Browsing the archives for the LATfob category

The New Sociology, or, in Praise of the Middle Zone

in 20 under 40, James F. English, LATfob, new sociology, New Yorker

(Crossposted at Arcade.) Mark McGurl’s The Program Era ends with an insightful reflection on the problem of "scale" in literary study — our almost automatic assumption that we must always scale up the stakes of literary study in order to argue for our relevance.  Bigger, we commonly assume, is better, and will garner for us […]

Post-Pre-Swinocalypse

in Fiona Maazel, Jerry Stahl, Jim Ruland, LATfob

I had a great weekend at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. As promised, and thanks in large part to the expert moderation skills of Jim Ruland, my panel, “The Post-Modern World,” had almost nothing to do with postmodernism and everything to do with the End of the World. Which, I should mention, is […]