Lee Konstantinou
I’ll probably become a negligent blogger over the next ten-twelve weeks. I’ve just started teaching a course for Stanford’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) called “Wipe That Smirk off Your Face: The Politics and Rhetoric of Irony.” Not to mention that I’m on the academic job market. Or that I’m occasionally even making a … Continue reading Negligence to Come
I’ve been mulling over the reported suicide of David Foster Wallace. The news hit me harder than I would have thought possible. His writing has always been hugely important to me, and Infinite Jest is central to the whole conception of my dissertation. I only began to think of irony as something that had a … Continue reading DFW, RIP
I have not forgotten you, my dedicated hardcore base of Redroom-profile readers. Let me update you on where we are with Pop Apocalypse. read more Continue reading Update on Pop Apocalypse
I received two mockup covers for Pop Apocalypse earlier today. Neither is perfect, and neither quite matches my original vision of how I wanted the cover to look, but it’s tremendously exciting to see these proposals, and both covers have potential. I’m going to work with my editor to revise these drafts. When we settle … Continue reading Pop Apocalypse Covers
I finished Salvador Plascencia’s fascinating first novel, The People of Paper, last night and have been carrying it around in my head all day. It is almost too much of a cliche to say, but this is a very very McSweeney’s novel: typographically innovative, vaguely and sometimes not-so-vaguely magical realist, ironic yet also filled with … Continue reading Post-Postmodern Paper People
In the latest Adbusters, Douglas Haddow gives us his takedown of modern-day hipsters, a popular activity in hip glossy magazines and journals of opinion. It may be unfair to critique this article, which doesn’t pretend to be a profound explication on the origins and meaning of hipsterdom, but stuff like this irritates me. The reasoning … Continue reading Hipsters at the End of the World
I have some good news to share with my adoring reading public (about 2 to 5 of you a day, if Google Analytics is to be believed). My essay on William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition and branding theory, drawn from the trendspotter chapter of my dissertation, has been accepted for publication by a big cultural studies/theory … Continue reading Some good news
In the WSJ, James Seaton reviews Praising It New, an anthology of writing by the New Critics, edited by Garrick Davis. In the space of a short review, Seaton–quite remarkably–manages to blame all of the following for our corrupt contemporary literature-hating ways: Television shows, movies, instant-messaging, Facebook, blogs, “writers with literary pretensions” who are “now … Continue reading The Old New Criticism, New Again
In the hallowed halls of literary study, there is a hugely popular critical genre best described as “Endism,” a kind of writing which continually proclaims the pending doom of English Departments, attributes said pending doom to our embrace of corrupt Theory, and then offers methodological–rather than institutional–solutions for the problems that plague our disciplinary soul. … Continue reading Endism, Literary Darwinism
Friends, Romans, Blogosphereomen (and -women): I hereby announce the opening for business of http://leekonstantinou.com. Begin thy rejoicing. Begin, I say! Continue reading Hello, Please Give Me Some Fish