Orphan quotes are quotation marks that people habitually use to surround a word or sometimes two. More recently they’ve broken out of the written sphere, becoming air quotes.
Entries Tagged as ‘reading’
May 28, 2009
Fraught relations.
A 14-line poem called “Embrace,” by Michael Collier in the June Atlantic. Please click over and tell me what you think of it. I love the changing points of view, from “you” to “her” and from then to now. Are the relations between children and adults always fraught?
Michael Collier is a former poet laureate of [...]
May 17, 2009
Which technology would you like to disappear?
There’s both good and bad news in the realm of communications.
This week, voice mail came in for castigation from Slate’s Farhad Manjoo. Everyone should enjoy this one. He succinctly summarized voice mail’s every shortcoming and held out hope for a better, saner world –
“If the voice-mail leavers in your life are anything like those in [...]
May 10, 2009
When video was young.
From “Moments Not to Remember,” by David Owen
“The popularity of video cameras arises from a simple but potent misunderstanding. Somehow people have gotten the idea that they won’t mind being old so much if they can turn on the TV and see what they were like when they were young. This is not true.
“The best [...]
May 7, 2009
Imagine all the people / Reading all the words.
I’ve heard the story before. I know how it ends. Yet something — curiosity, desire to learn, duty — drew me to the recent biography of John Lennon, John Lennon, by Philip Norman.
I’d already ingested Bob Spitz’s manic, intense, addictive The Beatles. Norman, who’s written on the Beatles and the Stones, Elton John and Buddy [...]
