Why Don’t Preening Brooklyn Novelists Ever Write Books About This?
From today’s Times:
Some experts say that emissions from airline travel are simply so large that it may be impossible to offset them.
“Buying offsets is a nice idea, just like giving money to a soup kitchen is a nice idea, but that doesn’t end world hunger,” said Anja Kollmuss, a staff scientist for the Stockholm Environment Institute who is based at a branch at Tufts University.
“Buying offsets won’t solve the problem because flying around the way we do is simply unsustainable,” said Ms. Kollmuss, who has researched airline offsets.
A recent study in Britain concluded that one flight from London to Los Angeles produced more carbon dioxide per person than the average British commuter produces in a year by traveling by train, subway or car.
Also, from The Awl:
Jonathan Safran Foer lives in a very large house in an urban neighborhood. Apparently his back yard runs the length of a block and is big enough to hold a whole extra house. He has the kind of house that is frequently subdivided into apartments. It is 7,000 square feet…. So he and his family are taking up housing that could hold another five or six households…. And this house of Foer’s is in a city center, where transit and other density-promoting amenities are available…. So five or six families who would otherwise live in the middle of Brooklyn are forced to live further out, which forces other people to live further out, which eventually leads to five or six families settling in crappy townhouses or garden apartments out on the edge of things, in land previously occupied by birds and rabbits, from which they have to travel by fossil-fuel-burning car. All because Jonathan Safran Foer has some vain fantasy of being a “city person” which he insists on clinging to, even as he demands a living space (for his growing family) more consistent with living on a rural manor….And Natalie Portman!… You and I could eat at Keens every day for the rest of our lives, and we would not do even a measurable fraction of the damage wrought on the planet by three Star Wars movies’ worth of plastic merchandise.
(For the record, I’m glad for Foer’s Farm Forward, and will be glad for Eating Animals to the extent that the hype around the book causes real changes in agricultural practices here and abroad. But for the same reason that I suspect the organization’s name began life as Farm Foerward, I do not trust that his motives are as altruistic as he would have us believe.)
“That’s a capybara; it’s tasty!”
Sicha and Scocca rule.
Come on, Bobby. Haven’t you read the excerpts of Tao Lin’s new book posted on Silliman’s blog? For instance: “A few weeks later Sam was walking to the library holding a large iced coffee. * A few days later Sam met Kaitlyn in Williamsburg to go to the annual work party for the organic vegan restaurant where he worked. * A few weeks later around 1 a.m. Robert and Sam were on a bus to Atlantic City. * A few months later Sam was sitting on his mattress with his MacBook drinking iced coffee and listening to music. * About two months later it was November and Sam was at Joseph’s house in Florida.” Oh Sam! Doesn’t that count?
Why doesn’t some paranoid Brooklyn hack write about his flight from London to Los Angeles?
Because, because, because!
On second thought, while the excerpts from this Foer book I’ve seen are no less irritating than those I’ve seen from every other book bearing his name, I’m surprised to say I admire the choice to use his platform to espouse a cause.
What would be even better is if he wrote a novel I wanted to read. Likewise, I ought to raise my sights and write poems and reviews that even novelists could admire.
I admire the choice to use his platform to espouse a cause.
The choice to espouse or the choice of platform?
To espouse. Also, his spouse writes pretty well.
I like it when Chabon pipes up about the socius, too — maybe I just enjoy the mirage of public intellectual discourse carried on by so-called artists.
maybe I just enjoy the mirage
Yes, I do, too.
@BN:
Yes, I do, too.
By which I mean that I like the mirage of poetry too, but I do not feel the responsibility to admire every poem that floats my way. We earn our culture by making it worth having.
I want to write a bestseller titled The Novel That Ate Brooklyn.
@BB:
I kinda wish all blog conversations could be this good. How does that line from Emerson go? I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
@BN: Heh, whoops. I’d tossed a little sigh your way—not quite silence but close—and stupidly wrapped it in carets. But I think you’re on to something here. By worse errors is genius made, right? Zen and the art of the blog discussion.
And on third thought, Sicha appears to have hired Bibbins to do poetry *and* he offers a variant on Alton Brown’s ziploc pie crust method. Which for all I know is Martha Stewart’s pie crust method.
>I admire the choice to use his platform to espouse a cause.
>>The choice to espouse or the choice of platform?
Ha ha. The espousing Davis got his.
>Ha ha. The espousing Davis got his.
Hope it was clear I was just kidding and trying to join in on the general fun!
Don’t want to feel left out of it…
I mean I AM glad that Jordan composed an awkwardly ambiguous construction. Don’t deny it. But I said the “Ha Ha” in good humor.
> in good humor
Understood!
> left out of it
Kent, you are it.
Oh, we’re all very much trying to figure out what the IT is, I think…