“The demand for our product is overwhelming,” Mr. Benzi told The Observer by phone from his home office in New Jersey. As Plastic Logic’s vice president of business development, Mr. Benzi spends only about a week a month in Mountain View, Calif., at Plastic Logic’s U.S. headquarters, using the rest of his time to take meetings in Manhattan, trying to woo publishers to partner with the company.

So far, the Financial Times, USA Today and digital publishers like Zinio—which converts print magazines from Cosmopolitan and InStyle to Mother Jones and The Economist into digital formats—have, among others, partnered with Plastic Logic. “I see a lot of companies who want to be with us tomorrow,” Mr. Benzi said.
Current e-reader products on the market weren’t made with print media in mind—they were made for books. Sure, the “Kindle store” currently offers e-friendly formats for newspapers and magazines, but the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader have hokey black-and-white screens that seem to replicate the inside of a book.

Apple’s iPhone has free, handy apps, such as Stanza and eReader, to compete with expensive digital readers, but those palm-size screens don’t provide enough room for the visual experiences magazines will need to appeal to readers and advertisers—those full-page, color pictures, “charticles” and information graphics, not to mention leggy models splayed across two-page spreads.

“We’ve worked closely with our magazine partnerships, our newspaper partnerships, to make sure we’re building something that they would publish to,” Mr. Benzi said. “It doesn’t mean books aren’t important to us, because they are. But we are able to go to magazine and newspaper companies with a different type of reader for them.”

Plastic Logic is developing an e-reader with a display that is about 8.5 inches wide and 10.7 inches long—the same size as most magazines and nearly twice the size of the Kindle screen (and more than four times the size of iPhone and Blackberry interfaces—where many of us skim our New York Times headlines in the morning).

Their prototype is made out of plastic, so it’s lightweight, and thinner than a pad of paper. Mr. Benzi said the company’s “secret sauce” is its flexible screen, which can feel a bit like a magazine and has an added bonus of making the device nearly unbreakable.

Plastic Logic plans to release a product on the market by 2010. Once they perfect the actual product’s look, Plastic Logic would include some kind of “content store” similar to what is available on the Kindle. Users could subscribe to publications, and new issues would update automatically—and they could download their own Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PDFs onto the device, too. Currently, the reader incorporates black-and-white display technology from Cambridge-based company E Ink, just like the Kindle.

But color screens are “on our road map,” Mr. Benzi told The Observer. “We’ll either get there with E Ink or another way. The one thing we have noticed with publishers, even though they know it’s on our road map, is they say as soon as I get there [with color screens], they’ll come with me.”

The success of the product may also depend on a larger market shift. Amazon, which is notoriously tight-lipped, hasn’t released official sales numbers for the Kindle, but Citi analyst Mark Mahaney guesses that Amazon is selling anywhere from 190,000 to 500,000 devices, in their first-year rate. Kindle’s numbers aren’t exactly on fire—yet.

About 376,000 iPods were sold during their first year on the market, 2001. In his 2005 book, The Cult of iPod, Leander Kahney described how the iPod became an icon—not only by redefining Apple as a leader in product design, but also by creating a culture around digital music that no other device maker could compete with. “More than a computer, a car, or a fancy pair of shoes, it’s part of your makeup, your personality," he wrote. "What’s on it—the music—tells who you are. Music is deep in your heart and soul.”

Perhaps magazines and newspapers can cling to their cultural and personal relevance with an e-reader. How many of us still keep old issues of the magazines that defined our teenagehood—like Sassy, the precursor to Jane, or Spy magazine—not only for their content, but for the advertisements, which are a pop-culture time capsule of their own? The Web is a great platform for specific articles displayed on a page, and some Web whizzes are working on better visual experiences to mimic browsing an entire, themed issue of a magazine or newspaper. That's key for branding and advertisers. On a digital reader in the right size, readers will experience the same colorful, image-heavy design experience that they see in the print editions—without the added pains of lugging around a laptop.

So could the next digital reader be the "iPod of magazine publishing?" Will a tech toy save the media business?

“I think [publishers] are kind of pissing in the wind,” Mr. Kahney told The Observer. He said Apple “already has a device and it’s called the iPhone.”

But perhaps Apple’s e-reader will come in a different form. A rumor in Mac-obsessed circles is that Mr. Jobs is working on his answer to the netbook, the slimmed-down version of laptops with smaller screens and reduced processors. Apple’s version would “be like the Kindle but with a multi-touch screen, like a 9-inch iPod touch,” Mr. Kahney said. That would mean a magazine-size, touch-sensitive, full-color tablet that would also have basic Internet, iChat, and Skype videoconferencing capabilities—the perfect environment for digital magazines and newspapers.

Maybe a toy alone won’t save print media. But certainly publishers must evolve those inky materials into digital products that work not only on the Web—but on the next Kindle killer, too. Mr. Jobs, we’re waiting.

greagan@observer.com

"This is horrible!" said a long-haired portly guy, thrusting his iPhone at her. "These songs you're playing are so tired, man! Listen, we're in the industry. Trust us. Please put on my playlist. I cannot listen to this crap!"

The waitress said she'd have the check with the manager.

("Aw man, you're like fucking Sarah Palin or something!" he blustered back, confoundingly.)

