Cheaper Than Therapy

Highly Recommended

And not just because they picked American Digest as "Blog of the Day."

There's plenty to like (and learn) at www.growabrain.net.

NYT Book Review Stoops to 'Bait and Switch' Tactics?

ormally, I wouldn’t be tempted to read a review of a biography of Jorge Luis Borges, especially if it interrupted an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, but in this case, the New York Times Book Review email teaser gave top billing to a book by David Foster Wallace on the Life of Jorge Luis Borges, with a review by Woody Allen. 

Now that I would read.

So they sucker me into clicking through to the review (who wouldn't?), only to find this unpardonable deception: the review is by David Foster Wallace and the book, ''Borges: A Life,'' is by Edwin Williamson.

Where the hell is Woody Allen in all this? I trudge through the three page online report, which includes tedious passages like the one below, but find no references to Woody Allen.

This is not, however, because Borges is a metafictionist or a cleverly disguised critic. It is because he knows that there's finally no difference -- that murderer and victim, detective and fugitive, performer and audience are the same. Obviously, this has postmodern implications (hence the pontine claim above), but Borges's is really a mystical insight, and a profound one. It's also frightening, since the line between monism and solipsism is thin and porous, more to do with spirit than with mind per se. And, as an artistic program, this kind of collapse/transcendence of individual identity is also paradoxical, requiring a grotesque self-obsession combined with an almost total effacement of self and personality.

Maybe I just haven’t had enough coffee (or maybe I’m annoyed because I had to look up ‘pontine’), but this is a lot to wade through with no Woody Allen payoff in the end.

So what is the story behind the facetious Woody Allen byline?

I suspect that it’s an irritated copy editor’s way of poking fun at David Foster Wallace and the NYT for not making the requisite Borges/Allen pontine, as James Whitlark, Ph.D. does so admirably in Chapter Six Part Six of "The Big Picture: A Post-Jungian Map of Global Cinema."

For further evidence of the Borges/Allen bond, look no further than Peter Keough’s insightful essay, "Disillusionment and Faith at the Boston Jewish Film Festival," in which he notes that, "Milewicz’s weakness for Woody Allen is balanced by his taste for Jorge Luis Borges, who’s alluded to in the title (his story "Borges y yo") and in the tale’s penchant for the cryptic and the cosmically ironic."

For final proof of the undeniable Borges/Allen pontine, we need only examine these two quotes, courtesy of curmudgeon-online.com:

"The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb."

Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1996)

"Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?"

Woody Allen (1935 - )

Perhaps a more realistic explanation for this literary snafu is that David Foster Wallace was a last minute substitution for Woody Allen, and the NYT just forgot to make the correction.

We may never know.

One thing is for sure, you won’t find this kind of deceptive reader tactic at The Washington Post.

Update 11/7: It was suggested by an inside source at the NYT that because Woody Allen reviewed a book about George S. Kaufman last week, it must have used the previous email page as a form but didn't change the byline. No teeth-gnashing copy editor, no architects of the "Save the Borges/Allen Literary Alliance." In other words, it may have been just a lame error. I'm still not convinced. That the New York Times would allow a mistake of this magnitude is simply inconceivable. However, should that prove to be the case, "never mind," as the late, great Gilda Radner's Emily Litella would say.

Laguna Beach Blogger Cited in New York Times Article for "Coruscating Humor"

When No Fact Goes Unchecked
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

The New York Times' brilliant and enlightened technology writer John Schwartz interviewed my husband this past Friday. Here is an excerpt from his article in Week in Review that quotes Gerard:

The memo sparked outrage in the conservative community. It's true that Kerry and Bush supporters live in "different universes," said Gerard Van der Leun, whose blog, at americandigest.org, blends conservative political views with coruscating humor. But he disagrees strongly with the notion that one side has a monopoly on truth.

"I think it's evident that both sides play about as fast and loose in this political season as they possibly can," he said.

Traffic at American Digest hit a record high of more than 25,000 visitors in a single day last week, due at least in part to the popularity of the post, 50 Reasons Why, which generated hundreds of comments and mentions/links on other blogs (including Instapundit) and does NOT lead one to ponder, "Gerard, why are you so on the fence about Bush?"

Oh, and don't feel bad. Though I'm not proud of it, I had to look up "coruscating," too. According to my trusty Webster's II:

cor-us-cate [Lat. corusacre, coruscat-, to flash.] To emit flashes of light: SPARKLE.

This "coruscating humor" is evident in Gerard's reaction to Schwartz' article:

"I note he left out my best anecdote about the two groups in two tents with opium pipes, but I'm sure that Schwartz's editor (AKA: Spawn of Satan! ) cut that out so as not to offend Frank Rich with whom he shares a goat."

Presenting...www.thejackzone.com

Check out Jackson's new website, www.thejackzone.com. Now he has a platform from which to deliver his unique, nine-year-old perspective on games, game platforms, game characters, and even games that stink and he's already ditched. Be sure to leave a comment so he knows you've been there.

I built it for him for Valentine's day and loaded up all kinds of cute Valentine's messages for him, including a Batman Valentine, a Garfield Valentine, and a Japanese anime-themed Valentine. He made me take them off. "That's so lame, Mom. My friends can't see that."

But he was very appreciative and is really getting into posting new content.

Thanks, Glenn.

Wow.

Wow. OK, yes I know I'm repeating myself. And I'm even repeating a post from Writer at Large, but it's just too cool not to share. I just sent out the notifications today about Gerard's upcoming photography exhibit, New York Life: Images After the Fall, and it went straight to the top of the blogosphere, with an eye-catching post on Instapundit, which gets something like 97 gazillion hits a day and is widely considered the most influential of all blogs.

Was it the stunning quality of the New York Life: Images website created by the devoted wifeling? Of course not. It's the talent of the brilliant and handsome photographer and his own growing reputation online as the publisher of American Digest.

Here is the permalink to Instapundit's post on the exhibit.

New Website Writer at Large is Up and Running

My online writing portfolio, Sheryl Van der Leun/Writer at Large, is up and running. I also wrote and posted an article ("From Neophyte to Blogoholic in less than 30 days) about my experience with TypePad, which has been nothing short of amazing. Check out both by clicking here.