I just finished Idoru, by William Gibson. He writes like Raymond Chandler on hallucinogens, prose spare and jarringly beatiful. Here's a sample:
Between stations there was a gray shudder beyond the windows of the silent train. Not as of surfaces rushing past, but as if particulate matter were being vibrated there at some crucial rate, just prior to the emergence of a new order of being.
Lines like that make my teeth sweat. Just amazing Of course, the first sentence Gibson gave the world was "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel," so I suppose it's time to stop being impressed and start taking his skill in stride. But: some things you just don't get used to. Thankfully.
It seems to me that many of these responses to Salon's troubles miss the point, focusing almost exclusively on the magazine's perceived business failings. Whether or not they, or the.com downturn, or the nation's dwindling supply of patience for in-depth and serious-minded news coverage, are to blame for the magazine's dire straits, the fact remains that Salon maintains a standard of journalistic quality and integrity that will be sorely missed if they should go out of business.
As many of my worthy peers have pointed it, Salon does lean a little left, no doubt about it. But given our country's recent and violent list to starboard, and our Democratic leaders' apparent unwillingness or inability to act like a real opposition party, we need magazines like this more than ever.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that many of these responses to Salon's troubles miss the point, focusing almost exclusively on the magazine's perceived business failings. Whether or not they, or the .com downturn, or the nation's dwindling supply of patience for in-depth and serious-minded news coverage, are to blame for the magazine's dire straits, the fact remains that Salon maintains a standard of journalistic quality and integrity that will be sorely missed if they should go out of business.
As many of my worthy peers have pointed it, Salon does lean a little left, no doubt about it. But given our country's recent and violent list to starboard, and our Democratic leaders' apparent unwillingness or inability to act like a real opposition party, we need magazines like this more than ever.