I am still snowed in with paperwork and this may continue for some time. I am also leaning into my current academic piece. At the studio, I have made a lidded porcelain jar. Meanwhile, a book worth reading is Guinier and Torres’ The Miner’s Canary (Harvard, 2002) on the limits of the “democratic” political system … More Porcelain Jar

Always of interest to me are the ways in which folk and ethnic musics are deployed in the service of national projects. Penny M. Von Eschen’s Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Harvard, 2005) discusses one such case. From Brian Morton’s review (The Nation, June 27, 2005, 38-41): Between 1956 … More Jazz Ambassadors

From one review of a book I want to read: [This] work amounts to a radical remapping of global literary space–which means, first of all, the recognition that there is a global literary space. [Its] insights build on world systems theory, the idea, developed by Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein, that the capitalist economy that … More Literary World Systems

I have just finished a list of works cited. It was the pickiest such job I ever undertook, because I had never written anything that cited so many very old books. Getting the editions straight, and discovering the conventions for citing these particular people, seems to have taken as long as writing the article in … More Picky

One of my far-flung friends has brought my attention to the existence of this evidently great novel, which I would like to read. Water Margin or Outlaws of the Marsh (Traditional Chinese: 水滸傳; Simplified Chinese: 水浒传; pinyin: Shuǐhǔ Zhuàn) is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. Attributed to Shi Naian, whom … More Water Margin

Venturing beyond the garden wall this evening I saw a live set by a girl band. It was fantastic, and that is all I will say, since further information would permit you to detect my precise location, at least for those two hours. I have a crush now on one of the singers, wicked thing … More How Our Lives Become Stories

I stopped reading Dissent when it came out in favor of the Iraq war, but Momo links to an interesting essay from it by Ellen Willis, on, let us say for short, the Revolution which is still to come. The validity of utopianism is the topic here. I am perusing Walter Benjamin’s On the Concept … More In Utopia

Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison closed The Liberator in 1865, on the theory that its work was done. Colonial powers carved up of Africa in the name of suppressing the slave trade. We can read all about this and more in New World Order, Robin Blackburn’s review of some new books on slavery. It is interesting … More William Lloyd Garrison

When she was 97, my aunt Helen took me to lunch at the upscale Lark Creek Inn. Normally she took members of our family to the Blue Rock, where we would drink gin fizzes, but we went to the Lark Creek Inn because she had been to the Blue Rock the day before. “I am … More Nikolai Bukharin