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Published On: Jan 26, 2006 06:39 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jan 26, 2006 06:39 PM
My Dissertation was on Oprah!
And the Apple saga ends...tragically and
comically...tragicomically if you'd like.
So, I was on the treadmill at the gym today (how
weird does that sound coming out of my fingers?), and Oprah came on. I love
her.
Anyway, you've probably heard the frap about James Frey and his book and how he lied about what he went through.
Well, 'prah just went off on him today. Sometimes I wish she would take on the government and call Bush on all of his lies and such.
It struck me as she was ripping him a new one that her main beef really was that she was having formal issues.
That is, she picked up this book, and the cover of it said that it was a memoir, not a novel. So, she read it as such. And, the power of the book was that it was all true. And the readers she drew to the book also had this visceral reaction to the book...because it was so fantastical but true! Truth with a capital T! Wow!
So, Oprah feels betrayed, embarrassed, because she thought what she was reading was fact, not fiction. Now, Frey tried to get around this whole issue a bit by talking about much of what he wrote being his recollection of events, and therefore still being within the frame of a "memoir"; his editor made much the same point, that a memoir is not an autobiography, is not pure fact. My Apple dictionary says a memoir is "a historical account or biography written from personal knowledge or special sources" or "an autobiography or a written account of one's memory of certain events or people." So, interesting huh? And, we all know from Toni Morrison how tricky memory can be.
However, he did in fact lie about the time he spent in jail amid other things. So, he is really an ass.
Now, about my dissertation: I argued that all of these funny novels written in the form of letters from "Oriental" travelers in European metropolises, but actually written by Europeans (one example), were able to be believed by the reading public as true collections of letters rather than the novels they were because of a) the form of the letter and b) the lack of knowledge that the reading public had of these people. Now, Frey didn't write an epistolary novel, but the memoir is a close cousin, since it depends upon intimacy. The idiot editor woman on Oprah defended herself by saying that she just simply believed that what he had written was true (Oprah just about threw her out when she said they really didn't do any fact-checking); she did that in part because he told her it was a memoir. FORM MATTERS.
However, what also wasn't really discussed today, was that everyone believed this guy because he was a drug addict and they weren't. In fact, the people who made this work so popular and successful were just about as far from being drug addicts as could be--they were Oprah and her audience. So, the hoax was successful because he had control over the discourse. Just as the Orient could be made by these authors because the audience at the time did not know the Orient, the world of a drug addict could be created and fictionalized because the audience did not know any different...and also because they wanted that world to be like the one he described.
All very interesting.
So, last you heard, I was awaiting iLife '06. I got it. Of course (and pay attention here), I didn't bother to notice that the install disk was a DVD. So, after much rigamarole, I cajoled a colleague at school to let me use his Mac and do some target disk magic. It all was working delightfully...and then my Mac told me that it was going to work.
Why?
Well, iLife only works with G4s, not the sad little G3 processor my iBook runs.
Again, I really hadn't paid attention to unimportant things like, oh, i don't know, minimum requirements for running the damn thing in all of my excitement.
So, yes, I'm stupid. But here's my thing: I cannot be the only person out there still running this thing, can I? Why is Apple being so mean?
OK, I'm off. So much TiVo to catch up with (after a bit of work), especially some very good reality TV in Project Runway and Beauty and the Geek, which everyone should be watching.
Anyway, you've probably heard the frap about James Frey and his book and how he lied about what he went through.
Well, 'prah just went off on him today. Sometimes I wish she would take on the government and call Bush on all of his lies and such.
It struck me as she was ripping him a new one that her main beef really was that she was having formal issues.
That is, she picked up this book, and the cover of it said that it was a memoir, not a novel. So, she read it as such. And, the power of the book was that it was all true. And the readers she drew to the book also had this visceral reaction to the book...because it was so fantastical but true! Truth with a capital T! Wow!
So, Oprah feels betrayed, embarrassed, because she thought what she was reading was fact, not fiction. Now, Frey tried to get around this whole issue a bit by talking about much of what he wrote being his recollection of events, and therefore still being within the frame of a "memoir"; his editor made much the same point, that a memoir is not an autobiography, is not pure fact. My Apple dictionary says a memoir is "a historical account or biography written from personal knowledge or special sources" or "an autobiography or a written account of one's memory of certain events or people." So, interesting huh? And, we all know from Toni Morrison how tricky memory can be.
However, he did in fact lie about the time he spent in jail amid other things. So, he is really an ass.
Now, about my dissertation: I argued that all of these funny novels written in the form of letters from "Oriental" travelers in European metropolises, but actually written by Europeans (one example), were able to be believed by the reading public as true collections of letters rather than the novels they were because of a) the form of the letter and b) the lack of knowledge that the reading public had of these people. Now, Frey didn't write an epistolary novel, but the memoir is a close cousin, since it depends upon intimacy. The idiot editor woman on Oprah defended herself by saying that she just simply believed that what he had written was true (Oprah just about threw her out when she said they really didn't do any fact-checking); she did that in part because he told her it was a memoir. FORM MATTERS.
However, what also wasn't really discussed today, was that everyone believed this guy because he was a drug addict and they weren't. In fact, the people who made this work so popular and successful were just about as far from being drug addicts as could be--they were Oprah and her audience. So, the hoax was successful because he had control over the discourse. Just as the Orient could be made by these authors because the audience at the time did not know the Orient, the world of a drug addict could be created and fictionalized because the audience did not know any different...and also because they wanted that world to be like the one he described.
All very interesting.
So, last you heard, I was awaiting iLife '06. I got it. Of course (and pay attention here), I didn't bother to notice that the install disk was a DVD. So, after much rigamarole, I cajoled a colleague at school to let me use his Mac and do some target disk magic. It all was working delightfully...and then my Mac told me that it was going to work.
Why?
Well, iLife only works with G4s, not the sad little G3 processor my iBook runs.
Again, I really hadn't paid attention to unimportant things like, oh, i don't know, minimum requirements for running the damn thing in all of my excitement.
So, yes, I'm stupid. But here's my thing: I cannot be the only person out there still running this thing, can I? Why is Apple being so mean?
OK, I'm off. So much TiVo to catch up with (after a bit of work), especially some very good reality TV in Project Runway and Beauty and the Geek, which everyone should be watching.
Posted: Thu - January 26, 2006 at 06:38 PM |