The table eventually got its way (the customer who drops $900 is always right), and they're all smiles, like they've just written themselves a fat check, like they're educating the masses, but nobody starts nodding along or asking the bartender "Dude, what is this?" like that Beta Band scene in High Fidelity.

Observed this weekend at a Brooklyn wine bar: a crew of boomy-voiced 30-somethings harassing their waitress.

"This is horrible!" said a long-haired portly guy, thrusting his iPhone at her. "These songs you're playing are so tired, man! Listen, We're in the industry. Trust us. Please put on my playlist. I cannot listen to this crap!"

The waitress said she'd have the check with the manager.

("Aw man, you're like fucking Sarah Palin or something!" he blustered back, confoundingly.)

The table eventually got its way (the customer who drops $900 is always right), and they're all smiles, like they've just written themselves a fat check, like they're educating the masses, but nobody starts nodding along or asking the bartender "Dude, what is this?" like that Beta Band scene in High Fidelity. Nobody leaves in disgust, either. Everyone kind of ignores the playlist. It's a little loud to hear much anyway.

Yet controlling the playlist to your every move seems to be a central ambition in the music industry today. Forget the Internet, where music is plentiful but also available for free at every turn. Get to someone while they're trying on jeans, or eating sushi, or ordering a latte, or ordering a beer, or watching a fun teen romantic comedy, and you've got them captive to your playlist, subject to your product and, the hope is, susceptible to its charms. Convince them they're listening to the soundtrack of their lives, and they'll pay to own a copy.

Observed this weekend in a movie theater: a fun teen romantic comedy where a playlist (what we used to call a soundtrack) fully subsumes both character and narrative. The movie came in at No. 5 in the nation this weekend, while the soundtrack debuted at No. 52 on the Billboard Hot 200 chart. Atlantic even put out a limited edition vinyl release of the soundtrack, so the playlist must be doing something right.

Based on a hit young adult novel (which presumably made do without an iPod), Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist concerns a music-obsessed teenage guy, freshly dumped, who is brought together by chance with a music-obsessed girl, who is cute. Over the course of one night in New York they have some adventures, a few scrapes, and they fall in love. There's some shy dialogue, a couple of cute moments, one or two good jokes (a post-breakup mix CD called "Road to Closure Vol. 12."). They're nice kids; it would have been nice to hear more from them and a little less yapping from their costar, the playlist. Sometimes a song sparks dialogue, or provides the mood for an exchange, but mostly, the soundtrack stands in for conflict, consequence, development, all of it. In this scene the music means we're driving! In this scene, the music means the boy and girl feel something for each other, but are nervous!

When Nick & Norah do get to talk to each other, it's mostly stilted conversations about music, as had by people who have never thought about music in their lives. There's a sort of brag-off about which of them is a bigger fan of an elusive band whose secret show they're trying to find (my favorite! No, mine!), and they both love this one song, and Nick's iPod proves to Norah that they are musical soul mates. But scripting conversations about music is more awkward than having those conversations. Sharing a favorite song, going through someone's iPod, even listening to a mix with someone can be flirtatious yet wordless or chatty and convivial. Here it hovers in the middle, afraid to grab hold of music's power to connect people. These characters never talk about the way music makes them feel, they just sort of play on repeat. "Are you into stuff?" "Oh wow, I totally am!" Cut to making out.

What's missing here is some connection between what we see and what we hear. We know that our leads are music-obsessed teenagers because they tell us so, yet if the soundtrack were devoid of rock tunes by hip bands (Vampire Weekend, Band of Horses, We Are Scientists, Bishop Allen and Devendra Banhart), this would all be theoretical, and thin. While being specific about songs and bands can be awkward (Garden State and Juno proved that), being overly vague while trying to pin the whole movie on pop songs makes it seem hard to latch onto this particular playlist over, say, any other collection of songs. Mark Mothersbaugh (once of Devo), who could be said to have gotten the whole hip-soundtrack-overwhelming-film thing started with his work on Wes Anderson's films, oversaw this soundtrack. Nick & Norah got some terrific tunes, both by those cool now bands, but also from less known acts, like Big Star's Chris Bell, with his tender "Speed Of Sound," as well as the excellent Richard Hawley, with the torchy "Baby You're My Light." Still, without any genuine connection to the characters and the action, the tunes just sort of float in space. They're background with no foreground.

At one point in the film, Norah admits to a Judaic concept she finds really beautiful: that the world is broken and people are there to make it whole. Nick posits that perhaps the people themselves are what need to be brought together. They kiss. It's really rather sweet, and though the further connection isn't made explicit, it seems clear that the concept is meant to hold for the notion of the playlist as well, the thing brought together from disparate ends to form a cohesive whole, to tell a story. Trouble is that this playlist doesn't feel hard won, and neither does Nick and Norah's union, so that in the end all we've got is an hour and a half held hostage to someone's idea of the perfect playlist, and rather than feeling excited and educated at the end, one just feels like they could have been in a room trying on jeans.

New York Mag inspires us to finish The Brothers Karamozov starting tonight. We swear!

Jay-Z will come out of his 23^rd retirement to perform at the Hammerstein Ballroom on Nov. 13.

iTunes revs up their film archives. Selma Blair’s boobs, which star in Ed Burns’ new movie Purple Violets, are going to look mighty tiny on the iPod screen.

