Evening Read for Monday Night

Wake Up, Geek Culture. Time to Die by Patton Oswalt (Wired)

Fast-forward to now: Boba Fett’s helmet emblazoned on sleeveless T-shirts worn by gym douches hefting dumbbells. The Glee kids performing the songs from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And Toad the Wet Sprocket, a band that took its name from a Monty Python riff, joining the permanent soundtrack of a night out at Bennigan’s. Our below-the-topsoil passions have been rudely dug up and displayed in the noonday sun. The Lord of the Rings used to be ours and only ours simply because of the sheer goddamn thickness of the books. Twenty years later, the entire cast and crew would be trooping onstage at the Oscars to collect their statuettes, and replicas of the One Ring would be sold as bling.

An Album and Its Buzz by Jon Caramancia (New York Times)

But consensus is less a measure of greatness than of social climate. And when the year-end lists of several prominent outlets with different demographics and agendas — the magazines Rolling Stone, Vibe and Spin; the Web sites Pitchfork and Stereogum — share the same winner [Kayne West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy], it almost certainly indicates intangibles at play. Blessedly there was no consensus on No. 2: the Black Keys, Rick Ross, Deerhunter, LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire each got a nod. But that reflected a lack of other widely agreed upon ambitious albums; maybe Mr. West was a titan in an off year.

The Trouble With Autobiography by Paul Theroux (Smithsonian)

It must occur as a grim foreboding to many writers that when the autobiography is written it is handed to a reviewer for examination, to be graded on readability as well as veracity and fundamental worth. This notion of my life being given a C-minus makes my skin crawl. I begin to understand the omissions in autobiography and the writers who don’t bother to write one.