Read This: Engine Failure

Sorting through a batch of accumulated magazines, I read this interview with Joel Kotkin in Metropolis, which led me to track down this, which he coauthored for the Center For an Urban Future. I haven’t read the entire 40-page report yet, but this bit in the summary was worrying enough:

“9/11 also appears to be having a significant impact on the city’s ability to attract and retain two of the demographic groups that were so critical to New York’s success in the 1990s: young, educated people who moved to New York from other parts of the country and foreign-born immigrants. “

Come to think of it, relationship issues aside, I’m reasonably certain I would not have taken the plunge of moving to New York, even the outer boroughs, if I hadn’t already done so a year before 9/11. As a non-native, I’m not completely attached to the city—and, frankly, could easily see myself in, say, Seattle or Portland under the right circumstances. But it is my home for the foreseeable future, and of course one likes to see one’s home community doing well.

In all fairness, though, the summary also notes that many of NYC’s worst economic trends were already in motion well before 9/11, which functions more as a placemarker than a genuine catalyst.

6 January 2004 | read this |

Imagine If He’d Gone on Oprah…

Barnes & Noble has just issued a press release to announce that they’ve sold over a million copies of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Sigh.

The book (which I admit I haven’t read cover to cover) bugs me. Not so much for the alleged anti-Catholic undertones, about which Amy Welborn, among others, has written eloquently about, and I sorta see but not entirely. Maybe it’s just the way that Brown’s mainstreamed tropes that go back at least as far as the Illuminatus! trilogy and got a somewhat more highfalutin’ expression about 10-15 years ago in Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. (Although it is rather amusing, I must admit, to see Holy Blood, Holy Grail on the bestseller lists after, what, 20 years? Especially since I can dazzle neophytes who only know this stuff from Brown with my mastery of the field, heh heh.) But mostly it’s the bad (from my point of view, anyway) writing. And as a lifelong science fiction and, to a lesser extent, mystery/thriller fan, believe me, I know from bad writing. Oh, Brown can string together a roller coaster ride, but characters? From what I’ve seen, ptui.

I suppose somebody was going to get rich off the Illuminati someday, though.

6 January 2004 | uncategorized |