Halford uses sarcasm in all of her posts. In one particular post, she rather backhandedly compliments Pittsburgh as having a great writing community.
The title of the post is "The Hills Are Alive." These words, inevitably, cause every person to go watch The Sound of Music before continuing on with the rest of the post. (If you didn't do that, then you are most likely a robot). She immediately continues the blog with the same Sound of the Music theme, except that she refers to the hills of Pittsburgh, and unfortunately for the readers, they are not alive with the sound of music. Rather the hills of Pittsburgh are alive with the sound of "an indie literary revolution." She successfully destroyed the Sound of the Music theme with which she started. But it makes sense for the rest of the post. In going against the grain of the lyrics of the song, she is setting a tone. She's talking about something that isn't obvious or well-known or will cause a uniform response from all that are reading.
She goes on to describe the movement:
If twee could be edgy; that might describe it.The word "twee" definitely alienates a particular audience. Only people who know that word will continue reading, softly chuckling to themselves as they push their hipster glasses onto the bridge of their nose. (I, myself, happen to know the word and felt naked without hipster glasses).
She lists the names of a few of the literary journals/ small publishers populating Pittsburgh. My personal favorites: Debutante Hair, Air and Nothingness, and Unicorn Mountain. Each name she listed links to their uber hip websites. She then asks her readers:
Aren't these names beautiful?That's not the word I would use describing the names. I would describe them as indescribable.
In another post, she throws a couple punches at the Times Book Review. Her blog revolves around some poorly chosen words in the headlines. She states that things weren't
looking good for the entire family, as these headlines attest:She showed this image, so readers could truly appreciate the ridiculousness of a such a combination of titles:
(Couldn't the NYTimes come up with another word for anguish, just to spice it up a bit? And, more importantly, why isn't there a father in anguish?)As later revealed in the post, one of the books (entitled The Lost Child: A Mother’s Story by Julie Myerson) has reviewers
"all in a tizzy"because the son (the one in anguish) hated on his mother's memoir for exploiting his former drug problem.
The blog comes full circle as she ends with another headline from Salon.com reviewing the Myerson book:
This is fucking bonkers, right?Her thoughts on this headline:
Now, that's a headline.Her observations and sarcastic humor definitely appeal to me. But, then again, I'm pretentious and therefore, predisposed to love anything with the New Yorker attached to it.
I read the times review, and the interview. Don't know what to make of it. The son is upset because his mother described his descent into some kind of madness. I guess he feels his mom just wrote about this and he didn't want her to.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about family members writing non-fiction built on the mess one member creates. Or, what about a mother doing that about one child or another? the reviewer thought it was a terrifiic book that needed to be written and read in part because it debunks the safe drugs stuff--for some people, no drug is safe.