Doing A D’Agata

lareviewofbooks:

LEE GUTKIND

on John D’Agata and Jim Fingal’s The Lifespan of a Fact.

Blackboard courtesy of Nieman Journalism Lab
A project of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard

John D’Agata and Jim Fingal
The Lifespan of a Fact
W.W. Norton & Company, February 2012. 128 pp.

A writer colleague, referring to a document she had written, confessed: “I totally D’Agata’d this.” I couldn’t help laughing. But her comment was unsettling because she meant that she had fudged her story, made some of it up. And I suspected that the man behind the reference, John D’Agata, co-author of the book The Lifespan of a Fact, would be pleased.

The book’s backstory begins in 2003: D’Agata had written an essay on assignment for Harper’s Magazine about a teenager who committed suicide in Las Vegas. Harper’s rejected the essay because of factual inaccuracies, so D’Agata re-sold it to another magazine, The Believer. Jim Fingal, the co-author of the book, then a 23-year-old intern, was given the opportunity to fact-check the article, and a pack of red pens to help in the effort. He probably used the entire pack — to little effect.

The necessity of fact-checking nonfiction has been discussed and disputed off and on in the publishing world over the past 40 years, usually in the wake of discoveries of inaccuracies or outright deceptions. Clifford Irving, named “Con Man of the Year” by Time Magazine in 1972, sold a fake biography of the reclusive Howard Hughes and spent more than a year in prison for fraud. Six years before the flurry of discussion that has greeted The Lifespan of a Fact, there was the great debate — and much finger-pointing — following revelations that James Frey, author of the best-selling memoir A Million Little Pieces, had exaggerated or simply made up information about his traumatic life. In 2008, Margaret B. Jones’s lauded memoir, Love and Consequences, the saga of her biracial gangbanging girlhood in the 1980s in South Central Los Angeles was revealed as pure fiction and “Margaret B. Jones” to be a pseudonym for a white middle-class woman from Sherman Oaks, Margaret Seltzer. The book was trashed by Riverhead, its publisher.

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And yet, remember how the US Senator James Inhofe called Michael Crichton in to testify as an expert on climate change based on his NOVEL A State of Fear? I’m not defending D’Agata. My humble opinion on this matter is that it’s simple ass-hattery. But I will re-emphasize how disturbing it is when powerful people choose to “believe” whatever facts they feel like.

Our culture’s, and perhaps especially our politics’, relationship to fact is screwed up. Incredibly screwed up.

Maybe D’Agata is just a self-conscious product of all that.

It all sucks. I think. The culture of anti-intellectualism, and his work as product thereof.

What I wonder is, is he mad about all this controversy? What the hell is he thinking…

(Source: lareviewofbooks)

Homestead...ish.: California Tumblrs -- Big chance for food justice on Nov. Ballot →

jennisnotahomesteader:

HEY! You California tumblrs need to know about a *big* ballot referendum that volunteers are currently gathering signatures for the November election. The Committee for the Right to Know is pushing the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act, which would label GMO food as such.

…

View high resolution

gardensinunexpectedplaces:

In his “Paradise Parking” photo series, Paris-based photographer Peter Lippmann captures scenes where nature’s taking over abandoned cars. Lovely, really.

(spotted on Colossal)

I sort of wish all art was variations on this theme. Not that that desire makes any sense, because art is so much more biodiverse than that. But I guess what I really mean is: I love it.

I believe this may be Highway 50, otherwise known as America’s Loneliest Highway. 

If it is (it could easily be some other road), I can recommend it. We drove from Vermont to California this summer and took 50 for a long way across Nevada. It climbs and dips through the basin and range stuff…beautifully quiet, remote, deserted.

(Source: weheartit.com, via ruralworkshop)

a thing I wrote for The Rejectionist about J Franz and Edie W →

findesiecle:

I have been a bad “fashion blogger” lately because I have been Writing Other Things, one of which is this Thing that I wrote, for Sarah’s blog, about Jonathan Franzen’s horrifying New Yorker piece on Edith Wharton. Here is some of it:

To be honest, I felt hysterical: that Victorian word for the tantrums of unstable estrogen-addled women, but that I know actually describes a rage forcibly contained, the hot burn of the involuntary tears, the snap in your composure when you are told for the millionth time that what you feel or think or say or do does not matter. I thought that complex, nuanced, funny, difficult, despicably lovable characters were the emblem of a good writer, not evidence of the insecure woman thieving our sympathies through sneaky writer-succubus tricks. And yet one hundred and fifty years after Edith Wharton wrote a number of canonical, excellent books, some rich white straight dude gets paid—what does the New Yorker pay for that kind of piece, like ten grand?—gets paid like ten grand to come to the riveting, breathtaking conclusion that she might be human, and maybe even A Writer, like him?

