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Arts and Humanities Commons™

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Creative Writing

2009

Book Review

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Review Of "Into The Beautiful North" By Luis Alberto Urrea, Marianne Rogoff Jun 2009

Review Of "Into The Beautiful North" By Luis Alberto Urrea, Marianne Rogoff

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

"There are still many places in the world where electricity is a luxury and bandidos regularly assert power over powerless villages, where a plate of beans has to suffice as daily bread, and the lure of Hollywood cowboys and television heroes encourages the imagination to believe in fantasies. Escapism is a form of hope. The men of Tres Camarones, the dusty pueblito in Sinaloa, Mexico, at the center of Luis Alberto Urrea’s new novel, Into the Beautiful North, have escaped to the U.S. The fantasy was, the men cross the border, acquire riches, and return to the land of lagoons …

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What Is Found, Marianne Rogoff May 2009

What Is Found, Marianne Rogoff

Marianne Rogoff

The book cover, with a wooden rocking cradle and baby shoes dangling from its corner, conjures baby boys, boys who become men, men who become fathers… the ongoing cycle.

The man in Patrick Somerville’s novel,The Cradle, is right in the thick of that terrific, life-altering stage of life when his pregnant wife is about to deliver her miracle. He is present for her as onlooker and provider and partner: at her beck and call, basically. In her eighth month, her power at its peak, Marissa makes a teensy request of Matt: She wants their baby to sleep in …

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Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed, Marianne Rogoff Apr 2009

Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed, Marianne Rogoff

Marianne Rogoff

Set inside New York City’s hip-hop scene and the surrounding neighborhoods, ghettoes, and clubs that house its supporting players, Mark Blatte’s Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed is shaded by skin of varying color and thickness. A broad cross-section of races shows up, an extreme mix of attitudes and sizes, with and without connections, talent, ambition, or moral compasses. There are hierarchies of respect, hills and mountains of greed. There’s lust, pride, people climbing over each other, positioning themselves, stomping all those who would get in their way.

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Is The Internet Ruining Our Lives? On "The Cult Of The Amateur" By Andrew Keen, Marianne Rogoff Mar 2009

Is The Internet Ruining Our Lives? On "The Cult Of The Amateur" By Andrew Keen, Marianne Rogoff

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

"Not everyone will agree with the premise of Andrew Keen’s book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the Rest of Today’s User-generated Media Are Destroying Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Values, recently out in paperback. Are you a throwback if you do? Are you a cultist if you don’t? Which is worse?"

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In Search Of Our Brains: On Teaching "Proust Was A Neuroscientist" By Jonah Lehrer, Marianne Rogoff Feb 2009

In Search Of Our Brains: On Teaching "Proust Was A Neuroscientist" By Jonah Lehrer, Marianne Rogoff

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

"I have always wanted to teach a semester of freshman English using a single text, moving students via rich allusions out beyond it for further reading according to their individual interests. Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer is a collection of essays linking contemporary findings in neuroscience with visionary knowledge dreamed up by writers and artists a hundred years ago. Concepts like Walt Whitman's poetic "body electric" and Virginia Woolf's psychological "stream of consciousness" are proven to have physical origins in our brains and bodies. I created a whole course around the book in Fall '08 at California College …

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