Link Roundup!

by Nicole Cliffe · January 28, 2014

If you loved me, I mean really loved me, you’d buy me the velociraptor enclosure from Jurassic Park.

An oral history of Gawker, by Reddit.

Where is the oral history of Dune I want? This has only whetted my appetite!

I know there’s some kind of backlash against oral histories because they’re just interviews where you don’t have to do any other work, but I love them.

We have decided to stop paying our freelancers so we can send that money to the Queen. I haven’t checked with Mallory yet, tho, so, um, don’t start FedExing corgis until I report back.

Quietly crumples draft of novel, just reads The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie again (do that!):

There is nothing harder than the creation of fictional character. I can tell it from the number of apprentice novels I read that begin with descriptions of photographs. You know the style: “My mother is squinting in the fierce sunlight and holding, for some reason, a dead pheasant. She is dressed in old-fashioned lace-up boots, and white gloves. She looks absolutely miserable. My father, however, is in his element, irrepressible as ever, and has on his head that grey velvet trilby from Prague I remember so well from my childhood.” The unpractised novelist cleaves to the static, because it is much easier to describe than the mobile: it is getting these people out of the aspic of arrest and mobilised in a scene that is hard.

I am biased because I LOVE Ben Jonson, but you can read all his stuff for free online now, and you should do it!

Here is a Middlemarch contest with a PRIZE.

Elon Green and Buzz Bissinger in the newest Annotation Tuesday:

Did you ever interview Callaway? It’s not clear.

I did interview Callaway. I constantly see in stories in such august publications as theNew Yorker where the writer says “…told me.” I assume it is put in there so the reader knows where the information is coming from. But there is also a certain amount of chest bleating — you’re a journalist for fuck sakes, people are supposed to “tell” you things — and it completely fucks up narrative. It is also why I try to use as few direct quotes as possible in narrative pieces. Nonfiction writers fall in love with their quotes: Most quotes are really not that good, hardly showstoppers. They are terribly utilized. As a young reporter I, like everyone else, came back to the newsroom to tell my editor I got some great quotes. Until I realized the quotes weren’t great but (for) the information contained within them.

YES, Boyd Crowder! Best husband or boyfriend in a show full of shitty ones.

Let’s be enemies! (def. read this)

Nicole is an Editor of The Toast.


76 Comments

    1. noodge4lyfe +5

      oooh, so interesting! I think concentrated populations are a huge contributing factor to why these plagues (and future potential plagues) happen, which is super scary. I mean, if you look at the population maps, it ends up looking like bacteria colonies on the earth, and anyone who’s studies microbiology knows all it takes is an evolved virus/bacterium to cause a massive kill off. Scary, but reassuring too? I mean, for the future of the planet I suppose, not humankind.

      1. Beakses +1

        If you have a smart phone and have not played Plague, Inc., you might enjoy it. Or find it terrifying.

  3. icebergmama +23

    Awwww that Let’s Be Enemies! The Bergy Bits have started pouting and telling each other “YOU’RE not my FWIEND.” when they’re mad, but they get over it quickly and start giggling together within minutes.

      1. icebergmama +15

        OH I think you are responding to the comment below mine! Haha. I was like, “why is that infuriating?”

    4. Problematichistory

      That kid seemed like a mini Hitler. It’s all fun and games to be friends with someone like that until you’re both in the paper and everyone starts calling you “Goebbles”

    2. prost +23

      I’m kind of loving the implication that there is such an overwhelming cultural consensus that Middlemarch is the Best Book that it is necessary for someone to make the contrarian case.

      1. anachronistique +4

        Right? Like, people are probably talking about it more because of My Life in Middlemarch, and it’s definitely A Classic, but… … I was not aware everybody thought of it as The Best Book Ever?

      2. deleted2845473 +15

        Yeah, I’ve heard more about this book in the past month on the internet than in my entire preceding lifetime. I wasn’t an english major or anything but I like to think I have some grasp of the cultural consensus (because I read the internet a lot, duh) so that one made me wonder if I was going nuts.

      3. BourneApprox +21

        “You know what really needs to get knocked down a peg? Middlemarch. All those goddamn Middlemarch fan girls with their Team Tertius shirts and their Fred/Ladislaw fanfics.”

    3. Sugar&Snails +10

      Also. We all have our own tastes, and that is fine. But saying that Jules Verne “fathered” science fiction in the 1870s makes me snarl.

      SPECIAL THANKS TO MARY SHELLEY.