But you can also go read the rest of it at Sarah’s blog if you are so inclined, which is a blog you should be reading anyhow because she rules. Cool!

A delectable rant against Jonathan Franzen, unconsidered white/straight/moneyed/male privilege, and cetera. A worthy read. Sigh.

The more I read/learn/hear about the various mechanisms of privilege in our society the more I wilt. Part of me wants to return to when I was just a tomboy-minded girly-girl child who thought she was equal in every way to everyone around her, if not prettier, more clever, more ambitions, etcetera. All delusions, but they were comfy ones.

As life wears onward, the delusions just crap out. And you’re left with the nothingness everyone really owns. Plus, if you’re a woman, queer, nonwhite, whatever you’ve got less than nothing. Don’t look up. You don’t want to see it bearing down on you.

And I’m really only one of those things. A woman. I don’t think it’s for my own position that I wilt.  It’s for the injustice of it. Injustice built in, that tarnishes any success I might achieve, because it was given me, at least partly, by a machine that holds other people down just because it feels like it.

jennisnotahomesteader:

Every time someone in Star Wars said “May the force be with you” I always wanted to follow it up with “And also with you”

We lift up our light sabers

Lift them up to the sith

Let us give thanks to the force, our god

It is right to give the force thanks and praise

*this post is only understandable if you have, at any point, been to a Catholic mass.

*Or Episcopalian.

Love it.

(Source: lawyerupasshole)

Seven Axioms Farmers Use to Justify Crappy Compensation for their Apprentices

Reposted from The Ruminiant.

A former apprentice and soon-to-be apprenticeship host suggests that farm apprentices, on average, aren’t compensated enough, and shares his ideas for improving their lot

This season, for the first time, my partner and I are going to join the ranks of dozens of small-scale farms across Canada that offer apprenticeships to eager, would-be farmers.  We’re now really excited at this prospect, despite long feeling conflicted about it. For quite a while we were uncertain about whether we would be able to stay on the right side of a line separating a mutually beneficial trade of labour for education on one side, and exploitation on the other.

Because here’s the thing: Vanessa and I have each completed two farming apprenticeships. And since then we’ve volunteered in a couple of different contexts with SOIL, one of Canada’s foremost apprenticeship facilitators, and have come to know dozens of apprentices and apprenticeship-hosts. And it has been my general, anecdotally-based observation that farmers as a group currently overvalue their contribution to the exchange while undervaluing what they receive. Such valuations are generally measured by the terms of the apprenticeship; that is, the hours and responsibilities to which an apprentice commits in exchange for room and board, the opportunity to learn how to farm, and hopefully, a cash stipend and/or bonus. And those terms, on average, aren’t that great.

I want to be clear that I’m not suggesting there are a whole bunch of farmers who are consciously exploiting their apprentices for their labour; rather that what hosts consider as a norm for compensation in Canada—financial, educational, and otherwise—doesn’t sufficiently reward apprentices for their work.

And I think these norms are reinforced by a few self-serving axioms, subscribed-to by many hosts, that justify unfair arrangements. I’d like to list and address those axioms now. But first I had better suggest a typical arrangement between a farm-host and apprentice in Canada.

My sense is that a typical apprenticeship in Canada lasts six months. It expects six days and between 40 and 50 hours of work per week from an apprentice. In exchange, the apprentice is offered basic room and board, between $25 and $50 dollars a week, and some sort of education, though many of the apprenticeships described to me are limited to ‘learning by doing’.  Often there is a bonus in the range of $100-$500 for sticking around for the season.  Sometimes, access to a vehicle is provided.

Now then. Seven of the axioms commonly cited whenever the idea of better compensation for apprentices is proposed:

Axiom #1 (regarding stipend and bonues): I would like to offer more, but my margins can’t justify it.
I can personally relate to this conundrum. But it’s a pretty weak argument for under-compensating your apprentice. Actually, many eaters use a similar argument in explaining why they’re not willing to pay more for their food, and we all know what farmers think about that. I have a colleague, incidentally, who believes that if your business plan is absolutely dependent on having an apprentice, you probably shouldn’t have one, because it almost ensures an exploitive situation. I agree with her. If your margins can’t justify an apprentice, figure out why, fix the problem, then take one on. And by the way: if you can’t offer more to your apprentice, you can always demand less from them instead. More on that later.

