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Articles by Beth Blum
The Yale Classicist Who Wrote a Bestseller and Lost His Job
Even over 50 years after its theatrical release, most people are at least passingly familiar with the plot of Love Story. Radcliffe College smart-aleck Jenny Cavilleri (Ali MacGraw) and Harvard “legacy student” Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O’Neal) fall in love, despite their different economic backgrounds. Oliver’s father disapproves and cuts him off, and the couple struggles to scrape by on their own.
The “Harvard Novel” Enters the Twenty-first Century
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The Hidden Depths of Alex Trebek’s Banter with “Jeopardy!” Contestants
On Friday, Alex Trebek’s last “Jeopardy!” episode will air, closing his remarkable run on the show. For future anthropologists, the beloved host’s historical contribution may not be his status as trivia icon, but rather his friendly role in the show’s awkward small-talk sessions. The real test of a contestant’s mettle on “Jeopardy!” often begins after the first commercial break, when competitors put down their buzzers and tell Trebek about themselves.
Dublin & Galway Friendliest Cities, 8 Smoothies
The T-Boy Society of Film and Music Selects Top Horror Films The Horror Film’s roots lie in German Expressionism. When it moved to Hollywood, along with many of its directors, it was smart, scary and clever, but eventually evolved into camp, then cheap thrills trash. John Carpenter dominated the horror film for years, yet like most genres it has exploded with sub-genres of films that can still interrupt a good sleep.
The Radical Origins of Self-Help Literature
The past and present of self-help literature. fb tw mail Print msg wa sms Bookmark November 17, 2020 Illustration by Tim Robinson. From the 1940s to the ’60s, the Onitsha Market in southeastern Nigeria was the center of a burgeoning movement in self-help literature. Known as Onitsha Market literature, these cheap, locally published booklets were at once moralistic and titillating.
October 2020 Eclectic News Articles
Written by Kim Knox Beckius Hogback Mountain, Vermont. PHOTO COURTESY CHENSIYUAN via WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. The annual display of colorful fall foliage clogs scenic byways this time of year as onlookers travel for “leaf peeping” getaways. As the trees put on a memorable show for us, behind the scenes, it’s due to the slowing of chlorophyll production. That’s what’s going on, you see: an un-greening of leaves that unveils the true colors that have been masked throughout the summer.
The Radical History of Corporate Sensitivity Training
During these turbulent months, American corporations have responded to demands for racial justice by straining to showcase their sensitive sides. They’ve pledged, like Quaker Oats, to change offensive product names; they’ve scrambled, like Prada, NASCAR, and Delta, to implement emergency sensitivity workshops; and they’ve opted, like most of the major publishing houses, to hire sensitivity readers to vet new manuscripts for racist representations. Not so at the Donald Trump White House.
When Did Self-Help Books Become Literary?
Walk into a contemporary bookstore and self-help manuals are likely to be among the first books you’ll see. In my local Barnes & Noble, a “self-improvement” section is featured in the vestibule, luring customers before they even open the store’s main doors.
How did self-help shape the minds of Woolf and Hemingway? – Beth Blum | Aeon Essays
‘How-to writers are to other writers as frogs are to mammals; they are not born, they are spawned.’ So jeered the influential New Yorker journalist Dwight Macdonald in a 1954 screed against the self-help guides he worried were taking over the culture. Macdonald voiced the prevailing view that the distinct spheres – or species – of literary author and self-help writer had little, if anything, in common. Serious authors create; self-help writers multiply.
The Self-Helpification of Academe
During a prolonged faculty and graduate-student strike this year at York University, in Toronto, employees received a missive from the university health-and-wellness officer on the “Importance of self-care during this time of labor disruption.” Picketing in circles for 15 weeks in weather conditions ranging from freezing rain to blistering heat, confronted by the university’s refusal to meet the union at the bargaining table, employees were reminded to practice “patience,” take “deep...
The Self-Helpification of Academe
During a prolonged faculty and graduate-student strike this year at York University, in Toronto, employees received a missive from the university health-and-wellness officer on the "Importance of self-care during this time of labor disruption." Picketing in circles for 15 weeks in weather conditions ranging from freezing rain to blistering heat, confronted by the university’s refusal to meet the union at the bargaining table, employees were reminded to practice "patience," take "deep...
In Defense of Friendlessness | Beth Blum
Winter 2009–2010 Hatred alone is immortal Beth Blum Child on left possibly showing signs of the “breath of antipathy.” Washington, DC, ca. 1941. Courtesy Library of Congress. One can describe [the writer] as … the sensitive person who is never given his due … who feels even in friendship and love that breath of antipathy that keeps every being distant from others and constitutes the painful, nihilistic secret of individuality.
Motherhood in the End Times | Public Books
Having a child forces you to confront all of those abstract threats you might have previously labored to ignore: physical entropy, the planetary future, human ... Having a child forces you to confront all of those abstract threats you might have previously labored to ignore: physical entropy, the planetary future, human extinction, and, most upsetting of all, your neighbors.
Shoptalk: Overheard at AAA | Public Books
The American Anthropological Association’s 116th Annual Meeting was brimming with how can we even? under the Trump administration. The theme ... The American Anthropological Association’s 116th Annual Meeting was brimming with how can we even? under the Trump administration.
The Self-Help Compulsion
Main Reviews Contents Excerpt Links Awards Samuel Beckett as a guru for business executives? James Joyce as a guide to living a good life? The notion of notoriously experimental authors sharing a shelf with self-help books might seem far-fetched, yet a hidden history of rivalry, influence, and imitation links these two worlds. In The Self-Help Compulsion, Beth Blum reveals the profound entanglement of modern literature and commercial advice from the late nineteenth century to the present day.
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