Of course, projections about the future of the Internet have always been like that. To give a classical analogy (C21 style), it’s like the mirror of Erised in Harry Potter – you see what you most wish for.

That said, there’s lots of older poetry out there waiting for one to
find it. Silliman recently mentioned Besmilr
Brigham, whose work turns out to be really rewarding. She
published mainly in the ‘60s, and was quite at home in the postmodern
poetics of the period; but she also belonged to an earlier generation,
and to a vanishing rural vernacular culture. Searching now, I see
Silliman posted an appreciation
of this book when it came out—beyond what he says there, I would
draw a connection to the poetry of D.H. Lawrence.

(I’m not really sure how to pronounce her name, but this
notes that her maiden name was Bess Miller Moore.)

I’m not complaining that you-all’re failing in your duty to broaden me. I’m just struck that the literary gamut is even narrower than the political one.

Well, first you have to keep in mind that after his death it turned out that almost everything Patrick O’Brian said about himself was a fib.

But back in the late 1980s I used to get a Patrick O’Brian Newsletter once a quarter from the publisher of the Aubrey series (W.W. Norton?). O’Brian contributed some essays about his experiences traveling around the promo circuit. Based on what he wrote I doubt he would have minded meeting McCaffrey (and contrary to his public persona I suspect he did know who she was).

Cranky

My favorite of his essays was about his visit to the US Navy base at Norfolk. He went there expecting to sign books in the PX and give a lecture in a classroom; he was led into an auditorium with 3000 Navy dudes seated in ranks from admirals in the front row to ordinary seaman in the 3rd balcony – all waiting expectently for his words of wisdom.

David Warsh, Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations. Read it on Tyler Cowen’s recommendation in MR, and the dude is never wrong. Maybe John has an opinion about whether it gets the story right.

Allegra Goodman, Intuition. The story flags a bit, but she gets the milieu of NIH extramural life perfectly.

And I liked McCarthy’s latest, No Country for Old Men, even though it was poorly reviewed. I heard that Tommy Lee Jones bought the rights and some of No Country takes place in the same town where The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada happens, obviously no accident (good movie, BTW).

Yes – this is what I liked the most about the book too. Seems to me that given the claim that the Singularity is strictly unimaginable ex ante, writers tend to use it as a sort of Rorschach test in which they (more or less self-consciously) see what they came in with. So we get a lot of extropian/technolibertarian views of the Singularity unleashing radical individuality – and Stross’s response which I suspect is a deliberate critique, and is really imo a satire of globalization run amok. Whether our future belongs to incredibly complex financial instruments, our present surely does.

Vance – fair enough. I don’t know much about modern poetry – my own tastes are stuck in the 1950s or so – some of the standards (Yeats, Eliot, Moore etc) as well as some who aren’t very fashionable today (Jarrell). Although his poetry criticism seems to be undergoing a minor revival. In my defence, while I surely haven’t posted about Babel (I’ve never read him) – I have posted about someone else writing about Babel. I recommend the Batuman essay wholeheartedly – and plan to write about the new issue of N+1 when I get my hands on it.

Bill – “Blood Meridian” is one of my favourite books.

To respond in kind, I’d highly recommend the recent Collected Stories of Isaac Babel (tr. Constantine). The Red Cavalry stories are excellent and consistently surprising (be warned, though, they too may bring on the PTSD); but there are other gems as well, such as “The Story of My Dovecote”.

I agree with Bill on “less interesting but more enjoyable”, but I still think Accelerando is deserving of its awards. I think it’s the right way to write about the Singularity, if you’re going to do that.

Patrick O’Brian met Anne McCaffrey where? A concert by Tom Waits and the Tallis Scholars? A seminar on ethics by HH the Dalai Lama and Tom Delay?