Scattered Notes
Franco Moretti: The Valve [scroll down] is sponsoring a symposium on Franco Moretti's Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History. In addition to the multiple posts at The Valve, see: Scott McLemee's"Literature to Infinity," Inside Higher Ed, 4 January; and two pieces by Tim Burke,"Franco Moretti: A Quantitative Turn for Cultural History?" Cliopatria, 20 January 2004; and"Book Notes: Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees," Easily Distracted, 13 January 2006. Hypocrites and Liars Watch: Say you go to the AHA business meeting to support a substitute resolution to condemn both David Horowitz's ABOR and speech codes and the substitute resolution is defeated, so you vote for the resolution that condemns only ABOR. That gets you called both a"hypocrite" and a"liar." That the resolution was hypocritical, I cop to; to be called a"liar" by David Horowitz is a crown of glory. Kings and Branches: One day last week, every periodical that came in the mail had a piece in it that pumped the third volume of Taylor Branch's trilogy on Martin Luther King: At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968. Simon and Schuster still hasn't sent my review copy, but this line in the New York Times review of it caught my eye:
Dollars to doughnuts that, before offering this judgment, the author of the review hadn't read the second volume of the trilogy, in which Branch's material sprawled way out of control. Taylor Branch tells his stories so brilliantly, however, that you almost think things actually should have happened that way. 9/11 and Pop Culture: Via Kevin Murphy at Ghost in the Machine, The Authentic History Center: Primary Sources from American Popular Culture has a good online exhibit of how 9/11 was treated in the comics.
Because the remainder of this bulky book tries to chronicle the post-Selma fragmentation of the civil rights movement, along with a host of other developments - from the riots in Watts to the rise of the black power movement and a growing white backlash - the volume is a sprawling and less cohesive production than the preceding installments of the author's trilogy.