A documentary about Karl Lagerfield will screen at Film Forum tomorrow night, with the director on hand for discussion about black clothes and Nicole Kidman.

To the editor:

In his article “Spitzer-Take! Governor Vows to Persevere” [March 5], Jason Horowitz writes that the health-care workers’ union 1199 SEIU is currently paying for a television campaign against proposed Medicaid cuts to New York’s state budget, and that Mr. Spitzer may respond with his own TV campaign.

I am not privy to how long 1199 SEIU’s campaign has been in flight, but I have seen two of the union’s spots—both on New York City broadcast channels. As I have written in these pages, not only does 35 percent of New York’s broadcast TV audience come from New Jersey and Connecticut, but because so many New Yorkers have cable—much less the growing numbers with digital cable and satellite—the ratings of the broadcast stations’ local news are so low that they are closer to zero than reaching critical masses of target audiences.

The article reminded me of the late NBC executive Paul Klein, who proffered the Least Objectionable Program theory, in which he had the audacity to state that Nielsen ratings reflected the fact that Americans reliably watched television, not any of its “hits.” After all, shows come and go, but Nielsen ratings say that levels of viewing at any time of day (or day of week, or week of year) have stayed constant for decades.

I once asked Klein why political donors wouldn’t want to encourage their candidates to buy local cable to ensure that their money wasn’t spent outside the boundaries of their campaigns. “Political donors,” he said clairvoyantly, “only care about keeping the rubber-glove concession at Rochester Hospital.” Amen.

Billy Sternberg

Manhattan

N.Y.U. Impervious to Irony

To the editor:

The recent article by David Foxley [“Is Caffeine More Important Than the Environment?”, March 5] amusingly highlighted an apparent paradox: an environmentally conscious coffee-shop owner in the Village opposing a construction project that N.Y.U. describes as part of its “Green Action Plan.”

Unfortunately, there is irony here only if one accepts N.Y.U.’s description of this project as environmentally friendly. The real irony about this situation is that the key component of the so-called Green Action Plan is a proposed 13.4-megawatt power plant (roughly tripled in capacity from N.Y.U.’s current facility) that will spew thousands of pounds of pollutants into a densely populated residential neighborhood, and will destroy a magnificent block of 40-foot trees maintained by the city’s Parks Department. (How green is this?) The irony deepens if you know that N.Y.U. has an alternative site for the plant that wouldn’t entail the destruction of one of the city’s few and precious green spaces—i.e., underneath N.Y.U.’s sterile Gould Plaza, a site where the plant can be built faster, cheaper and with no destruction of trees. But the Gould Plaza site would inconvenience N.Y.U. rather than neighboring non-N.Y.U. residents and businesses (such as Think Coffee).

N.Y.U. does indeed have a Green Action Plan—unfortunately, if the Mercer site is used, the most visible action will turn out to be the destruction of a precious public green space.

Jim Corter

Manhattan

The Way of the Future

To the editor:

I sincerely enjoyed Mark Lotto’s George Jetson piece [“I Am George Jetson,” Feb. 26]. It’s refreshing to see such a broad yet poignant critique-of-consumer-culture-cum-apocalyptica. I personally have been fascinated with our culture’s popular evocations of certain doom, all served up against a backdrop of mainstream political and social malaise. We seem to enjoy apocalyptic rumination while simultaneous stewing in our own shit. I especially enjoyed Mr. Lotto’s likening iPods to modern Fabergé Eggs—trinkets that we reward ourselves with while the world crumbles and our expectations of future go unfulfilled. Thank you for the candor and insight.

Jeff Moores

Manhattan

What? You’ve Never Read Franny and Zooey?

To the editor:

Re “Guilty Pleasures of Literary Greats” [The Observatory, Feb. 19]: J.D. Salinger also allegedly flew across the country and talked his way onto the set of the TV show Dynasty just to meet the actress Catherine Oxenberg. She’d never heard of the old man, was totally creeped out by him, and had security throw him off the set. Can’t blame him, though—Ms. Oxenberg was pretty cute.

Great strip, by the way!

Peter Bagge

Seattle

Feeling a bit claustrophobic between the Empire State and Chrysler buildings? Get a bite-sized version of the Big Apple at the tiny New York City tucked away inside the Queens Museum of Art in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. The Panorama, which reopened Feb. 4 after a five-month hiatus for lighting and video renovations, shrinks the city from nine billion square feet to a 9,335-square-foot version of the five boroughs. Commissioned by Robert Moses for the 1964 World’s Fair, this 1992 version of the city is the world’s largest architectural model and includes 895,000 buildings made of wood and plastic. An inch equals 100 feet, so the 102-story Empire State Building is just 15 inches tall, and the wire-made Cyclone in Coney Island looks like a sideshow attraction at a flea circus. On a rainy day last week, Benjamin Keil, 31, strolled along the Panorama’s balcony walkways around the border of the exhibit with his 4-year-old daughter, Angelina. “I used to live ri-ight there,” he said, pointing toward the Lower East Side, below Houston Street, where he lived for 12 years before moving to Long Island City three years ago. “I never knew about this. It’s flooring me to see how big the city is. Kinda makes me realize how small we really are.”

