JamesMarcus

James Marcus is a writer, translator, critic, and editor. He is the author of Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut and five translations from the Italian (the most recent being Dino: The Life and Films of Dino De Laurentiis and Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror). He has contributed to the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Newsday, the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Book Review, Lingua Franca, the Nation, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and many other publications. He also written about jazz, pop, and classical music for Salon, The Oregonian, and WBUR Online Arts, and is currently editor-at-large at The Columbia Journalism Review. He blogs at www.housemirth.blogspot.com.

my website

http://www.housemirth.blogspot.com/

Submitted Comments (132)

The 50 Most Influential Bloggers of 2009 »

• Most of these people are "influential" only in the sense that they've monetized their blogs. And the article sounded like a TV infomercial--the familiar, hustling ...

  2 months, 2 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• 4 comments from 4 members total

Aldo Buzzi, Writer and Filmmaker, Dies at 99 »

• CA and BB, thanks for the kind words.
  
  I can't figure out why anybody would drop this story.

  2 months, 2 weeks ago 1 reply View »

• Thanks, DR. I met Aldo only once, but corresponding with him and (especially) reading his books over many years did make him a real presence ...

  2 months, 2 weeks ago 1 reply View »

• 7 comments from 4 members total

Obama, The African Colonial »

• Hi fsev, and thanks for the warm welcome. Is Goppy around? Good to know.

  2 months, 4 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• Hi BB. Part of my family comes from the region around Odessa, from which they fled as rapidly as possible during the early years of ...

  2 months, 4 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• Oh, I see. So if I visited Odessa to connect with my own family's roots, that would make me--a Russian. And not only a Russian, ...

  2 months, 4 weeks ago 2 replies View »

• 86 comments from 26 members total

Barney Frank Confronts Woman At Town Hall Comparing Obama To Hitler »

• You too, slate.Glad you're still keeping up your side of the Propeller badminton match :).

  4 months, 2 weeks ago 2 replies View »

• Don't forget, Hitler also tried to lower the deductible on the dental plan to 50 pfennigs. That's what finally brought the Third Reich to its ...

  4 months, 2 weeks ago 4 replies View »

• 308 comments from 88 members total

NYT Flashes Confusion in HFT Reporting »

• Glad you liked it, EE. I agree that the modern stock market can be pretty damn forbidding. As for the surfeit of talent around the ...

  4 months, 3 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• Yeah, I don't think the article was denying that flash orders have some thorny issues of their own--only that it was confusing and unhelpful to ...

  4 months, 3 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• 4 comments from 3 members total

Ripeness Is All: Aldo Buzzi Turns 99 »

• Soltanto un'anno, e parli come romano! Io invece studiavo la lingua per molti anni e parlo ancora come se narcotizzato.

  4 months, 3 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• Hi BB, and good to hear from you. I see that the video says "currently unavailable"--I have no idea why. Maybe Blogger will get its ...

  4 months, 3 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• Thanks, NP, and I'm glad you liked it.

  4 months, 3 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• Ma tu parli bene l'italiano, raggio di morte!

  4 months, 3 weeks ago 2 replies View »

• Exactly. They became great friends in the Thirties as fellow architecture students. Then Steinberg, who was a Romanian Jew, had to flee Italy as things ...

  4 months, 3 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• Prego, amico, e tante grazie per il tuo prop.

  4 months, 3 weeks ago 4 replies View »

• 13 comments from 6 members total

House of Mirth: Jewish shouting: the last gasp, the club mix »

• Well, that one is shorter--it cuts to the chase. The other one takes you through the many, prismatic moods of Jewish shouting.

  4 months, 3 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• Doctor Wigglefoot is a great character and I think Clooney is interested.

  4 months, 4 weeks ago 1 reply View »

• I'm working with some great samples of Episcopalian sighing right now.

  4 months, 4 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• Still working on that one :).

  4 months, 4 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• You're welcome. I may take a break and play with some non-Jewish shouting now.

  4 months, 4 weeks ago 2 replies View »

• Many thanks, CA. Glad you liked the steel guitar--I'll keep working at it. As for my hamster-wheel work schedule, I've found something more low-tech than ...

