"The Social Media Editor is Dead"
Sunday, June 9, 2013
At BuzzFeed, Rob Fishman on the widening out of this once-distinct role.
Bezos and the Six-Page Meeting Narrative
Sunday, June 9, 2013
A Fortune profile on Jeff Bezos reveals how Amazon’s senior-executive team presents, consumes, and prepares to discuss plans and information: Meetings of his “S-team” of senior executives begin with participants quietly absorbing the written word. Specifically, before any discussion begins, members of the team — including Bezos — consume six-page printed memos in total silence for as long as 30 minutes. (Yes, the e-ink purveyor prefers paper. Ironic, no?) They scribble notes in the margins while the authors of the memos wait for Bezos and his minions to finish reading.
Leo
Saturday, May 25, 2013
"> <figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " style="max-width:550px;"> <div style="padding-bottom:99.454544067383%;" class=" image-block-wrapper has-aspect-ratio "> <img src="http://sschenkenberg.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/02ca4-image-asset.jpeg" alt="" /><img class="thumb-image" alt="" /> </div> </figure> </div> Meet Leo Huremovic Schenkenberg — born Saturday May 18, 2013. Tamara was amazing. And Leo’s a little gem. Onward, sleepily and smiling.
On Launching The TOKY Research Library
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
A new post I wrote on the TOKY Blog.
Robert Silvers: Toward a "New Form of Criticism"
Thursday, April 11, 2013
At New York Magazine, the great journalist Mark Danner talks at length with The New York Review of Books’ Robert Silvers. Here’s one bit about online publishing and social media, which strikes me not as fuddy-duddy, but very considered: To tweet or not to tweet. And not to tweet is to be left behind. And that raises a question: What is this? What are the kinds of prose, and the kinds of thinking, that result from the imposition of the tweet form and other such brief reactions to extremely complex realities?
CoDesign on Editorially
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Excited to try this new online writing and editing environment, built by a few all-stars.
Hemon: "The Book of My Lives"
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
I’ve written before of the penetrating, often funny essays of Aleksandar Hemon, the Bosnian writer who, fortunately for us, calls Chicago home. His new collection, The Book of My Lives, is terrific, whether the subject is gravely serious (war, illness) or much more fun (pick-up soccer with a crew of fellow refugees). Here’s one opening paragraph I quite liked from the essay “The Lives of Grandmasters,” which has just been published online as well:
FT and the "Finite Read"
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
From Folio’s “FT Relaunches Web App”: One of the biggest changes is offering readers both a static version of the morning paper along with a dynamically updated version that automatically updates throughout the day. “The big learning for us with the first app is how important the concept of a finite read is,” says Steve Pinches, FT.com’s group product manager. “Readers love the idea of starting with the FT in the morning and reading it all the way through, which is quite a different concept than on the web.
Reading William Gass
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Lots going on at my other blog, perhaps most notably Cynthia Ozick’s review of Middle C, which carried the cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review.
Karen Green: "Bough Down"
Monday, April 1, 2013
BOMB offers an extraordinary excerpt from Bough Down, a volume by artist Karen Green, who is also David Foster Wallace’s widow: September again and I take your parents to the lighthouse, I do. There is nothing but September fog to cover our shame, and your father laughs just like you, at the opacity. I want to eat the laugh, I want to rub it on my chest like camphor, I want to make a sound tattoo.
Kevin Ashton: "Creative People Say No"
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Enjoyed this piece, especially Ashton’s quoting of composer George Ligeti's secretary, writing to a requester of some kind: He is creative and, because of this, totally overworked. Therefore, the very reason you wish to study his creative process is also the reason why he (unfortunately) does not have time to help you in this study. He would also like to add that he cannot answer your letter personally because he is trying desperately to finish a Violin Concerto which will be premiered in the Fall.
Remnick: "A Scandal at the Bolshoi Ballet"
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Continually impressed by David Remnick, who, between serving as the bloody EIC of The New Yorker, has time not just to bust out whip-smart blog posts on Obama in Israel and Philip Roth, but to pen 11,000-word, richly reported pieces on, say, the Russian ballet. Here’s a characteristically wonderful paragraph: I lived in Moscow in the last years of the Soviet era, when tickets to the Bolshoi were cheap, and I used to go whenever I could, happily enduring even Grigorovich’s agitprop warhorses “Spartacus” and “Ivan the Terrible.
"More commas, please"
Saturday, March 23, 2013
At McSweeney’s, Teddy Wayne’s “Feedback From James Joyce’s Submission of Ulysses to His Creative Writing Workshop.”
"William H. Gass: How I Write"
Friday, March 15, 2013
Fun interview in The Daily Beast. Happily surprised to see my name pop up.
Stirring to John Ashbery
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
In this New Yorker podcast, the great Jane Mayer talks about food, kitchens, and using evening cooking time to let her mind relax and repair amid heavy reporting assignments: Certain things were good to stir with, and certain things were not good to stir with … Certain poetry. I used to stir risotto to “The Four Quartets,” which I thought had a very, very good rhythm. But I made the mistake of one day writing that I stirred my polenta to John Ashbery.
Richter: Painting What's Fun
Sunday, March 10, 2013
"> <figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " style="max-width:500px;"> <div style="padding-bottom:100%;" class=" image-block-wrapper has-aspect-ratio "> <img src="http://sschenkenberg.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/6eca7-image-asset.jpeg" alt="" /><img class="thumb-image" alt="" /> </div> </figure> </div> Gerhard Richter, quoted in Atlas: Do you know what was just great? — To notice that such a stupid, absurd little act like copying a postcard can result in a painting. And then the freedom to be able to paint what’s fun. Deer, aeroplanes, kings, secretaries.
Jason Fried on a Reader's Motivation
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Customers come to learn something, research something, consider something, buy something. If they are motivated, they may not mind spending 5 minutes reading. They want to read, they want to know. They’re OK investing their time to find something out if they really care about the answer.
The Ecosystem Known As Reading
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Andrew Piper, writing in Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times: Books will always be there. That is what they are by definition: there. Whether in the classroom, the library, the archive, the bookstore, the warehouse, or online, it is our choice, however, where books will be. It is time to stop worrying and start thinking. It is time to put an end to the digital utopias and print eulogies, bookish venerations and network gothic, and tired binaries like deep versus shallow, distributed versus linear, or slow versus fast.
The Risks of Rereading
Sunday, February 10, 2013
I really like this bit from Katherine Boo, taken from her interview for the New York Times Book Review’s “By the Book” series: I was working my butt off trying to investigate the violent deaths of some homeless children, under circumstances that had been covered up by the police, when I reached the section of “2666” entitled “The Part About the Crimes.” It begins with a relentless, near-forensic account of corpses and injustices (closely based on the murders of poor women in Juarez) that opens out into this fevered exploration of both the psychological cost of paying attention to the tragedies of others and the social cost of looking away.
Asimov: Why Wine
Thursday, January 24, 2013
From Eric Asimov’s How to Love Wine, which I quite enjoyed: To assert that tasting notes amount to an “intellectual dissection” of a wine is to ignore the fact that the more specific the description of flavors and aromas, the less one is actually saying about a wine and what it has to offer. People drink wine for many reasons. It makes them happy, it cheers them up, it is delicious, it makes meals better, it is intoxicating, it enhances friendships, it serves a spiritual purpose, and that is only the beginning.