‘Do You Feel You Subconsciously Place Symbolism in Your Writing?’

In 1963, a sixteen-year-old San Diego high school student named Bruce McAllister sent a four-question mimeographed survey to 150 well-known authors of literary, commercial, and science fiction. Did they consciously plant symbols in their work? he asked. Who noticed symbols appearing from their subconscious, and who saw them arrive in their text, unbidden, created in the minds of their readers? When this happened, did the authors mind?

Don’t miss Ayn Rand’s instant classic at the link.

Sweet Merciful Crap

Sweet merciful crap, I have a lot of tabs open. Well, I’d better get started.

* Up first: Colbert’s “Better Know a Beatle” interview with Sir Paul McCartney from last week, definitely one of his funniest in a while.

* George Saunders remembers John Updike. Saunders also had a typically good story in the New Yorker last week.

* The piece on Caroline Kennedy was pretty good too. I remain persuaded that she would have been a very good Senator but also that she shouldn’t have been appointed on anti-dynastic grounds.

* Nor can you lose with a New Yorker story titled “The Invasion from Outer Space” that is actually about an invasion from outer space…

In Walks These Three Girls in Nothing but Bathing Suits

In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I’m in the third check-out slot, with my back to the door, so I don’t see them until they’re over by the bread. The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs. I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not. I ring it up again and the customer starts giving me hell. She’s one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I knowit made her day to trip me up. She’d been watching cash registers forty years and probably never seen a mistake before.

Rest in peace, John Updike. Remembrances from the New York Times, AP, Salon, NPR, and MetaFilter.

Late Night

Late night links.

* Wikipedia’s list of common misconceptions.

* It’s good to live in a country without nobility or hereditary office.

* Are you a film addict? I am 55.2% yes.

* John Updike considers Mars.

* Matt, Josh, and Ezra consider the fillibuster and the extent to which we should just dump the damn thing.

* Coleman has gone to the Minnesota Supreme Court (a majority of whom have apparently been appointed by Tim Pawlenty) to ask that improperly rejected absentee ballots not be counted in the recount. I’ve looked, but I haven’t actually found any sort of legitimate reason why he thinks ballots that were improperly rejected should stay improperly rejected, other than “I might win that way.” Some commentary at TPM.

* Scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence that the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world at least a decade before it was predicted to happen. We’re so very screwed.

Against Updike

Against Updike.

Has the reputation of any novelist fallen quite so far and so quickly as that of John Updike? Thirty years ago, he was at least the equal of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, and maybe even a good few notches above Roth. Bellow’s matt-grey seriousness, to be fair, has also fallen quite sharply as a commodity — whereas Roth keeps on rising with every novel, perhaps because his best work has been written since he hit pensionable age. Updike has been prolific of late, for sure, but his novels, for the past quarter of a century, have been greeted by the critics with a sigh and a knowing nod of the head: uh-oh, it’s him again.