The Culture Gabfest “We’re Not Here to Fish” Edition
Slate’s Culture Gabfest on Captain Phillips, the SAT writing section, and Alice Munro’s Nobel Prize.
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On this week’s show, the critics discuss Captain Phillips, Paul Greengrass’ based-on-a-true-story thriller, starring Tom Hanks as the eponymous captain whose ship is taken hostage by Somali pirates. Next, the critics prattle in polysyllables about the SAT writing section—does it teach writing or reward bullshit? And finally, with author and Slate contributor Meghan O’Rourke, the gabbers discuss Alice Munro’s Nobel Prize and the significance of her win for women, Canadians, and the short story medium.
Links to some of the things we discussed this week follow:
- Dana’s review of Captain Phillips on Slate
- Manohla Dargis’s New York Times review
- The Bourne Supremacy
- The Bourne Ultimatum
- Bloody Sunday
- Matthew J.X. Malady’s Slate piece “We Are Teaching High School Students to Write Terribly”
- “The Beggar Maid” by Alice Munro
- “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro
- Away From Her, directed by Sarah Polley
- Elizabeth Bishop’s Poems
- Open Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996 by Seamus Heaney
- Philip Roth: Novels 1967-1972
Endorsements:
Dana: The now-viral video of Árstíðir, an Icelandic indie-folk group singing an ancient hymn in a German train station
Julia: Keith Houston’s Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks
Steve: Green Acres pie in Hudson, N.Y.; The Holy Cow ice cream in Red Hook, N.Y., and the autumnal wonders of Robert Frost’s “October”
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