Modern Mythographer

I’ve avoided writing about this whole “ground zero mosque” fiasco simply because I was hoping it would drop out of public conversation. Seriously, you’re going to object to a house of worship in an American city? On patriotic grounds? Really? I hesitate even to link to these fearmongers, for fear of enhancing their cause. The [...]

So the Mythographer has recently moved to Jersey  City, New Jersey, from the bucolic reaches of upper Manhattan. I make this announcement with some measure of caution, though I’m excited for my new digs, because when you say “I live in Jersey,” especially to New Yorkers, you get a lot of scorn. Jersey is of [...]

MM can not resist the jaw-dropping Pope story of the day.  According to the Christian Science Monitor, Pope Benedict has affirmed the authenticity of the much-maligned Shroud of Turin. The cloth, which has been scientifically dated to about 800 years ago, says the embattled head of the Catholic church, was nonetheless the actual garment of [...]

Silly me, thinking the swine flu mythography had reached a dead end back in May.  It had proved a fruitful topic then, what with blaming the Mexicans, isolating Afghan pigs, etc. But then I got a detailed warning email from the writing residency I will be attending in October on how to prepare to not [...]

Dear Reader, please forgive the Mythographer as she geeks out:  I just have to note how excited I was to read James Wood’s piece in this week’s New Yorker taking apart the New Atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens (which form the irresistible conflation “Ditchkins”) for being just as stubborn and intolerant as the [...]

This past weekend a loyal MM reader reminded me that I have as yet been mum on the topic of the “birthers,” and shame on me.  They are, after all, one of the biggest purveyors of political misinformation since the Swift Boaters and more than deserved to be busted, debunked, and hopefully, defused.  And I [...]

So you may have noticed the Mythographer hasn’t been myth-graphing lately.  I have taken some time off from my busy life of doing not much, and found it to be very restful.  As I rested, many  many myths passed me by.  The New Yorker did that whole thing on parenting myths, a topic on which [...]

As the Mythographer prepares to visit her hometown in Maine this summer, she’s reminded of a conversation she had maybe 12 years ago with her college roommate, a native New Yorker.  At this point, I was a Mainer planning to visit New York for the summer.  And the two of us were talking about which [...]

Myth: Creative writing can’t be taught.  I have to admit, when I first saw the article in last week’s New Yorker about the effectiveness of M.F.A. writing programs, my first reaction was: not this again. Writing  classes, writing teachers, and writing degrees are a colossal waste of time–because you either have talent or you don’t–and [...]

Two days after his historic Cairo speech, President Obama made an appearance at the ruins of the German concentration camp Buchenwald, calling the chilling site the “ultimate rebuke” to Holocaust denial, of which Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been the most insidious recent example.  It seemed a brilliant rhetorical move: take the cultural capital and [...]