Month: May 2013

Review in Kyoto Journal #77

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New as of right now: my long-delayed review of B.R. Myers’ The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters is out in the current issue of the Kyoto Journal (#77). Though the title is goofy — “Minjok Mama Madness! and Other Fairytales From North of the 49th Parallel” — the subject is serious, and the review is overall quite positive. My review isn’t in the online preview, though, so you’ll have to get a copy of this fine journal in order to read it. I’m enjoying my contributor’s copy, and can recommend the issue (and the journal) without …

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Despite All the Nostalgia for the 1980s…

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… that seems to be cropping up these days, it’s not a post-80s world we live in. It’s in the shadow of the Baby Boomer Generation that we dwell, today: their politics, their economics, their morality, their paradigm. This insight I ran across on the Ivebeenreading blog in a post about a piece elsewhere where Kent Jones “takes after Quentin Tarantino for a poorly thought-out slam of John Ford.” It’s curious that American culture and history are still so commonly viewed through a New Left prism, by means of which 1964 or thereabouts has become a Year Zero of political enlightenment; …

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More on the Gin Craze

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This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Gin Lane & Soju-Ro

A long time ago, I started a planned series of posts that didn’t go very far, drawing some parallels between the England of the Gin Craze era (the early 1700s) and Korea in the first decade of the 21st century. I’m still not feeling like continuing it, but I am reading up on the Gin Craze (right now, working my way through Patrick Dillon’s wonderful Gin: The Much-Lamented Death of Madam Geneva–The Eighteenth Century Gin Craze) as I continue working on a short story set during that period, and a number of things have struck me as fascinating. So fascinating, indeed, …

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Out from the Sinews

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In a book I read long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the Christopher Dewdney wrote in his book of poetry The Radiant Inventory about neurology, using the most brilliantly poetical and beautiful language. He wrote about all kinds of things, of course: books of poetry are like that. But among the things he discussed in the book was the neurobiology of break-ups, and why they are so difficult. I can’t quote the book, or even paraphrase it in any way I’d regard as trustworthy–my copy is somewhere in that other galaxy where I read it, in a box, floating …

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Can You Make Risotto with a Southeast-Asian-Twang?

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Apparently yes. I was dealing with some stuff so I wasn’t so into it, but other people who tried it liked it… I suppose that’s encouraging, this being my first risotto. (It was a bit too salty, though.) I basically followed Felicity Cloake’s advice, though: I had to use arborio rice–the other stuff wasn’t available. I forgot to get white cooking wine, so I just used red, which gave the risotto a pinkish color (deepened by the red bell pepper I threw in later). I ended up using a mix of cheddar and pecorino cheeses, again beause that’s what we …

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