—Gillian Reagan

F Is for Feminism! And Other Things!

What the F? That’s what Carol Cole Levin asked herself (and you might, too) when she gathered artwork for What F Word?, an exhibition at the Cynthia Broan Gallery in Chelsea. Originally organized for a feminist art project at the College Art Association conference held earlier this month, the estrogen-charged exhibit includes work from 34 female artists dancing around Gloria Steinem’s favorite F-word: feminism. According to Ms. Levin, 63, who spoke to The Observer from her North Carolina home: “You just didn’t say that you were a feminist artist …. These are women’s words that are sometimes ignored.” The photographs, paintings, video installations and mixed medium pieces have serious themes on faith, fascism and floods, but it’s the funny pieces that make the exhibit worth attending. Ms. Levin’s work on “finance” is a breast made out of shredded money that plays “God Bless America” when you press the nipple. Nancy Davidson’s video “Let ’er Buck” documents an elderly woman competing in a rodeo. Suzanne McClelland’s bright pink-and-red painting “Coming to a Head” is an instructional display on how to give a blowjob. So queue Sleater-Kinney and Le Tigre on the iPod and take notes, girls!

—Gillian Reagan

Ways to Forget It’s Monday Already—Bingo!

Like bowling alleys, karaoke bars and roller rinks, bingo halls may soon become a quintessential destination for scenesters seeking a kitschy, jolly release. Helping to ignite this trend is Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction—an East Village venue where L.E.S. kool kids peaceably rub shoulders with Sutton Place I-bankers.

Hosted by celebrity drag queen Linda Simpson and comedian Murray Hill, Monday Night Bingo is definitely not reserved for the likes of AARP members and suburban housewives.

“We want to try and be a place where the core values of the Lower East Side and the Village are represented,” said Jeremy Manta, a manger at Mo’s. And unlike their other nightly events, which mainly consist of performances by local and well-known musicians, “bingo is a really good chance to join in the fun—no matter who you are, you become a part of the show,” Mr. Manta gushed. Prizes include “theater tickets, liquor, X-rated DVD’s, useless junk [like the Felix the Cat alarm clock that one lucky winner took home last week] and good ol’ American cash.”

Fans of Monday Night Bingo include local resident Parker Posey. Noting some loopy antics of the well-lubricated crowd, Mr. Manta cited a side competition that erupted a couple weeks ago between two separate birthday parties. “They wanted to see which table could be the loudest and most raucous,” he said. “The lights were flickering on and off, people were dancing on tables, and I was like, ‘Come on, it’s bingo!’”

—David Foxley

Jarvis’ Secret Song

Among the few who stayed till the house lights went back on after a showing of December’s gloomy near-future film dystopia Children of Men, there were fewer still who probably recognized the milky croon in the last song of the credits. Jarvis Cocker, it seemed, had a new song! And it was very angry, and had some dirty words:

If you thought things had changed,

Friend you’d better think again,

Bluntly put in the fewest of words,

Cunts are still running the world,

Cunts are still running the world.

Against the cheerless gray backdrop of that movie, the lyrics worked. But the political directness was a surprise to those who remember the elliptical, clever-clogs leftism of Mr. Cocker’s former band, Pulp.

“Running the World,” as the song is demurely called on iTunes, isn’t available there as a single; it isn’t in the liner notes of the LP Jarvis, either. To hear it, you have to endure the silence that follows the last song on the album for about 30 minutes.

But if the song’s viral popularity in New York bars these days is any indication, we’re putting bets on “Running the World” to be the rabble-rousing finale of Mr. Cocker’s solo tour dates at Webster Hall on April 22 and 23.

Those shows are already sold out. But if you want to get into the sing-along spirit with an angry Brit, you can find the video for the song easily enough on YouTube, complete with a scrolling karaoke-style lyrics presentation. Who needs eBay?

—Tom McGeveran

From: Ari Gold

Subject: Your Oscar Speech

Dear Al:

Before I go any further here, allow me to apologize in advance for calling you “Al,” as opposed to “Mr. Vice President.”

Sure, it might seem overly familiar.

But Al—dude—VeepMan—now that you’ve got the Oscar nomination and you’re officially in show business, the local working rules apply. We call everybody by their first name, whether we know ’em or not: Jack. Marty. Steven. Harvey. Gustav. (The G-Man is my biofuels connection over at the Benz dealership over on Beverly. If you’re looking for an ethanol conversion, just say the word, I’ll hook you up.)

Anyway, Al, let me come to the point: As you, of all people, know, few things in this life are certain. Marty for Best Picture this year? Done. Borat II? In the works. Your Oscar for Best Doc?

It’s in the swag bag.

So, as you and Flipper fly out here (and no, that’s not a typo—one of my partners represents the dolphin, and I hear he’s booked to present the award), I’m sure you’re looking forward to the free jeans, the free iPods and the free pedicures at one of the celeb lounges (just go with it, dude). But I’ve got two words of warning for you:

Roberto Benigni.

Who’s Roberto Benigni, you ask? Precisely my point: He’s the Italian guy who climbed over the seats to pick up the Oscar for Life Is Beautiful in 1999—after which he vaporized and disappeared into the ozone like yesterday’s carbon emissions. (Yeah, I know that’s not exactly right. But you know what I mean.)

