Disambiguations™ for September 24, 2009

I. I've updated ed-park.com, for the first time in months! A few readings sprinkled throughout the fall...

II. The NYT on The New Literary History of America—our own Hua was on the editorial board. Hua explains:

Each essay is loosely fixed to a moment of "making"--the fashioning of a new idea, the publication of a book, a turning point-of-a-speech, a conversation that would outline a movement, the birth of cool, or simply a fleeting spark of a thought that would continue on as someone else's design for life. As such, our sense of the literary was canonical yet, at times, weird and wide-ranging--the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous and the publication of Linda Lovelace's autobiography seem to be the two non-"literary" entries critics have gravitated toward.

Other Disamiguation-fave contributors include Douglas Wolk, Howard Hampton, Joshua Clover, and more...

III. Dennis talks to Lars Von Trier via satellite.

IV. Andrew Gelman on Steve Hely's How I Became a Famous Novelist (a book I keep thinking about).

V. Jenny remembers Barbara Johnson and reproduces her syllabus from 1992. (Also follow for a link to Lindsay Waters' remembrance.)

VI. The Significant Objects project is still going strong—here's Stephen Elliott ("The Adderall Diaries" = play on "The Basketball Diaries"?) on some Hawaiian utensils:

I bought these Hawaiian utensils, a wooden spoon and fork, while living in Alaska in the mid-eighties with my first wife. We were living outside the Eskimo village Wales on the western edge of the state, three miles outside of Tin City Air Force Station. The Air Force station was the location of a long-range radar for air surveillance. It was originally built in the 1950s but Reagan gave it a serious upgrade during his successful bid to destabilize the Russians. From the top of a snowdrift you could see boats pulling into ports larger than many football stadiums, carrying steel arms more than a mile in length.