About Me

My photo
Susie Wild is a poet, writer, journalist, critic, lecturer, festival organiser and editor with 25 years of editorial experience. She is the author of poetry collections 'Windfalls' (2021) and 'Better Houses' (2017). Her debut short story collection 'The Art of Contraception' was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2011. Her ebook novella 'Arrivals' was released in 2011. She edited the illustrated short story anthology 'Rarebit' for Parthian's 21st birthday. (All available via Parthian Books). She lives by a mountain in South Wales @Soozerama

Saturday 23 July 2011

Marshall McLuhan's ideas about media seem more insightful than ever


"I never really understood McLuhan's views about television, preferring the perspective of one of his disciples, Neil Postman, who argued that the essential thing about the medium was that it had an infantilising effect, a view neatly encapsulated in the title of his wonderful book about the medium, Amusing Ourselves to Death. But McLuhan's insight into the significance of dominant media, expressed in another aphorism – "We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us" – always seemed profound and came to seem more and more so as television gave way to the internet and the networked world that we now inhabit.
"The past few years, for example, have seen a series of angry and sometimes anguished debates about what a comprehensively networked ecosystem is doing to our children, our politics, our economies and even our brains. We wonder whether social networking might be fuelling political revolution, for example. And we ask if Google is making us stupid – or at any rate whether networked technology is reducing attention spans, devaluing memory and blurring the line between making online connections and forming real relationships. Over all of these contemporary debates looms the shadow of McLuhan, who now seems more insightful than ever."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/24/marshall-mcluhan-media-john-naughton

Friendship: why social networks are too crowded to get close

Social networks are trying to be more subtle at accommodating our shifting allegiances, but they're no substitute for real time with our friends.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/24/aleks-krotoski-web-network-friendship


How the internet created an age of rage

The worldwide web has made critics of us all. But with commenters able to hide behind a cloak of anonymity, the blog and chatroom have become forums for hatred and bile.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/24/internet-anonymity-trolling-tim-adams

Saturday 16 July 2011

Poor memory? Blame Google

Research finds people are adapting ability to remember because of power of search engines to remember for them: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jul/15/poor-memory-blame-google

Friday 15 July 2011

Has plot driven out other kinds of story?

"I often wonder if relentless focus on plot is edging something of value out of our literary culture. Creative writing students are frequently told to "show not tell", to "get into the scene early", and make sure their characters are never without motivation. All great advice, except it doesn't really reflect the way life is. Would-be novelists must submit three chapters and a synopsis of their manuscripts to the literary agents or publishers they approach: if these fail to "hook" early on they will almost certainly be rejected. So what would happen to NauseaThe Unnamable,In Search of Lost Time, or, God forbid, Finnegans Wake? I recently attended a talk where a leading London literary agent stated that, in his opinion, it is highly unlikely that Kafka would get published as a first-time writer today. Of course there's no way this can be verified, but if true it's a pretty sorry state of affairs.
There are always exceptions to the rule, and the popularity of David Mitchell and Roberto Bolano is encouraging, as was the excitement around the publication of David Foster Wallace's The Pale King earlier this year and Tom McCarthy's shortlisting for the 2010 Booker prize for C. McCarthy has said that "it seems to me that a lot of contemporary writers are shirking their duty to deal with the legacy of modernism and that many of them don´t care". Art has occupied the experimental space that literature did in the 1920s, "maybe because writing is too commercial". In order to be read widely, writers must go through the major publishers who are beholden to their shareholders, and therefore to market forces. What gets published, in other words, must please as broad a swathe of the market as possible."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/14/plot-driven-out-other-kinds-story

Sunday 10 July 2011

Sunday Reading:

THE OBSERVER...


Online dating: Computer says yes. But will we click?


The lonely hearts ad has had its day: now an algorithm will decide who we spend our lives with. But can a computer really be trusted with affairs of the heart? As eHarmony's online matchmaking service booms, Emma John looks for her perfect man


http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jul/10/online-dating-will-we-click

Saturday 9 July 2011

Monday 4 July 2011

"Writers are very dangerous people, you shouldn't know them."

"[...]I have to force it. And then after – and this is real compulsion, real self-flagellation – it kind of takes off. But there's a lot of agony before. And sometimes during. And sometimes all through. But just before the end and revelations start coming, that's the joy. But mostly its hell."

A life in writing: Cynthia Ozick