The thing of it is, Al, the morning after you get the statue, every studio in this town is going to be asking: What do you want to do next? A sequel? A remake? Another Inconvenient Truth? But this time, they’re going to expect you to do it bigger, and better, with lots of special effects: Change the carbon emissions to meteorites; switch out the oil lobby for aliens; tweak the McGuffin, from man-made environmental catastrophe to the Big Bang theory and the impending collapse of the universe. Bruce Willis and Michael Bay, here we come.

But somehow, Al, I know it’s not you. It’s not where your career should be heading.

All of which is why I think you should skip the usual Oscar speech and announce that you’re running for President—even if I can’t commission the salary.

C’mon, Al. Don’t laugh. You know you’re thinking about it. And it’s a hell of a lot better than making the announcement on (please, somebody stop them!) The Daily Show. So bear with me here:

Sure, Obama just got in the race. And he’s got some support. But on the ground out here in L.A., outside the old “Friends of Bill,” Hillary’s campaign is a non-starter. Too divisive, too much baggage, too much triangulation. When she kicked off her campaign with the line “Let the conversation begin” (written by a New York ad guy), we groaned, because it sounded as if it was written by a New York ad guy. When she said she’d “resent it” if George Bush didn’t get us out of Iraq by January 2009, she sounded petulant. In the age of viral marketing and the Internet (no joke here, just take credit already), where voters want to feel empowered and power bubbles up, it feels like she’s running an old ward-boss campaign. And when she says “It’s time for a woman president,” we agree—but answer “Yes, but not you.” Entitlement is not a job qualification. (And before you ask: Yes, Marty is “entitled” to the Oscar this year, and he’ll probably get it. But not because he said so.)

Moreover, we still don’t know where she stands on the war. And while we’ll always have a soft spot for Bill, it’s time to move on. We don’t want to relive the 90’s; we don’t want to get dragged through the mud over every dime he’s taken over the past eight years in speaking fees. (Remember when Hillary was bewailing the proposed takeover of our ports by a Dubai-based firm while Bill was advising the company? It’s something we’d rather forget.)

Then there’s you, Al:

—You’re on the right side of the war.

—You own the environment.

—You’ve already won the popular vote once before.

So, for all of our sakes, give it a think. Make the speech short and self-deprecating (no reason to bring in Naomi Wolf; go with the classic black tux) and say something to the effect of: “I think I’m supposed to say it’s nice to be nominated. But having been ‘nominated’ once before, I’ve got to tell you: It’s a lot better to win …. Which is why, tonight, I’m announcing my candidacy for President. Together, with your help, we can return to the kind of people we once were, and go forward to become the kind of great nation were always destined to be.”

And that’s it. Over, done and out. And by the time you show up Graydon’s, there won’t be a full checkbook in the house.

Get back to me as soon as you can on this, Al. Obama is waiting in the wings. But in the meantime, keep one thing in mind:

There’s only one thing Hollywood loves more than a winner:

A comeback.

Hug it out, babe,

Ari.

As Tad considers this, he’s Googling his new landlord, Charles O. Lee; the observed is also an observer, a theme that plays out again and again in Mr. Raban’s Seattle. Lee, of course, has his eye on Tad’s neighbor and close friend, the journalist Lucy Bengstrom—while she’s spending a weekend with a reclusive author, gathering information for a profile, Lee is rifling through her underwear drawer. All of this is observed by the author, who is in turn observed by the reader; it’s enough to make Marshall McLuhan dizzy.

The character most used to observation is Lucy’s daughter Alida, whose school is covered in security cameras. The girl coming of age in what Mr. Raban has referred to elsewhere as a “surveillance culture” is a minor miracle of adolescent characterization. From the way she tries out irony—“Saying the opposite of what you meant was cool when it worked, but she had to put a lot of labor into keeping it going, and often, like right now, people just didn’t get it”—to her fixation with certain new words, at no time does the 11-year-old Alida seem like a Disney Channel creation. She alternates between sophistication and naïveté, experimenting with the adult world as she does with irony: not always successfully. Her explorations disturb her mother, who at one point observes that Alida looks “like a nymphet,” though she still cuddles with her mother before sleep.

Even if Mr. Raban’s pop-culture references hit the wrong notes (Surveillance is set in the near future; Green Day’s American Idiot, which Alida is listening to on her iPod, was big in 2005—an eon ago in teenager-time), creating such a believable adolescent is no mean feat.

As one might expect, a character used to being observed has a keen eye herself. Alida, we are told, loves facts. Unlike the other characters, she has not yet discovered the shades of truth and falsehood. Though Mr. Raban is too clever to make this explicit, it’s a nice touch that the most truth-obsessed character is also the youngest, the one with the least experience, and the one for whom “no fact is more reliable” than her address. For all her charm, Alida doesn’t understand how facts can squirm under observation.

The line between truth and fiction in Surveillance depends upon the angle and the observer: from the staged explosion, to an accident Lucy witnesses on the road, to the authenticity of the memoir about which Lucy is writing. It’s one of the most intriguing observations Mr. Raban makes, but it’s a sidebar to most of the action.

