Crit­ics! Eter­nal medi­oc­rity liv­ing off genius by den­i­grat­ing and exploit­ing it! Race of cockchafers slash­ing the finest pages of art to shreds! I’m so fed up with typog­ra­phy and the mis­use peo­ple make of it that if the Emper­or were to abol­ish all print­ing tomor­row, I should walk all the way to Paris on my knees and kiss his arse in gratitude.

-Let­ter to Louise Colet, July 2nd, 1853

Flaubert’s Par­rot may be the finest lit­er­ary biog­ra­phy and lit­er­ary crit­i­cism I’ve ever read. It’s been ten years since I last set foot in a class­room express­ly for the pur­pose of lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, but I hope that new­er antholo­gies include Barnes, prefer­ably some­where in the back so as not to dis­rupt the steady diet of Arnold, Brooks and Fish, in keep­ing with the staid tra­di­tions of my alma mater.

Let me direct your atten­tion to one of the best pieces about women musi­cians that isn’t anoth­er “women in rock, don’cha know” arti­cle, fea­tur­ing BMIML fave Marnie Stern.

Since Philadel­phia emerged from Feb­ru­ary’s nuclear win­ter con­di­tions, I’ve been get­ting out more, which means spend­ing less time in movie the­aters. I need to get in to see Mafioso [check out A.O. Scot­t’s video review here] and prob­a­bly Zodi­ac, even though it smacks of also-ran Oscar refuse, jet­ti­soned safe­ly in the postseason.

I’ve had spo­radic inter­net access the past sev­er­al days. Also, I got a new job that I’m pret­ty excit­ed about!

Marathon­packs’ Eric Har­vey tries to unpack what both­ers him about Girl Talk. I’ll sim­ply refer you to this post at Riff Mar­ket, which more or less sums up my feel­ings about Girl Talk. It’s a “sub­tle­ty” that Eric miss­es out on, anoth­er inter­me­di­ary lay­er for Girl Talk’s “pub­lic” per­sona, the irony here being that we have an artist who flaunts copy­rights and assumes a “secret” iden­ti­ty* meant to set him apart from indie careerists, pro­tect his job secu­ri­ty, whathaveyou,  mak­ing him a cross between Clark Kent and Jem, who then relies on com­plex of han­dlers to main­tain his image and lim­it media access. They’ll even instruct you on what you’re allowed to dis­cuss in inter­views! Hooray for the Infor­ma­tion Age!
*[Results 1 — 10 of about 140,000 for greg gillis girl talk. (0.36 seconds)]