In celebration of the new paperback edition of José Saramago's The Notebook, Verso is pleased to present another of the acclaimed author's elegant and astute observations on contemporary culture and politics. The publication of excerpts selected from his blog began on April 20 in lead-up to the release of the new edition and to commemorate Saramago's passing on June 18, 2010.
On May 26, 2009, Saramago's mind was on the production and sale of armaments. Contemplating the kind of nefarious political infrastructure necessary to allow such a global flow of destruction, his thoughts turn to the potential for human kind to liberate itself from this economy of violence...
Writing on May 10, Dwight Garner of The New York Times reviewed Small Memories, the latest book to be released by the acclaimed novelist José Saramago.
The slim memoir joins The Notebook (now available in paperback from Verso) as one of Saramago's last, "a distillation of some of the central recollections of Saramago's youth." Garner reports that while "it's mostly a vague and distracted book," the memories that it presents are "echoing ones."
In the most recent Sunday edition of the Washington Post, Ross Perlin's Intern Nation got an exceptional review from one of its own subjects, a member of the unpaid masses. Katy Waldman, an unpaid intern at Slate, describes the book as an "eye-opening" investigation into the otherwise under-studied world of internships:
Perlin is at his best when he relates internships to broader socio-economic trends. He traces the spread of interns working for nothing to the rise of the Internet's "ideology of free," which invites users to churn out unpaid content in return for exposure. Online entrepreneurs and interns speak a common language, he says, aiming for a presence, whether on a browser or in an office. The author also touches on the oft-deplored phenomenon of suspended adolescence, which he connects to internships that maroon 20-somethings in a widening gray area between dependence and self-sufficiency. (As a former "serial intern," Perlin knows well how one unpaid gig leads to another.)
In celebration of the new paperback edition of José Saramago's The Notebook, Verso is pleased to present another of the acclaimed author's elegant and astute observations on contemporary culture and politics. The publication of excerpts selected from his blog began on April 20 in lead-up to the release of the new edition and to commemorate Saramago's passing on June 18, 2010.
On May 29, 2009, Saramago wrote about the various disappearances caused by neoliberalism: species, industries, ways of life all wiped out in the name of expansion and human enrichment. His post reveals a sense of disenchantment that speaks to years of observing the machine of capitalist development.
On May 17, Ross Perlin appeared at the Busboys and Poets bookstore in Washington, DC to discuss the world of intern exploitation as explored in his book, Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy. The Daily Caller published a report on the discussion, including Q & A with Perlin on the subject of DC internships and the rise of a generation of free-laborers:
Acknowledging that D.C. is a major intern hub, Perlin told The Daily Caller that the nation's capital is "pretty bad" in terms of its treatment towards interns.