I can't believe no one has done this one yet
[spoiler]
Dukasaur wrote:The Dispatch Critics Contest by Dukasaur
The Dispatch Critics Contest has both an easy option for those who just want to get stamp 21 and get back out to the playground (the type of people who took Sociology in grade 12) and a harder option for those who want to show off their brain pans.
The basic option: Choose one article in this issue of the Dispatch or any previous issue. Yes, any previous issue of the Conquer Club Dispatch, right back to Number 1 in January of 2009. You could even go back farther and pick something out of the CC News or out of Gozar's newsletter, if you really want, and I would accept it. There's a catch -- each article can only be chosen by one person.
Once you've chosen your article, post in the thread for THIS issue, giving the title, author, and issue number of the article you've chosen. Then, write one sentence describing why you find that article interestings. That's it, that's all. Just name, author, issue number, and one little sentence about it. Pretty simple, huh? That's all it takes for the Newsletter Prize.
However, if you want to turn this into something more challenging, I have some more prizes for you. If you want to write a critique of the article that is more than just a one liner, I will consider you for the Critic's Award. The Critic's Award will have prizes for the three best critiques. To qualify for this prize, your critique must be well-written (yes, spelling, grammar, and punctuation count) and must actually have something intelligent to say about the article.
First place: One yellow conquer star, one General Achievement medal, and 300 credits. NOTE: I reserve the right to not award first prize at all if I don't think any of the entries deserve it. If I'm only given half-assed efforts to choose from, I will award only second and third prize and no first prize at all.
Second place: One pink conquer star, one General Achievement medal, and 150 credits.
Third place: One cyan conquer star, one General Achievement medal, and 75 credits.
Special Citation: One General Achievement medal will be awarded for the entry (regardless of whether it qualifies under the above criteria or not) which surprises me the most with something I didn't know. At one time or another I've read pretty much everything ever written in the Dispatch, but I may have missed something here and there, and there's lots that I've forgotten. So, surprise me, teach me something interesting that I've forgotten or never knew to begin with, and the GA may be yours.
I will also hand out (at my sole discretion) some orange conquer stars for brave attempts that don't quite make it.
[/spoiler]
In order to get my passport stamp, I decided to write one sentence on Dukasaur's "The Dispatch Critics Contest" in this edition, #128, of the Dispatch. I chose this article because I'm feeling a bit
meta today and thought it would be amusing to write a review of the article explaining how and why to write a review of an article. Now that I've got title, author and issue number out of the way, the biggest question that I have is whether I will be able to write one sentence explaining why I "find that article interestings." There are several hurdles that I will have to overcome in order to do that.
First off, I'm not sure what it means to find something "interestings." It could by a typo, but then again I see that there is a
book by Meg Wolitzer with that title, so I guess I have to start there. Since I don't have time to read the whole book right now, I will be depending on reviews. But hey, that seems like a pretty
meta way of analyzing things to me.
The novel seems to be a comparative retrospective about a generation's "coming of age." According to the
NY Times, the book describes the baby boomers' quest for exceptionalism as largely futile:
“Specialness — everyone wants it,” he tells her in frustration, fed up with her invidious comparisons to her childhood pals. “Most people aren’t talented. So what are they supposed to do — kill themselves?”
NPR give's the plot a bit more room to breath in a
lengthy interview with the author. The book follows a group of young summer campers from the summer of 1974 through adulthood. The title comes from the name that a group of young summer campers ironically gave themselves in the summer of 1974. Except that "The Interestings" are unironically and actually interesing to Jules Jacobson, the fifteen-year old protagonist. This emotion--a bundle of excitement, insecurity, envy, pride, expectation and disappointment--is one that follows Jules throughout her life.
The random page that I pulled up from Amazon's "Look Inside" feature lends support to these interpretations (p. 207):
The train came, and Jules Jacobsen stepped on and thought: I am the loneliest person in this subway car.
...
After a certain age, you felt a need not to be alone.... While Jules lay alone in the bedroom on Cindy Drive, her two good friends lay without clothes in Ash's bed on the sixth floor of the Labyrinth. Ethan Figman [a boy whose advances Jules had rejected as a youth] in his vulnerable nakedness was somehow maybe even beautiful. He was no different from anyone in the world. He wanted what he wanted, and he'd found it, and now he and Ash were dumbly happy in their shared bed.
Indeed, the moral of the story, as described by these reviews, is more
Rolling Stones the band than
rolling stones the adage. Or, as Liesl Schillinger of the Times concludes:
“You didn’t always need to be the dazzler, the firecracker, the one who cracked everyone up, or made everyone want to sleep with you, or be the one who wrote and starred in the play that got the standing ovation,” Jules tells herself. “You could cease to be obsessed with the idea of being interesting.” Now there’s an interesting idea.
So, what then does it mean to write a sentence about the interestings-ness of an article? Is it finding a bit of something special or satisfying in something that is unexceptional? In a sense, that is one way in which we use the term "interesting." "Hmm ... interesting," even when not uttered sarcastically, often is meant to convey something much more sober than surprise--something that is
merely odd or, at best, unique. Some, like
bartender Dave Arnold, even consider it a mild epithet. Arnold, whose contributions to the alcoholic science include extensive use of liquid nitrogen, advises fellow drink slingers to "Gauge success by whether your guest orders another, not by whether he or she thinks the drink is 'interesting.'"
But understanding Dukasaur's prompt in this fashion poses a set of unique problems, at least if I am willing to get a tad more
meta and try to get into his head (perhaps for the reason of winning one of those prizes). I mean, in the more advanced version of his contest, he is clearly looking for the superlative: the "best," "well-written," "intelligent" and not "half-assed." Could this same author be posing a simpler challenge that involves explaining the uniquely mundane or the mundanely unique? Further, not to go all
meta on you or anything, would Duka's ego bear my description of his article as such? Or is this definition of interesting, in fact, the solution to the riddle that is the "simpler" version of the contest?
At this point, I think I must give up this quest to write one sentence about what I found interestings/interesting. Or in the spirit of my quandry, perhaps, I should say that I will
table this endeavor, in its current,
unpacked form until I can dust (ibid.) the idea and
cleave or garnish more oversight to the topic.
As such, I hereby submit this post as an entry into the second and "more challenging" contest of critiquing this article.
I think it's a strong contender. Or ... how shall I say this more
meta-ly? ...
)
. (still not the case with 12 contestants having all good answer after 8 rounds)