A young man Lucy sees having his car searched on the ferry back from her first encounter with the reclusive author August Vanags puts her in mind of a terrorist that she’d profiled for The New York Times; but then she decides he’s exhibiting “the natural creaturely torture of someone entangled in the workings of an enormous, incomprehensible military machine.” Later that night, on the television, the man has been arrested for having “traces of explosive residue” in his car. Lucy considers calling to tell the authorities he’s harmless, although when she last encountered him in person, she decided she “wouldn’t greatly care if they carted this guy off in shackles and cuffs to Guantanamo Bay.”

Although Mr. Raban gets the story off the ground skillfully and cruises smoothly for the majority of the book, there are some bumps. Near the beginning, we’re told Alida has been chronicling her mother’s habits in order to figure out the human equation, but after a brief description of such chronicling, it’s not brought up again for the rest of the book. Nor does Mr. Raban explain how Alida manages to figure out how many milligrams of wine Lucy is drinking. And Charles O. Lee, Lucy’s snooping landlord, reads like a terrible stereotype of an Asian immigrant, down to his pidgin Engrish and obsession with books like Who Moved My Cheese? His flatness is especially apparent when contrasted with the other, more fully realized characters.

A more serious problem is the anti-climactic dénouement. Though most of the guns appearing on the mantelpiece in the first act are fired in the third, Mr. Raban chooses to end the book in a startlingly inconclusive way. He anticipates this when he shows us Lucy generating her profile: “For these inconclusive times, it would be a topically inconclusive piece.” And yet when Lucy rereads her “topically inconclusive piece,” she finds it disappointing. Readers may find the jarring end to Surveillance off-kilter and out of nowhere—it mars a canny observation of observation.

Jonathan Raban’s clear-eyed novel neatly encapsulates how modern culture has made voyeurs of us all. Too bad that what we see as truth can twist under observation, the way a skyscraper’s steel frame twists during an earthquake.

Liz Lopatto is the blog editor for The Kenyon Review. She can be found online at http://kenyonreview.org/blog.

The “times” young Master Byrne was referring to concerned his school’s decision to cancel a dance because the kids (?)—youths (?), children (?), pupils (?), students (?)—had embraced a style of licentious dancing indistinguishable from fucking with your clothes on.

James Chupaila, the principal of young Master Byrne’s school, designates the dance as “pornographic.” That may tell you what he thinks about it, but it doesn’t convey what his students are doing. For that, let us go to the Urban Dictionary, which explains what “grind dancing” (as the principal’s terpsichorean pornography is sometimes called) involves. With apologies for the spelling and the syntax, the definitions, accompanied by examples of correct idiomatic usage, do make clear what’s going on (some punctuation supplied):

“When a female and/or male places there hindquarters in the general area of a male’s Scrotem and then shakes Vigorously. Many youths grind dance with each others boyfriends, and in return the person they grind danced withs girlfriend comes and they beat that bitch down.”

Or: “Also Known As Dirty Dancing. When a girl is rubbing her ass all over a guys dick until it comes to the point where he gets a woody—i was grinding with this girl with the biggest booty.”

This kind of recreation is also called “dancerbating,” which the Urban Dictionary says is “also known as dry-humping. When people get really freaky on the dance floor with wandering hands and grinding hips, much to the disgust of those around them.—Look at that girl getting all freaky with that guy! She looks like she’s dancerbating!”

A variant is the “booty dance,” which is unmistakably described by the dictionary thusly: “1. To dance in a sexually explicit way often termed ghetto making your ass cheeks clap while shaking ones hips. 2. Shaking hips side to side to the beat of the music, the faster your ass shakes the better your booty dance. 3. To thrust hips in a circle stopping at intervals in a robotic motion before returning into a liquid motion of grinding then back into a booty shake.

“To shake your hips and ass cheeks to the beat of the music the faster the better making your flesh jiggle when you hit it, to grind down and back dat ass up as though you had a playay [not yet defined] under you bout to get some ass.”

It follows that people go to grind fests, defined as “Having a party where everyone is grinding. Guys on guys, girls on girls, guys on girls, doesn’t matter. Everyone is fucking grinding til the break of fucking dawn.”

Thus do the wee ones from seventh and eighth grade on entertain themselves when not prevented by school administrators, though their prohibitions are not for long, as Steven L. Smith of Rochester, N.Y., explains when he writes into the Urban Dictionary to announce: “My high school banned nuts to butts dancing, but we can do it in college.” And we’re sure you can, Mr. Smith.

Add alcohol and drugs to the mix of sex and sensuality. The newest surveys tell us illegal drug taking by the young is down but by no means out. As for booze, 40 percent of ninth graders, girls and boys both, drink; 20 percent are binge drinkers. Teacher chaperones at teenage parties have begun to use some kind of electronic wand that they can wave over the heads of the grind-dancers to reveal who has been drinking. The gadget itself is less important than its having been invented and rushed into use. For those who have never been under the influence of alcohol, those who have will tell those who have not that in America, at least, consuming alcohol enhances the urge to grind, booty-dance or whatever, on and off the dance floor.

Whether or not all this fun-making is indicative of a society going to hell in a hand basket is a matter of opinion. But it isn’t only conservative religionists who are alarmed. While they talk about family values (or the lack thereof) among the fornicating, blowjobbing youth of America, the nonreligious seem to be saying the same things with a different vocabulary. In place of family values, they talk about the dysfunctional family. Either way, many older people have a fearful sense that the warp and woof of the underlying fabric of society is frayed and weakening.

