According to Jewish law, when Jewish boys become 13 years old, they become accountable for their actions and become a bar mitzvah. A girl becomes a bat mitzvah at the age of 12 according to Orthodox and Conservative Jews, and at the age of 13 according to Reform Jews. Prior to reaching bar mitzvah, the child's parents hold the responsibility for the child's actions. After this age, the boys and girls bear their own responsibility for Jewish ritual law, tradition, ...
Bar and Bat Mitzvah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
8 years
ven Barth—were criticized too much for being only interested in narcissistic, self-reflexive games, whereas these devices had very real political and historical applications. DFW: But
when you talk about Nabokov and Coover, you’re talking about real geniuses, the writers who weathered real shock and invented this stuff in contemporary fiction. But after the pioneers always come the crank turners, the little gray people who take the machines others have built and just turn the crank, and little pellets of metafiction come out the other end. The crank-turners capitalize for a while on sheer fashion, and they get their plaudits and grants and buy their IRAs and retire to the Hamptons well out of range of the eventual blast radius. Ther
A Conversation with David Foster Wallace By Larry McCaffery | Dalkey Archive Press
when you talk about Nabokov and Coover, you’re talking about real geniuses, the writers who weathered real shock and invented this stuff in contemporary fiction. But after the pioneers always come the crank turners, the little gray people who take the machines others have built and just turn the crank, and little pellets of metafiction come out the other end. The crank-turners capitalize for a while on sheer fashion, and they get their plaudits and grants and buy their IRAs and retire to the Hamptons well out of range of the eventual blast radius. Ther
A Conversation with David Foster Wallace By Larry McCaffery | Dalkey Archive Press
8 years
the sort of cynicism that lets readers be manipulated by bad writing. I think it’s a kind of black cynicism about today’s world that Ellis and certain others depend on for their readership. Look, if the contemporary condition is hopelessly shitty, insipid, materialistic, emotionally retarded, sadomasochistic, and stupid, then I (or any writer) can get away with slapping together stories with characters who are stupid, vapid, emotionally retarded, which is easy, because these sorts of characters require no development. With descriptions that are simply lists of brand-name consumer products. Where stupid people say insipid stuff to each other. If what’s always distinguished bad writing—flat characters, a narrative world that’s cliched and not recognizably human, etc.—is also a description of today’s world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world. If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and mean, then Ellis can write a mean shallow stupid novel that becomes a mordant deadpan commentary on the badness of everything. Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the de
A Conversation with David Foster Wallace By Larry McCaffery | Dalkey Archive Press
A Conversation with David Foster Wallace By Larry McCaffery | Dalkey Archive Press
8 years
... Upper East Side apartment, and it is the ideal venue for an elite astrologer: With its dim light, tasseled upholstery, and sconces, the oval-shaped room looks like an upmarket fortune-teller’s lair. A woman on the right, in a drapey cape, is bragging to a friend that she was the last person to see Christopher Hitchens alive. A couple on the left is talking production budgets. There’s no cell-phone service, and Miller is 25 minutes late.
How Susan Miller Became Fashion's Astrologer -- The Cut
8 years
...azines. (Rudd: ‘‘I brought those with me.’’) That morning, he had a fitting and then an interview and then a nap, during which he had a dream that he could no longer remember. Tonight, he handed over the slab of a room-service menu and said: ‘‘What looks good? Probably nothing,’’ which was correct.
How Does Paul Rudd Work? - The New York Times
8 years
That isn't false modesty, but rather an example of disaster averted: the baby carriage from movie chase scenes that gets struck by a car—gasp—and tin cans go flying all over the place (whew). Because what happened next is this: Derek met Alexis while waiting on her and her mom at a Brazilian restaurant, and the two proceeded to record some demo tracks, which were excellent. Then in Augus...
Sleigh Bells Ring--and Molly Young is Listening: Critical Eye : Details
8 years
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