October | 2012

A Storm-Battered Week of Reading: 28 October-3 November 2012

October 28, 2012 by William Eaton

From Dianne Stone, Zeteo Assistant Editor 28 October 2012 Reading today Marc Santora’s New York Times article on Hurricane Sandy as I scurry to hole up for the next couple of days in a nice dry spot and load up with fresh water. Santora points out that all over the mid-Atlantic, 50 million or more Americans are in this same predicament as Hurricane Sandy makes its presence known. Santora notes, “[s]andbag joined the Halloween scarecrows,” so I hope everyone in the region is […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: electricity, George Saunders, Halloween, New York Times, The Guardian

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Young woman reading book, standing, in nature

Reading Women Reading

October 24, 2012 by William Eaton

By Rachel M. Brownstein A review of The Woman Reader by Belinda Jack (Yale University Press, 2012) “We were always encouraged to read,” Elizabeth Bennet tells Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who has impertinently asked whether she and her sisters had a governess. Her remark begins to account for why so many women readers—J.K. Rowling among the latest—have admired the heroine of Pride and Prejudice: like us reading about her, this novel heroine is a reader. Where a governess might have […]

Categories: Review • Tags: feminism, Jane Austen, reading, women

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Who’s Happy Now?

October 24, 2012 by William Eaton

Who’s Happy Now? By Victoria Ludas Orlofsky What makes people happy, on a large scale? Is happiness determined by what we have or by what we still hope to attain? If the medical, agricultural, and educational advances of the past two centuries has led to a world freer of illness, hunger, and ignorance, why aren’t we all happier? A review of Satisfaction Not Guaranteed: Dilemmas of Progress in Modern Society by Peter N. Stearns (New York University Press, 2012) Excerpt The United […]

Categories: Review • Tags: happiness, Internet, modernity, satisfaction

A Week of Reading: 21-27 October 2012

October 22, 2012 by William Eaton

From Rachael Benavidez, Zeteo Assistant Editor 21 October 2012 Reading Tolstoy’s early short novel The Two Hussars. Tolstoy expresses his longing for the previous generation in the story of Count Turbin, who endears himself to the inhabitants of a small provincial town, and his son, also Count Turbin, who appears in the town twenty years later, and unable to live up to the image of his father, makes the opposite impression. Interesting how we long for what was… Also reading the New York […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: Andy Warhol, Ralph Ellison, Tolstoy

Adorno Was Right?

October 19, 2012 by William Eaton

Adorno Was Right? (Consumer culture is “a medium of undreamed of psychological control”?) William Eaton Review of Daniel Horowitz’s Consuming Pleasures: Intellectuals and Popular Culture in the Postwar World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) {Click for pdf} Daniel Horowitz’s Consuming Pleasures: Intellectuals and Popular Culture in the Postwar World is not all that interested in consumption, consumer culture or the postwar world, and the many pleasures it indeed offers are entirely intellectual, stemming as they do from the writings […]

Categories: Review • Tags: Adorno, cultural criticism, Habermas, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Susan Sontag

A Week of Reading: 14-20 October 2012

October 14, 2012 by William Eaton

From Keyonna Hayes, Zeteo Assistant Editor 14 October 2012 Here is a quote from Kahlil Gibran, one of my favorite authors: I am happy now because I have […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: art, Asian culture, fairy tales, Italy, knowledge, marine biology, photography, poetry, psychology

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Memory Stor(i)es

October 9, 2012 by sjzeteo2015

Memory Stor(i)es By Stuart Johnson Stories of actual real-world controversies over the nature of memory, with actual real-world consequences, sometimes life and death. But by the end, memory remains remarkably elusive—as elusive as le temps perdu. A review of Alison Winter, Memory: Fragments of a Modern History (University of Chicago Press, 2012) Image is of “Cairn” by the ceramicist Eric Knoche. Used with the permission of the artist. One might expect that a book entitled Memory: Fragments of a Modern […]

Categories: Review • Tags: Eric Knoche, law, memory

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A Week of Reading: 7-13 October 2012

October 7, 2012 by William Eaton

From Phillip Rhinehart, Zeteo Assistant Editor 7 October 2012 Editorial spin, an exercise; or how to make bigotry palatable with continual reference to a Chuck Bartels article: Samples from the original: Arkansas Republicans tried to distance themselves Saturday from a Republican state representative’s assertion that slavery was a “blessing in disguise” and a Republican state House candidate who advocates deporting all Muslims. Fuqua, who served in the Arkansas House from 1996 to 1998, wrote in his 2012 book God’s Law that there is “no solution to […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: life, simplicity

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Books with Greatness in Them

October 1, 2012 by William Eaton

Take 1: October 2012 (1) In September of this year, the University of Minnesota Press sent me, at my request, a copy of a translation of the French philosopher Michel Serres’s Biogée, which the Press was distributing for a smaller publishing company, Univocal. As is my wont, I began reading the book to get an idea what it was like, whether it was indeed worth reviewing, and who among Zeteo’s ever-expanding corps of reviewers I should ask to review it. […]

Categories: Books with Greatness in Them, Review • Tags: animals, maps, Michel Serres

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ZETEO

Zeteo (ζητέω): to challenge, question, dispute, explore the forgotten and ignored

Monthly Archives: October 2012

A Storm-Battered Week of Reading: 28 October-3 November 2012

Reading Women Reading

Who’s Happy Now?

A Week of Reading: 21-27 October 2012

Adorno Was Right?

A Week of Reading: 14-20 October 2012

Memory Stor(i)es

A Week of Reading: 7-13 October 2012

Books with Greatness in Them