People, chiefly older people, have a premonitory sense of being taken away to an unknown conclusion by a downward spiral of change. Is there a vortex of national doom in operation, or are these apprehensions merely a repeat of the old decrying of the generation that is soon to displace them?

Generations are not internally homogenous in their opinions or their actions. Not everybody in the age group is lost in the dancerbating masses. There is a certain stratum of American young people who not only do not dancerbate, but also do not do IT. Or else they do IT less often than their parents did IT at the same age. They have postponed active sex lives even as many of them work their butts off in high school and college. They are ambitious and achieving, but are there enough of them? Evidently not. They are a minority, and maybe a minority too small to occupy all the jobs necessary for the nation to carry on.

Then what of the majority? They are the iPod generation, young people who have not spent 60 consecutive nonsleeping minutes without music or other forms of entertainment. They are a generation of roughly middle-class people who apparently have few of the attributes once used to define members of the middle class. Large numbers have the neatness and cleanliness and the expectations for themselves of the middle class, but not the sobriety, the competence and the self-restraint that had been defining middle-class characteristics.

And these iPodal youths differ in other ways from the middle-class youths of the past besides hungering for Sony PlayStation 3’s and Nintendo Wiis. They have more leisure, but—more importantly in shaping character and behavior—these dancerbating, maniacal music listeners have access to the vices once available only to the debauched members of the upper classes and what Karl Marx dubbed the lumpenproletariat—that is, the lumps creeping about the gray blackness of a society’s criminal depths.

A little dancerbation will hardly ruin a person. Sexaholics have been known to be successful and productive people. Nor will a little cocaine sniffing or a certain amount of binge drinking foreclose a useful existence; it’s when such practices become, if not a way of life, then part of a way of life, one founded on the conviction that the fulfillment of desire ought to come first and then we can talk about work. We all know and recognize the type—the ignorant, incompetent, feckless, celebrity-struck boobies who, when released into the labor force, turn into human amyloidal gunk, clogging, impeding and holding back every business, every institution and every social process.

Happily, many a person in the age-15-to-40 group doesn’t fit that description—but enough already do, and their numbers are growing. By all reports, a new American has come into existence: call him Pleasure Man or Consumer Man or Dawdler Man or Cool Man or Grinder Man, he is a human to whom all is owed and who owes nothing in return.

Somewhere along the line of the passing years, the New American may become preponderant, so numerous, that the essential functions of this advanced 21st-century society will lose forward motion and begin to float backwards. Then we’ll all be out with our buckets, looking for a gasoline pipeline to tap to run our broken-down cars, as they must do in Nigeria.

Forget overexposure. These things quickly clock past cliché and head right into the Green Zone (ding—there’s one!) of cultural irrelevancy.

This year, in an attempt to get ahead of the curve (ding—two!) here’s a list of targets that are already due for a pre-emptive strike (three!) from the lexicon:

• Surge. Troop surge, resurgent Democrats, insurgent forces, or any other derivation, including Nancy Pelosi as a surge protector, or Hillary/Obama/John Edwards surging forth in a poll. It’s only January, but there are already 48 million citations like this on Google. (Yes, it’s the word of the year.) And so far, as the war goes, why don’t we all just agree to call it “Iraq III: This time, we mean it. Sort of.”

• Listening Tour and Exploratory Committee. Enough already. This ain’t our first rodeo; we’ve been down this road before, and it’s thoroughly proscribed: I talk, you listen, you get to ask a few questions, I tell you what you want to hear—and then we all go home happy, in my case with a sack full of campaign contributions. C’mon: In the history of modern political campaigns, has any “exploratory committee” or “listening tour” ever resulted in anything but an announcement that someone is running for office?

• 2.0 Anything. Internet 2.0, Hillary 2.0, Iraq 2.0. Can’t anybody here count anymore? This convention is woefully overused, not to mention that it usually represents a gross undercount. My advice: Given the surprising success of Rocky VI (a.k.a. Rocky Balboa), Roman numerals will always remain a stylish and classy alternative.

• Exit Strategy. Maybe it’s just me, but it occurs to your correspondent that the recently deposed C.E.O. of Home Depot, Bob Nardelli, is the only guy to come up with a winning exit strategy for anything in years: He ran the company into the ground, yet managed to get paid almost $200 million to take a hike. My take on this: Put him in charge of Iraq. We’ve already run the country into the ground; our reputation is trashed. With Mr. Nardelli at the helm, things certainly won’t get any better—but maybe they’ll pay us to leave.

• Political Movement. Moving to the center, moving to the right, moving to the left, shoring up the base. Henceforth, let’s all agree to use the far more accurate and concise terminology: pandering.

• Bipartisanship. If polonium has a half-life in the human body of about 50 days before it decays, bipartisanship in the governing body lasts about two seconds—just slightly longer than the time it takes to echo through a campaign rally. In other words, it’s a phrase that vaporizes instantly, sort of like “responsible government,” “term limits,” “civil unions,” “campaign reform,” “compassionate conservatism,” “victory,” “staying the course,” “cut and run,” “we’ll stand down when they stand up” or “universal health care.” More prosaically, it joins a list of words like “luxury,” “exclusive,” “gourmet” and “deluxe,” which signify absolutely nothing, save perhaps for: “Want fries with that?”

