This introduces our series on phaticized work, a covert and often unconscious form of corruption in which organizational resources are diverted to personal ends by way of social instincts.
It’s an on-the-books form of embezzlement, because instead of shifting money outside the organization—requiring the books to be “cooked”—phaticized work commandeers official workplace activities for private ends that have nothing to do with the mission of the organization.
Nobel judge Horace Engdahl, while echoing some of my concerns about creative writing programs, had this to say about transgressive fiction:
Engdahl slammed novels which “pretend to be transgressive”, but which are not. “One senses that the transgression is fake, strategic,” he said. “These novelists, who are often educated in European or American universities, don’t transgress anything because the limits which they have determined as being necessary to cross don’t exist.”
As fans know, I’m not a big fan of consciously transgressive art, either.
I suspect Engdahl and I might disagree about which transgressions are fake and which limits don’t really exist, or (I would qualify it) which ones exist mostly as traumatic memories rather than overwhelming current realities. But the issue he’s raising is an important one. How transgressive can institutionalized writers really be?
I’m not really the kind of guy to bend over backward for the team. Unless it’s a limbo team.
Among the raging hordes who set aside all facts and reason to bash Amazon in what I can only guess is a spooked panic about the retailer’s size (something that concerns me, too, but not to the point of losing my mind) there is a prevalent slander, which was recently repeated by Cosmin Gheorghe at the ever-flowing spring of spin that is the Huffington Post:
Amazon considers books a commodity, like cars or computers: an object that has no other inherent value, but only the value dictated by how often it is demanded or offered by the majority of us, i.e., the market.
This statement is moronic on two fronts.
I once worked for a government office admin professional, one of the most powerful GS employees in his agency at the time, who boasted about rejecting a well-qualified candidate for a computer programming position because the guy had worn white socks with dress pants and dress shoes.
We see interview advice all the time targeting the interviewee, advice on grooming and speech and how to compose and format a résumé. “Five Huge Mistakes You Should Avoid During an Interview” is a web headline sure to go viral.
We don’t often see advice for interviewers and hiring officials steering them away from mistakes, however. We seem to simply assume they’ll do the right thing. They’re trained professionals, after all.
This is a dumb assumption.
“I crack myself up!”
– Suicidal porcelain doll
There’s a lot of hoopla about Marvel’s new Thor, specifically the fact that he’s now a she. Perhaps part of the reaction is due to some recent overkill in feminizing the comic franchise, even to the point of renaming Asgard Asgardia.
All of that questionable political background aside, when it comes to Thor taking on a female form there’s really nothing to lose your cool about. That’s part of who Thor is and always has been.
Appalachocalypse : When the end of the world arrives in the form of mocha-flavored hillbillies.
A new Publishers Weekly salary survey of people in the publishing industry is being used to confirm the narrative of the gender pay gap. But if you scratch below the surface, what it really reveals is that—even though they dominate (~70%) non-managerial jobs more than they dominate (51%) management—women in publishing actually get paid and promoted more for their experience and commitment than men do.
How so? Continue reading
I’ve been relatively quiet during Banned Books Week, but here are a few cool literary bits and pieces I’ve found for you guys.
Stephen King argues that books—by which he means paper codices—are going to be around for a long time, and I agree with him.
Script Shadow asks: What makes a good story idea? Also, what makes a bad idea? And, can you make a bad idea good?
The movement to make scientific publishing more open to the public is on! But, can it work, realistically? Let’s hope so.
Now, if you want to know why I’m no fan of Banned Books Week, keep reading. Continue reading
