Litopia After Dark : Boys Night!
Welcome to our podcast! Looks like this is your first time here - you may want to subscribe to ourRSS feed - it'll keep you up to date with our latest shows. Thanks for dropping by - and don't be a stranger!
On Litopia After Dark this week:- Our Special Guest is Jean Hannah Edelstein, writer blogger and literary commentator. Is it time for the first female Poet Laureate? William McGonagall - genius or idiot? Nerds are the subject of a new book. Kindle figures are out and Amazon puts the squeeze on Publishers. And public schoolboys are back - but what makes us love them?
Here come the boys!
Litopia After Dark flexes its muscles and takes an unemotional, rational, stoic look at the masculine news of the week. We keep it real as we discuss boy poets, boy heroes, boy geeks and boys toys. No-one cries, there’s little small talk and you can almost hear the stiff upper lips.
Our very special guest this week isn’t a boy but Donna needed all the help she could get. Jean Hannah Edlestein is a contributing editor to Bad Idea Magazine, a frequent contributor to Guardian Unlimited, she’s written features, comment and criticism for the Observer, the Sunday Times, The Independent and the Independent on Sunday… among many others. She’s been described as everything from “the only attractive blogger” to a “wangsty git” (a term she explains on the show). Her first novel is due for release May 2009. And her blog can be found at http://www.jeanhannahedelstein.com/
Also on the show this week…
- Is it time for the first female Poet Laureate?
- A first edition of poetry by William McGonagall sells for more than Harry Potter first editions. Why do we love this rubbish poet so much?
- Benjamin Nugent has written a new book celebrating The Nerd… what’s to love about boys who don’t wash, don’t go out for days at a time, and never have girlfriends?
- As Scrabble turns sixty, we ask what is so compelling about this simple game.
- Kindle-watch again… our obligatory Kindle news item.
- Amazon’s at it again…
- Tintin, Jennings and Biggles are all back… why are public schoolboys so popular?
Our regular pannelists this week are Donna Ballman, Richard Howse and Dave Bartram. The testosterone level was at an all time high in the chatroom on Ustream (8pm GMT) and the nerd war was polite and methodical. Next week it’s all pink fluff and knitting, join us for the gossip.
Links mentioned in the show…
Arifa Akbar in the Independent…
Ever since the Royal household crowned John Dryden as the first Poet Laureate in 1668, the honour has been bestowed on men of letters from William Wordsworth to Ted Hughes. No woman has ever held the position.
But now, organisers of one of the most significant poetry festivals have decided that the wait for a female laureate has been long enough. Chloe Garner, director of the Ledbury Poetry Festival, has made an impassioned call for the appointment of a female poet laureate to redress the imbalance in the 22 male laureates chosen over three centuries.
Yesterday, Ms Garner wrote a letter to the Queen, Gordon Brown, the Tory leader David Cameron, and the Culture Secretary Andy Burnham, in which she calls for the appointment of a female poet laureate when the position falls vacant next year. She is to launch a campaign urging the appointment of a woman to the role in July, to coincide with the opening of the festival.
Wonderful William McGonagall poetry for your reading pleasure…
The Tay Bridge Disaster
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.Jottings of New York
Oh mighty City of New York! you are wonderful to behold,
Your buildings are magnificent, the truth be it told,
They were the only things that seemed to arrest my eye,
Because many of them are thirteen storeys high.
The information age has been good to nerds. No longer are they relegated to getting sand kicked in their faces by that other familiar archetype, the jock. We’ve gotten used to watching Steve Jobs grin awkwardly as he announces the latest hot techie toy, and when it comes to pop culture, nerds like “Superbad” writer/star Seth Rogen are increasingly in control of their own image. But even with the cultural cachet that comes with having your achievements validated by the masses, nerds are still high school losers.