  5. katienaum +55

    Can I just say that “by Reddit” as its own clause sounds to me like an updated curse from the 19th century – an Internet version of “by golly” or “by Jupiter”?

    1. anninyn +36

      I’m gonna start using it that way, I think.

      “By Reddit, this man is a mere cad! He totally ate the last handful of crisps, and they were mine!”

      1. donkeywork +4

        I had totally forgotten about the ice cream social at the roller rink at the end of Middlemarch. I knew it reminded me of ‘Xanadu’ for some reason…

  7. ArsenioB_Ham +6

    Re: oral histories. I am currently reading “Live From New York” which is an oral history, or really a collection of oral histories, of SNL and I actually quite like the format, much more than I expected to do.

    1. NicoleCliffe +18

      LOVE THAT BOOK LOVE IT. BETTER THAN MIDDLEMARCH

      “My Life in Live From New York” – Nicole Cliffe, 2016, Random House

      1. prost +5

        “As an innocent lass I related to most to Mary Gross but as I have grown older I have come to appreciate the layered complexity of Colin Quinn.”

        (Have not read either Live From New York or My Life in Middlemarch [yet]; did just look at the SNL cast members wikipedia page.)

    2. anachronistique +5

      My brother got me “Slimed,” an oral history of the golden years of Nickelodeon, and I love the idea but it is SO poorly organized that I am having a super hard time reading it.

      1. CleverManka +6

        That’s too bad. I had SUCH a crush on “You Can’t Do That On Television”‘s Alastair.

      2. alamuzmo +2

        Gah! I was the prime audience for that book and requested an advanced copy as soon as they were available. I was so disappointed in the formatting that I just stopped talking about it rather than offend the rep. that got it for me.

          1. alamuzmo +2

            It could have been so good!
            The choice to just throw everyone’s comments in with *no* mention of who they are and what they did at the network is just…annoying. Making the reader flip to the back of the book to keep 50+ (100+? It felt that way at times) people straight was actively rage-inducing. Add to that the lack of narrative arc of any sort, and I was just…really underwhelmed. Especially when you compare it to Klickstein’s articles at Splitsider on specific Nickelodeon shows. Gah. THEY WERE SO MUCH BETTER! (On the plus side, if you keep reading, there is one quote from Dave Coullier about 3 pages from the end of the book. I found it hilarious that the author and/or editor thought they should continue adding people to the bitter end.)

    3. no_blues +5

      Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
      The greatest piece of inadvertent D.A.R.E. propaganda ever produced

    4. abbeyroadmedley +2

      “Live From New York” is FANTASTIC. I had a fierce crush on Lorne Michaels for most of my adolescence, and that book came out when I was sixteen, so I was obsessed.

  8. leapingrabbit

    Ahh, I saw an Eliot set like that at a used book store a few days ago except it was missing two books and it was published in 1908!

  9. imgs5890 +47

    Oh, no. No. No. An oral history does not ‘not require any kind of work besides interviewing’.

    A good oral historian will have researched their subject extensively before interviewing, so they can outline the proper questions to ask, and fit the context of that particular oral history into larger history. A good oral historian knows proper methodology, and knows how to draw rich answers out of a subject without asking leading questions. A good oral historian fact-checks (though their are some debates as to where the truth of emotion holds up against a truth of fact, and they are fascinating). A good oral historian goes back to their subject and follows up and asks more questions, and unlike journalism, gives them final say over the record so its truly a collaborative record between interviewer and interviewee. Famous oral historians like Studs Terkel and Alessandro Portelli didn’t just leave their houses and say “Welp, think I’ll go interview some people today and hope it comes out ok!”

    *cries into my history degree*

    1. prost +12

      That’s what’s slightly irritating to me about this ‘oral history of pop culture thing’ trend – not the pieces themselves, which I generally enjoy if I care at all about the subject, but the fact that they are repurposing the term ‘oral history’ to something much fluffier.

    2. theskyrbeast +16

      There was a really interesting article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (if you’re into that) over the weekend about an incredibly fraught Boston College oral history project involving former paramilitary members in Northern Ireland. Poor research design and confidentiality documentation (among other things) turned the whole project into a transatlantic legal and ethical clusterfuck. There’s definitely a lot more at stake in doing oral history than just bouncing around and interviewing people. See: http://chronicle.com/article/Secrets-From-Belfast…

      2. daisicles +2

        Thanks for this. I was aware of the legal problems around that project, but it’s really fascinating to read more about it.

