thinking without words
Jerry Fodor, the man who wrote the seminal (and now outdated) The Modularity of Mind reviews a new book on thought processes, Thinking Without Words, by Jose Luis Bermudez.
Jerry Fodor, the man who wrote the seminal (and now outdated) The Modularity of Mind reviews a new book on thought processes, Thinking Without Words, by Jose Luis Bermudez.
The Guardian has an interview with Joe Sacco, the author of the acclaimed Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde. Sacco takes issue with the term “graphic novel”:
“I have no problem with the term ‘comics’, but now we’re saddled with the term ‘graphic novel’ and what I do I don’t see as a novel,” says Sacco, in a conversation that started over a couple of Jamesons in a downtown Portland bar and resumed at his home the following morning.
Meanwhile, Amazon.com has his book categorized, among other things, as…a graphic novel.
The San Francisco Chronicle has a profile on Ayelet Waldman, who’s hoping to move from mystery to literary fiction with her new novel, Daughter’s Keeper. The article makes the inevitable Chabon references, but also mentions Waldman’s birth in Israel, her upbringing in the U.S, the years she spent in a kibbutz, etc. Of the Middle-East mess, she jokingly suggests:
“Green cards, green cards for all. The Palestinians and Israelis will open air- conditioning companies together in Los Angeles, and we will have an end to war.”
The idea for Daughter’s Keeper came to Waldman a few years ago, when she was working as an attorney in OC:
Waldman was defending a young man from Honduras named Felipe, just 20 years old and borderline retarded, who was mixed up in a methamphetamine deal.
“He’d gotten involved with a confidential informant who was a Mariel Cuban who had been found to be psychotic by the American physician who evaluated him when he came over on the boat-lift,” says Waldman, breathlessly. Arrested for dealing cocaine in the United States, he parlayed that into a career as a confidential informant.
“This is too much for fiction,” she says, “but he was also a Santeria priest. So people would come to him and say, ‘My uncle is dying of cancer, can you help us?’ And he would say, ‘OK, sacrifice this chicken, do this methamphetamine deal and I’ll cure your uncle.’ And then they’d get arrested, because he was an informer.”
You can also visit Ayelet Waldman’s site.
The Femina people are upset with the Goncourt judges.
The Salt Lake Tribune has an article on writers’ websites (not necessarily blogs). The article hawks sites by the likes of James Patterson, Stuart Woods, and Catherine Coulter. No mention of other writers.
Writers’ sites vary a little in sophistication and a great deal in friendliness. Some writers cheerfully talk about where they get their ideas and answer questions from readers in an uncondescending way.
Woods is not quite as patient.
One reader asks Woods about a specific character, Stone Barrington, who is rich. The reader wonders whether Woods’ success and wealth have begun to “leak” into his fiction. “Why do you think Stone’s lifestyle and mine are the same?” Woods responds. “And if they are, whose lifestyle should I write about, if not my own? It seems to me that most people are interested in reading about characters who are richer than they are.”
Someone named Marie asks where she can get a complete list of his work. “Questions like this make me crazy, Marie,” Woods writes. “I have received hundreds of e-mails from readers asking me to send them a list, in chronological order, of all the books.”
He adds, “They are, apparently, too lazy to look in the front of the book they have just finished, or to consult the Web site, and they drive me nuts.”
Stuart Woods: Forgive your fans for existing.
The Goncourt jury skipped the shortlist this year and announced its winner: Jean-Pierre Amette for La Maitresse de Brecht, which tells the story of a woman sent to spy on Bertolt Brecht.