In his absorbing new book, “American Nerd: The Story of My People,” Benjamin Nugent chronicles this underdog class. He considers the etymology of the word “nerd” — possible origins include the name of a creature in Dr. Seuss’ 1950 book “If I Ran the Zoo,” and a bucktoothed ventriloquist dummy dubbed “Mortimer Snerd” — and explores the world of hipsters, “an androgynous paradise where adults of both sexes look like enlarged spelling-bee champions.” He traces popular representations of nerds, from Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” to Gilda Radner and Bill Murray’s sketches on “Saturday Night Live,” to “Napoleon Dynamite.” And he asks what a person’s race has to do with their chances of being a nerd. Are nerds born, or are they made? According to Nugent, it’s both.
Lindsay McIntosh in The Scotsman…
THERE are no flashing lights, interactive car chases or shoot ‘em ups and although it can now be played online, it has steadfastly refused to be corrupted by the digital revolution.
Yet Scrabble – the word game consisting solely of a board and some tiles printed with letters – has endured through the generations to celebrate its 60th birthday this year.
In an era supposedly defined by gawping youngsters plugged into computer games, families still gather around their battered set in a battle for that elusive triple-letter word with 50-point bonus. Nipan Maniar, a games expert, said: “One only needs a pen and paper to play Scrabble – it is that simple.
Mark Mahaney of Citi is projecting the Kindle could represent a $750 million business for Amazon by 2010. There are several great articles and blog posts talking about this. Here are three I liked best, along with my two cents on each one:
Washington Post Gadget Roundup
A range of 10,000 to 30,000 units sold to date is projected in this one. That’s pretty broad but I still think based on forum post rates and other highly unscientific metrics the actual number seems closer to the low end than the high end. The 120,000/month projection “by the end of the year” seems wildly optimistic; I can’t see that happening unless there’s a significant price reduction or new model by then.
In the Bookseller, Benedicte Page…
Amazon has removed from sale key front and backlist titles from across the Hachette Group: the UK’s largest publisher and online retailer are believed to be locked in a dispute over terms.
Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth (Orion) and James Patterson’s The 6th Target (Headline) are among the big-hitting paperbacks only available for sale from Amazon Marketplace this morning (23rd May), with the “Buy New” button removed from their Amazon pages. New hardbacks from Stephen King (Hodder), Chris Manby (Hodder), Lesley Lokko (Orion) and Dan Cruickshank (Weidenfeld) also feature on the retailer’s website conspicuously without their “Buy New” buttons.
More than 200m copies of Hergé’s Tintin books have been sold around the world; fans tend to be devoted, if not obsessed by the character, his faithful dog Snowy and his perpetually frustrated friend Captain Haddock, an endearing drunk.
Spielberg has been working with Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings and King Kong, on how to bring Tintin to life. Now the production has taken another significant step with the casting of Sangster, alongside Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in the adaptation of Tolkien’s books, as Captain Haddock.
Alex Larman on the Guardian Blog…
Whether you love or loathe Harry Potter, there’s no doubting JK Rowling’s skill at combining tales of wizardry and magic with an equally popular literary sub-genre, the school story. However, as spells and fantastical monsters have thrilled millions the world over, the more conventional, almost quaint charms of the traditional school story now seem unlikely to compete with her rip-roaring adventures.
Admittedly, many of these books (most notoriously Frank Richards’ Billy Bunter series) were undercut by issues of snobbishness and racism, as George Orwell brilliantly analysed in his essay “Boys’ Weeklies”, and so their loss might not seem a problem. However, this week’s BBC serialisation of Anthony Buckeridge’s Jennings Little Hut has been showing that not all “old” school stories are dull or outdated.
Biggles made his first appearance in the short story “The White Fokker”, published in April 1932 in the aviation magazine Popular Flyer, of which Johns was editor. The tales that followed were published later that year in book form in The Camels are Coming.
The early Biggles stories were set in the First World War and were based on Johns’s own experiences as a bomber pilot on the western front. Johns only served six weeks before he was shot down and imprisoned. It was a fate which was to befall his fictional creation on several occasions, but Biggles - unlike Johns, who had to wait until after Armistice Day to be released - always managed to escape.