  4 months, 4 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• I have been out of the loop, Propeller-wise, which I regret. Learning the ropes at the new gig has kept me busy. As for my ...

  4 months, 4 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• Thank you, friends, for propping! I hope you'll follow the link and download this pulse-pounding treasure--it could be a collector's item, just like that Jetsons ...

  4 months, 4 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• 18 comments from 7 members total

Eugene Robinson - Sarah Palin: A Starter, Not a Finisher - washingtonpost.com »

• Re: fourth graders, I see your point. I hope they were listening. It was a mighty good history of Arkansas, even if the vocabulary was ...

  5 months, 4 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• Fourth-graders :). I found Arkansans very easy to talk to.

  6 months ago 2 replies View »

• I love the Agnew note. Spiro, we hardly knew ye!

  6 months ago 3 replies View »

• Wow, I'm going to check that out. Did I ever mention that I wrote a history of Arkansas for fourth-graders? If you can talk to ...

  6 months ago 4 replies View »

• 153 comments from 41 members total

Michael Jackson: Bad! And very dangerous - The Independent »

• I stand corrected: he didn't have porn on his computer, but he did use a credit card to look at a kiddie porn site on ...

  6 months ago 0 replies View »

• Townshend's crime consisted of having images of child porn on his computer. He claimed that he had compiled these for a project on child abuse. ...

  6 months ago 2 replies View »

• 36 comments from 18 members total

Spinhead's Sock Puppet Theater »

• You are absolutely right that both parties should be held to the same standard. But it's hard sometimes to sort out culpability when the mud ...

  6 months ago 0 replies View »

• Hi SC. The standards are inconsistent, but I don't think this is due to an ideological thumb on the scales. Not usually, anyway.
  
  Again: ...

  6 months ago 1 reply View »

• Many thanks, slate. In the wake of my recent viral success, I'm now putting together a 10-minute club mix of the Philip Roth. After that ...

  6 months ago 0 replies View »

• Re: your last question, you'll have to ask Tom. But as I've said before, vicious political spatting and personal attacks are not considered a plus ...

  6 months ago 5 replies View »

• Every time Tessy returned, under a wide variety of names, she immediately fell back into the same abusive habits. It was a dead giveaway. So ...

  6 months ago 11 replies View »

• 289 comments from 35 members total

Philip Roth features on "booty-shaking" dance track »

• Oh, I'll be around :).
  
  I hope the alchemical shenanigans were a big success!

  6 months, 1 week ago 2 replies View »

• And yet also a badge of polemical pride :).

  6 months, 1 week ago 1 reply View »

• 16 comments from 8 members total

Thanks, for nothing »

• In theory, sure. But I still have friends in high places :).

  6 months, 2 weeks ago 1 reply View »

• Thanks, both of you, for the warm welcome. Just doing my bit!

  6 months, 2 weeks ago 5 replies View »

• 80 comments from 26 members total

Federal Register: February 4, 2009 (Volume 74, Number 22) »

• If you mean the State Department link, it's already there. I'll let you Google the other ones yourself.

  6 months, 3 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• Oh, I'm sure we haven't exhausted this topic :).

  6 months, 3 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• Under the radar? The State Department put out a press release the day the order was signed, and it was reported by the Associated Press ...

  6 months, 3 weeks ago 0 replies View »

• These funds, which Obama authorized back in January, have nothing to do with resettling Palestinian refugees in the U.S. Allow me to quote from the ...

  6 months, 3 weeks ago 5 replies View »

• 19 comments from 10 members total

Obama, The Unencumbered Man - The NY Review of Books »

• BB, what makes you say that the GOP is growing? I'd love to see some info on that.

  6 months, 3 weeks ago 10 replies View »

• 77 comments from 33 members total

Holocaust Museum Shooter Was Left Wing Radical »

• Please see the note above--the Fresh Conservative blog has retracted their original story and apologized to readers.

  6 months, 3 weeks ago 1 reply View »

• 197 comments from 43 members total