Weekly Dispatches Category
Shit Needs to Go Down: On AI, Speech Technology, and ‘Speak’
Posted on November 9, 2015 2 Comments
By Ryan Joe 1. When your team sucks, there inevitably comes a point when you treat the season as a curiosity, like a mutated animal floating in a jar of formaldehyde. How did this happen to you? (Owner abuse.) Was there any chance that you would have lived? (No.) What does the future hold for […]
Lighting Up: On Maggie Nelson’s ‘The Argonauts’
Posted on November 1, 2015 1 Comment
By Adam Boretz Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts — a work of “autotheory” and a memoir of sorts — pretty much destroyed me. I loved the fragmentary, mosaic storytelling — which Dan described in his great post from earlier in the week — but more than that, I loved the way Nelson’s prose affected me. While reading The Argonauts, I […]
The Freedom Inside White Space: On ‘The Argonauts’ and Being a Jets Fan in Manhattan
Posted on October 28, 2015 1 Comment
By Dan Bjork 1. So, I made it through the first real test of my FBC: I did not watch Jets-Patriots. This is the first rivalry game I’ve missed since the late ’80s and Ken O’Brien. According to my Facebook feed, we lost “in the most Jets-y-est way possible.” But I don’t know what these […]
A House Party Full of Strangers: On Maggie Nelson’s ‘The Argonauts’
Posted on October 28, 2015 1 Comment
By Ryan Joe Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts gets its title from the ship the Argo, which was replaced piece by piece over a long voyage – as described by Roland Barthes – until it was both the same ship and an entirely new one. This is not unlike how the 49ers, a few years removed […]
The Shame in Thinking You’re Simply Soft: On the Paradox of Other People in ‘Hyperbole and a Half’
Posted on October 18, 2015 2 Comments
By Dan Bjork This week was tough for me. My S.O.P. for these entries — extremely close readings and (attempts at) abstract subtext analysis — wasn’t really an option. Everything in Hyperbole and a Half is presented with a single-entendre straightness I admire. I’m truly digging its blog-roots (the word blog being used without any […]
One of Us: On ‘Hyperbole and a Half’ and Chicago Bears Mediocrity
Posted on October 18, 2015 3 Comments
By Adam Boretz 1. I think Yona’s piece from earlier this week hit upon two key aspects of Hyperbole and a Half. In that post, she wrote: [Allie] Brosh, unlike any writer I’ve read in a long time, doesn’t seem particularly concerned with extracting any deep meaning from her childhood to reveal the meaning of present […]
Funny as Hell: On Hyperbole and a Half
Posted on October 17, 2015 Leave a Comment
By Ryan Joe I was thrilled to read Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half because finally, finally, I found out where all those memes are coming from. Though I go through a lot of comics, I rarely do so online. It’s hard for me to read for pleasure through a screen. Of course, I use […]
My Life in Ruins and Whacky Childhoods: The Highlights Reel
Posted on October 13, 2015 3 Comments
By Yona Harvey 1. Cartoonist Allie Brosh and novelist Steven Millhauser immerse readers in the warped worlds of children. But after that, Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half and Millhauser’s Edwin Millhouse part ways. At no point does Brosh declare herself a precocious genius or claim to tell a genius tale. Quite the opposite: “I was […]
Unhealthy Attachments: On the 49ers, Piles of Bodies, and ‘Edwin Mullhouse’
Posted on October 12, 2015 6 Comments
By Ryan Joe I watched the final drive of the San Francisco 49ers game against the New York Giants. The one where the 49ers are winning until Eli Manning looking all slack-jawed flings a last-second touchdown. My mood is surprisingly dark right now. You know what else is surprisingly dark? Edwin Mullhouse by Steven Millhauser. […]
Embracing Your Tinfoil Hat: On the Levels of Reality in ‘Edwin Mulhouse’
Posted on October 11, 2015 5 Comments
By Dan Bjork It feels good to be back in fiction. Writing about poetry proved to be both easier and harder than I’d expected: it was much easier to find something to say, and then much harder to say it with any clarity. And last week’s non-fiction post was solely inspired by the voice in […]
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