Advertisement
The Paris Review
Subscribe
Sign In
Remember me
Forgot password?
Sign In
Subscribe
The Daily
The Latest
Columns
The Quarterly
Issues
Interviews
Fiction
Poetry
Letters & Essays
Art & Photo
graphy
Authors
Podcast
About
History
Opportunities
Masthead
Prizes
Submissions
Media Kit
Bookstores
Events
Donate
Donate to
The Paris Review
Institutional Support
THE SPRING REVEL
Newsletters
Store
The Paris Review
The Daily
The Latest
Columns
The Quarterly
Issues
Interviews
Fiction
Poetry
Letters & Essays
Art & Photography
Authors
Podcast
About
History
Opportunities
Masthead
Prizes
Submissions
Media Kit
Bookstores
Events
Donate
Donate to
The Paris Review
Institutional Support
THE SPRING REVEL
Newsletters
Store
Sign In
Remember me
Forgot password?
Sign In
Subscribe
Sign In
Remember Me
Forgot password?
“Are You Being Processed?” and Other News
By
Dan Piepenbring
September 16, 2014
On the Shelf
Detail from the cover of the first issue of
Processed World
, 1981.
The National Book Awards have published
this year’s poetry longlist
: Louise Glück, Edward Hirsch, and Fanny Howe are among the ten nominees.
Technology was supposed to increase our leisure time and enliven our workplaces—that hasn’t really panned out. But in the early eighties, amid all the Pollyannaism of the Bay Area,
a magazine called
Processed World
seemed to foresee all the resentments of the contemporary office drone. “In the writing … one can also find the beginnings of today’s revolt against Silicon Valley and its pernicious mix of libertarian economics, techno-utopianism, and the deracinated remains of the sixties counterculture.”
“Fingerprint words”: the words and phrases we overuse to the point that they become our personal trademarks. (Mine are probably
foresee
,
edify
, and
floccinaucinihilipilification
.) The strangest thing about these words is that they’re contagious: “We’re all simultaneously donating to and stealing from those around us. But how do we pick up these linguistic signature words, and
what is going on when we notice other people using those words
and we feel, well, a certain way about it?”
Writers seeking peace, quiet, and old-fashioned American bonhomie: Washington, D.C.’s Politics & Prose is renting
a cottage in Ashland, Virginia
—a town where “people wave at you from their front porch”—for weeklong retreats.
On
the performative paintings of Avery Singer
: “The gentle sarcasm embedded in her work is usually aimed at art-world stereotypes. Her first solo exhibition at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler in Berlin last year, for example, was a satiric take on the art industry and its conventions. Works with titles such as
The Studio Visit
(2012),
Jewish Artist and Patron
(2012) and
The Great Muses
(2013) play on myths around the romantic figure of the artist. The show was accompanied by a short text by Singer, a fake press release for an exhibition that will never happen.”
Last / Next
Article
Last / Next Article
Share