Disruptive Juxtaposition

Thursday, September 15, 2005

I drank a beer rather quickly and

remembered how long it's been, relatively, since I've contributed to this blog. I am still in the middle of searching for a roof some fraction of which I can call my own. Queens, Brooklyn, and Upper Upper Manhattan all proffer possibilities of varying merit. Internet access remains catch-as-catch-can. Rachel, for your generosity and forbearance, you are a dear. Kristin, ditto and tenfold.

But for you, kind Reader, I offer this short but tantalizing list of Coming Attractions!!!!!!!

*** A review of Summer Lawns's debut album "First We Waited... Then It Started" (Thanks, Laurel) !!

*** A review of Benjamin Kunkel's debut novel "Indecision" (Thanks, corporate policy allowing book loans from inventory) !!

*** A review of Sigur Ros's new and fourth major release, "Takk..." (Thanks, is what 'Takk..." means in Icelandic) !!

Speaking of Benjamin Kunkel specifically and Post-post / New Sincerity generally, did anyone happen to read the profile of The Believer and n+1 magazines in this Sunday's Times Magazine? A. O. Scott wrote it, and his grasp of the movement and of these journals makes me love him more and more and more. I'll be writing at more length about this matter soon - suffice it to say that Scott picked up smartly on the rise of the New Sincerity - in spirit if not in name - and triangulates its position in the worlds of academia and creative expression. Post-postmodernity is here. It is here to stay. It has able and dedicated friends (the staffs of n+1 and The Believer, among others) and earns copy in our national paper of record. I read this article on Monday, a day late, with a tangible, physical sense of elation. A feeling that that aesthetic I've thought about, struggled to theorize, and seen blooming in the blogging of my friends and the writings of dozens of torch-inheritors, is actually taking shape and shooting out roots. As Oleh Iwachiw, fellow West Genesee High School alum, was given to saying imperiously, "Yes, this pleases me."