I grew up in Maine, where I woke up this morning, and which is full of empty factories, dating back to when manufacturing jobs were shipped overseas to take advantage of cheap labor. Here in Biddeford, where my mother lives, this town is still struggling to make its way back from the loss of those jobs. [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘white collar sweatshops of the east coast’
March 17, 2008
America Discovers Middle Class Gone, Held Everything Together
I’m not an economist, but even I know that you can’t keep wages down, force people to pay outlandish medical, gas and home loan prices and gouge their financial services with late fees and surprise interest rates and still have anyone with any money to buy anything. Ben Stein of Ben Stein’s Money (and, who [...]
March 8, 2008
The Money Quote
From Sam J. Miller’s essay on the Short Story, over at The Quarterly Conversation: Many, including me, see a lot of positives in the digitization of art, don’t have a lot of sympathy for the RIAA when it complains about its dwindling bottom line—and laugh out loud at folks like Richard Parsons, CEO of Time [...]
March 5, 2008
Your Questions Answered: Why Don’t The Fake Memoir Writers Write Novels?
Q: Why would someone like Margaret Seltzer try to publish a fictional story as a memoir? A: The novel in the West owes a great deal to the fake memoir, dating back to such classics as Moll Flanders. It was long held in disrepute, for that reason. However… Nonfiction today makes more money than fiction. [...]
December 28, 2007
The Silent Majority Is Reading
The New York Times ran this piece Sunday about the pretentiousness of buying something like Herodotus for someone for Christmas. Let’s read along and translate it, shall we? Feel free to add your own translations in the comments. YOU would have to crack open “The Landmark Herodotus” and get as far as Page 41 to [...]
November 11, 2007
If You Watch This On The Internet, Pay Us.
Some of my favorite people from the Office, talking about the Writer’s Guild Strike. I watch the show on the internet, for the record. via Fishbowl LA
