What I’m reading

Gogol. No, really. For both work and pleasure. My copy of “The Overcoat” went in the Great Book Robbery of 1998, so hooray for Project Gutenberg.

Chad Taylor on technology and the curse of “upgrades”. Money quote:

I don’t need the web to find out what I already know. If it’s online I'm grown-up enough to look at it. I want my laptop to work like a typewriter and my phone to work like a phone and my camera to have shutter speed and aperture and focus: if I need to get closer to the subject I can walk there. I would just like things to function. And I would like to not be thinking about this. The only reason I am is that there’s writing I need to get done. Whatever happened to welcome distractions?

 Nicholas Reid has a good go at Frank Sargeson. It’s up close and personal.

Questions we can answer: Are Govt spin doctors writing Stuff’s headlines? No. But how refreshing to see Fairfax newspapers accused of being right-wing and in the thrall of the Nats: roll over Rod Oram and tell Anthony Hubbard the news. Perhaps if those on the right think that Fairfax writers are all lefties, and those on the left think they are all righties, they may be, on balance, balanced. Well, not Michael Laws, obviously.

The little mermouse.

Editor-speak. 

Finally, via Word magazine, proof that Marcel Proust invented air guitar 120 years ago. The photographer is unknown; the caption here reads, “Marcel Proust et ses amis au tennis du boulevard Bineau (au centre Jeanne Pouquet), 1892”: