religious tolerance. Jason is an excellent writer, but his verbosity is sometimes oppressive.
A good variety of news, politics and weirdness. Lindsay is the sister of one of my students, who showed me this blog. It’s good. That is all.
The blog of the intrepid and prodigious Heather Havrilesky. Her effortless brilliance is inspiring and sickening.
She writes Salon’s TV review every Monday, which I read religiously even though I don’t have a TV. Her job is basically to watch a lot of TV and then write something new and interesting about it every week. As you would expect, she is completely bonkers.
Fiction Bitch provides editorial criticism of short fiction submitted by the general Internet-public. A lot of people have never read any fiction that wasn’t written by a professional writer, and it’s an eye-opening, soul-crushing experience.
I had this problem as an undergrad. I’d never read an essay written by other students. I was curious about what kind of stuff people were turning in. I always thought my essays were pretty weak, often written the night before, but I’d get good marks anyway. Getting honest feedback about writing is difficult, psychologically and logistically. Philosophy professors I’ve found to be mostly unconcerned with good writing, (as opposed to good grammar), and useful feedback is rarely given on this aspect of the profession.
I bet it’s even harder for fiction writers to get reasonable feedback. Because it so closely emulates thought, writing is an intensely personal craft. Critiquing someone’s fiction is like critiquing their manners, or their personality. Who wants to tell anyone, friend or stranger, that their prose is worse than a scrotum full of spiders? Who wants to lay waste to someone’s dream of becoming a famous author so they can finally quit their telemarketing job and prove to their kids that their life wasn’t a depressing spiral of failure? Fiction Bitch, that’s who.
The criticism FB provides is hilarious and completely, devastatingly honest. I wish this site was updated more often.