Have you noticed?
Over the last couple of weeks, it’s become increasingly obvious that there is little to no reason to keep reading certain political blogs. (I still visit, but just to skim the post headers.) The world is so far ahead of anyone’s opinion or grasp of reality, anyway. Events are cascading faster and faster. The Obama victory is part of this ongoing, inescapable change, of course. People would be better off centering themselves and opening their hearts than looking for trouble where there isn’t any.
I posted those exact words in reply to an article at Huffington Post and immediately attracted a swarm of people who don’t understand that the world reflects what they believe. (If you know someone like that, wish them good afternoon and keep on walking.) This basic building block of the universe is almost universally ignored, because most of us think there’s an objective world out there apart from the sparks of light inside our brains.
‘Tain’t so.
Nyah, nyah.
And with that, I’m diving into Sunday.
Comment by Michael Zed
1 November 30, 2008, 9:43 pm o'clock |
Hmmmm, plenty more to tell.
An Aussie woman friend who has been living in NYC since the 80s, has just had published her, unique, take on the election, Obama and Wall Street.
Kate Jennings worked as a speechwriter at one of the big investment banks for a number of years, understands finance-tech, international politics, race and feminism.
Justy picked up a copy this AM, and looking forward to reading this 95pp essay at home tonight.
She’s a gem of a writer.
Cheers
Michael, Adelaide AUSTRALIA
Quarterly Essay Issue 32
American Revolution: The Fall of Wall Street and the Rise of Barack Obama
By Kate Jennings
Where were you when America elected Barack Obama? Kate Jennings was in New York, eyes wide open, completing her take on an amazing time: “the run-up to the election … a time when every day felt like a year and we became slightly crazed from worry but also mesmerised, unable to switch off the cable news stations, obsessively tracking the DOW, VIX, LIBOR spreads, polls in red states. So much at stake.”
American Revolution is a dazzling and perceptive look at the United States between hope and despair: an election-year kaleidoscope. Jennings describes how and why the US economy fell off a cliff and how an apparently endless run of primaries and an increasingly rancorous campaign culminated in a world-changing victory. She surveys the characters – Obama, Palin, McCain and the Clintons – and conveys the concepts – derivatives, bailouts and moral hazard. This is an essay that shows America in fascinating flux: it is witty and poetic, acute and evocative.
Kate Jennings is a poet, essayist, short-story writer and novelist. Both her novels, Snake and Moral Hazard, were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She has won the ALS Gold Medal, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the Adelaide Festival fiction prize. In the 1990s, she worked as a speechwriter on Wall Street. Stanley and Sophie, a memoir of life in New York City where she has made her home for the past three decades, was published in 2008.
ISBN 978-1-86395-311-5 - $15.95
Comment by Michael Zerman
2 November 30, 2008, 11:43 pm o'clock |
Not sure how or why, but the URL I sent locating the publisher of the Quarterly Essay mentioned above was “offed”, presumably to prevent comment s–m.
So here’s another attempt or two:
1. Quarterly Essay is online at:
http://www.quarterlyessay.com/qe/currentissue/
2. Quarterly Essay is online at:
http://www.quarterlyessay.com/qe/currentissue/
3. Quarterly Essay is online at:
http://www.quarterlyessay.com
Basta.