    3. deleted2845473 +2

      Ehh, I always thought that the purpose of my history degree was to prepare me to build my primary sources into something readable. When I’m sitting down to read something, rather than to research it myself, I expect more organization and framing than what I see in all these “oral histories” that have been bouncing around lately.

      1. imgs5890 +6

        But if you’re working on something contemporary enough, an oral history can serve as a really fantastic primary source.

        I think the problem, as Prost pointed out upthread, is that the term “oral history” has been co-opted from a legitimate research technique to the currently popular pieces that are bouncing around the web, which are really pieces of light journalism that happen to be interview-centric.

        1. deleted2845473 +2

          Yeah, I guess what I’m saying is that just because you work hard on something doesn’t mean it’s the appropriate format for your audience. I don’t go to Buzzfeed looking for primary source material.

          1. imgs5890 +4

            Er, of course you wouldn’t? No one is debating that. I’m talking about interviews you conduct directly with your subjects.

          2. deleted2845473 +2

            Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound dismissive of your work or anything. I assumed we were talking in the context of online media like linked above but maybe I wasn’t reading carefully.

  10. Lyzz13 +4

    I’m currently trying to convince everyone I know on Facebook that they should all pool their money and buy me the raptor cage. Mostly, I want the raptor…

  11. rkfire +2

    Bergie!! Are you okay? I’m assuming by commenting here you weren’t stranded in traffic for hours.. ^^;

  12. littlehuntingcreek +13

    Boys named James ARE very bossy. Jims however, are much more easy going. Jimmys are BAD, though. They have been known to drink and cheat.

    1. deleted3703734 +4

      To say nothing of their proclivities for sleeping in trees and listening to prophetic wristwatches. Also being dicks to their high school girlfriends.

  14. bluewindgirl +17

    Wait, people are down on oral histories because they aren’t “work”? You know what’s hard? Knowing how to listen actively and intently, while people talk about things that are important to them, without hearing what you want to hear or mentally dicing up their words to find the quote that makes your point instead of theirs. I know we realized objectivity is impossible sometime around the 70s, but this is why we have pundits instead of news and activists instead of judges and pop sensations who “write all their own songs”– after all, if you can’t really *know* anyone else, you might as well do your best to make sure everyone knows you!

  15. Alli525 +7

    The commenters on the article on how broke the Queen is are hilarious.

    The Queen received 31 million pounds (51 million dollars) from the taxpayers in 2012-2013. And she cannot run her household with that sum of money. Emergency fund down to it’s last million. What a sad situation. There is nothing that can be said which defends such stupidity. British Royalty is not a compelling and important institution, they are idiots with no redeeming value whatsoever.
    Reply: Luckily you have Washington to rule you. You must be so proud. No wasting money there at all!

    *snarfle*

  16. Blondsak +16

    I am now imagining that Let’s Be Enemies is the prequel to Sherlock, starring John Watson and Jim Moriarty.

  18. catoclock +4

    I may or may not have exclaimed “I WOULD MARRY BOYD CROWDER” to my boyfriend last night while watching Justified.

  19. deleted3703734 +4

    I’ve never actually read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie*, so thanks to this roundup I’ve had Professor McGonagall’s voice chirping, “Mary MacGregor!” in my head all morning. Mary MacGregor! Mary MacGregor.

    *(I’ve always meant to, so I really hope that’s an Amazon affiliate link for when I get the Kindle edition? I assume it is, but for serious, I buy a ton of Kindle books and a lot of generic household stuff on Prime, so I hope you guys are making use of link wizardry. I’mma click on your links before I make Amazon purchases either way, just in case.)

    1. hey_lady +1

      “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” is one of the greatest books of all time. It also happens to be one of my favorites, which may be why I’ve labelled it one of the greatest of all time, but it really is good. Also, her book “The Driver’s Seat” is terrifying and amazing.

  21. cosmia +1

    Also, I did not read that “A Life of Their Own” article because I wanted to scroll down to the bottom and see if it was written by THE James Woods

  22. twobluebikes +3

    Bissinger’s answers are awesome. And his point about over-quoting is really dead-on. And so hard to follow.

  23. Sugar&Snails

    Also. We all have our own tastes, and that is fine. But saying that Jules Verne "fathered" science fiction in the 1870s makes me snarl.

    SPECIAL THANKS TO MARY SHELLEY.

  24. Heather S.

    I had totally forgotten about the ice cream social at the roller rink at the end of Middlemarch. I knew it reminded me of 'Xanadu' for some reason…