#2 (regarding the expected work load): I work 6 days/80 hours a week. Why shouldn’t my apprentice?
Yes, you do work long, long hours. You also own your land and have a much bigger stake in working that hard. And at the end of the season, you’ve got a root cellar stuffed to the tits with food. And a season’s worth of improved soil, if you’re an organic farmer. And better farm infrastructure. And lifestyle expenses you can write-off. And other long-term benefits that stay on the farm when your apprentice leaves. But look, while we’re on the topic of keeping things equal, shouldn’t your apprentice get to live in a real house rather than in that old trailer out in the pasture?

#3 (regarding work load): They need to work a heavy schedule so they know what it’s like to be a farmer.
That’s just not true. Which is why most farmers’ kids know they don’t want to farm by the time they’re twelve. Apprentices spend a great deal of time working and living with their hosts; they don’t need to work full time to notice that your hair has grayed sufficiently in the six short months they’ve been there.

#4 (regarding the overall compensation package): If my terms were unfair I wouldn’t be able to get apprentices to work for me.
Replace the word ‘apprentices’ with ‘”Mexican Illegals’ and you’ve got the same argument being made by many large-scale veggie growers in Florida right now. The reality is that most apprentices are approaching their selection process with a very idealistic view of farming that precludes the possibility that a farmer, especially an organic one, would take advantage of them, knowingly or otherwise. Next they arrive with an enormous desire to please their hosts. And if the average compensation package is unfair, they’re not likely to see examples of a better deal before committing. So it’s kind of on us hosts to strive to offer the fairest possible arrangement.

#5:  Learning by doing is the best way to learn.
Maybe, but you can learn by doing as a farm-labourer getting paid 12 bucks an hour at those farms that hire, which will net you 800 or 900 bucks at the end of the month after taxes and living expenses. Some sort of extra effort at educating your protégé, be it designated classroom time or offering regular workshops, can really improve the deal they’re getting.

#6: If they went to an agricultural college they would be paying thousands to learn how to farm.
Yep, and they would come out with an accredited degree that would allow them to get further degrees and then jobs in which they’re well-paid to ‘help’ us farmers. There would also be much more time devoted to pedagogy, and college students have more recourse when they’re dissatisfied with their education. The two options involve greatly different outcomes, and so are not really comparable.

#7: Apprentices take up a lot of my valuable time.
Maybe in the first month. But any half-bright apprentice with a decent work ethic is going to make up for that ten-fold over the ensuing five, and you can always structure your compensation arrangement to be weighted towards the end of the apprenticeship. If you’re a host, and you bring an apprentice to the point that you can leave the farm for an extended period without worrying that the crops will fail, you should know what I’m talking about.

This is great. The article goes on to describe his idea for better compensation, so you should read it if you’re curious.

I completely agree that these assumptions need to be questioned. I’ve been lucky to work on one farm that treated me very well, and another that didn’t really — but the second one tried. They were just in over their heads. They could have used five interns-worth of work!

What do you think?

||| || | |||| ||||||| || ||||: Why I Try to Ignore Things Like Chris Brown →

emperorx:

I was already sort of grumpy this morning. Then I logged into my Friendsterbook account and saw that the Grammy awards show happened last night. Among the usual inane gossip stuff and press release-flavored news articles about the award winners, I saw this article which re-posted tweets from a…

Ignoring it is self-preserving, and nobody can fault you for that.

I would prefer if more men-folk, especially articulate ones with a platform, took time to publicly articulate the shape of the problem as they see it. Which is basically what you did here. Which is far better than merely ignoring it.

Things like domestic violence need to be blasted with light. With eyes, awareness. I’m glad you said something.

WTF those women?! Ugh…

In lieu of formulating my own thoughts, I appreciated this article: http://hellogiggles.com/im-not-okay-with-chris-brown-performing-at-the-grammys-and-im-not-sure-why-you-are

Oh Where are you Going: Oil Change and Wal-Mart, February 7, 2012 →

ohwhereareyougoing:

1.

“How are you doin’ in this weather?” — L’renzo at Jiffy Lube

It is cool and grey. There was drizzle this morning…this is weather? It seems like an absence of weather to me.

2.

A masculine persona has always been a safe space in public. Women are vulnerable, feminine felt vulnerable. Loose,…

This is what happens when I go shopping.

good:

Straight Talk: We Don’t Know Anything About Heterosexuality

What does it mean to be a straight person? In Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality, Blank spends almost two hundred pages to make clear just how unclear our conception of heterosexuality really is. “Despite the fact that most of us use the term ‘heterosexual’ with enormous (and cavalier!) certainty,” she writes, “there seems to be no aspect of ‘heterosexual’ for which a truly iron-clad definition has been established.” The study of sex should belong to the social sciences, not the physical sciences.

Read more on GOOD→