• Bono as World Savior. I won’t argue that U2 isn’t the world’s greatest rock band. But on the other hand, did anyone else notice that for all the millions of dollars and full-page newspaper ads that the Gap took out promoting the singer’s Red Campaign, the retailer’s same-store sales still tanked? In other words, is it possible that the baby boomer’s musical messiah is viewed by the younger generations as a tax-dodging old geezer? Just a thought. If nothing else, the mitigating news here is that at least he had the good sense to adopt all of Africa, wholesale, rather than just retailing it and picking up a single African orphan.

• “I”-anything. Such as: iPods, i-music, i-phones, i-video—anything with an “I” in front of it, save possibly for “I-backdated-my-stock-options.”

• Hedge Funds Saving Hollywood. Pssst: Wanna know a dirty little West Coast secret? Hedge-fund managers are the new German dentists. In the 1980’s, Texas oil money was going to save Hollywood; in the 1990’s, it was German tax shelters; now, it’s hedge funds. Either way, the outcome is always the same: We take the money, spend it all, and the hedge-fund guys won’t even be able to get into the roped-off section at the Premier. The names change, but one thing stays the same: The fastest way to earn $5 million in Hollywood is to come out here with ten.

• Hypothetical Books. For example, If I Did It, A Million Little Pieces, The Iraq Study Group Report: A New Approach. Yes, sir—along with the first two Bob Woodward books on the Bush administration (Bush at War and Plan of Attack), it seems like the time for this new interesting book category has come and gone. Let’s get Obama writing again, fast. And in the meantime, here’s a not-so-hypothetical question: If (I should posit when) Judith Regan writes her memoirs this year, how long do you think it will be before she winds up on Oprah?

• Starchitect Buildings. See “Bipartisanship.” But instead of “You want fries with that?”, substitute the phrase “How do you like those granite countertops?”

• Any Kind of “Bubble.” The Internet bubble, the real-estate bubble, George Bush living in a Presidential bubble. Personally, I prefer “-mania,” as in “tulipmania,” but either way, the psychological underpinning is the same: Ignorance is bliss. And while we’re at it here, let’s make a deal: Let’s all agree to shoot the first TV news anchor who offers up the exact number of standing ovations and interruptions-by-applause that George Bush receives during his upcoming State of the Union address. (On the other hand, don’t worry about it: Dick Cheney will probably take care of it, particularly if the count is too low.)

• Trying to explain the difference between Shiites and Sunnis. Enough, unless the story somehow miraculously incorporates the phrase “both agreed to the cessation of hostilities.”

• The Tragedy of Katie Couric. Ah, the unfairness, the inhumanity, the sadness of it all. Has it occurred to anyone else that the very people who are now writing these articles about Her Anchorship’s grounding are also the very selfsame scribes who over-hyped her rise in the first place? No matter. Trust me, by the end of year, we’re bound to see the story “No Exit Strategy Here—Katie 2.0, the Sequel: Moving to the center, restoring her base, she’s surging in the ratings …. ”

- Max Abelson

Dazzling 10-Story Iridescent Black Brick Condominium, 100 West 18th Street, to Include 41 Luxury Units and Prime Retail on Sixth Avenue

Modernist Australian Architect Garrett Gourlay Utilizes Unique Facade to Highlight Corner Property Featuring 23 Distinct Layouts and Abundant Amenities

NEW YORK (January 2, 2007) - Designed by architect Garrett Gourlay as a distinct visual statement at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West 18th Street, 100 West 18th Street, a new luxury residential condominium property, will rise 10-stories in an unusual multi-angled shape that creates chamfered corners, multiple setbacks, double-height windows and an array of private terraces, all sheathed in iridescent black brick.

The building will consist of 41 condominium residences, with 23 distinct layouts and prime retail space at the base. Scott Aaron, director of Development for The Brauser Group Aaron points out, "The building reflects the originality of this truly eclectic neighborhood. The abundance of flexible floor plans will allow buyers to select homes that best suit their lifestyles."

Uncommon common areas will include such sophisticated elements as an art gallery-styled lobby; landscaped roof deck with outdoor shower and gas grill; club room with kitchenette connecting to an exterior Zen garden; dedicated package room with refrigeration for food deliveries; fitness center; private storage bins for each residence; and 24-hour concierge service.

The units range from one- to four bedrooms, and most have flexible layouts. Two spectacular penthouses will include dramatic, glass-enclosed spiral staircases leading to private roof decks, 2,000 square feet and 1,500 square feet, respectively, each featuring outdoor gas grills, fireplaces and showers.

The contemporary style apartments, ranging in size from 800- to 3,000 square feet, are designed to reinforce an experience of open space. Top-tier gourmet kitchens will include Miele appliances, Sub-zero refrigerators, wine refrigerators, Miele coffeemakers, and GE washers and vented gas dryers. The master bedrooms will include such unusual features as custom closets and iPod docking stations. Master bathrooms will feature Tea-for-Two soaking tubs and separate lava stone showers. Six of the units will contain wood-burning fireplaces.

Luxury finishes and details abound in each residence, including wide plank white oak floors, Zephyr-Milano stainless steel and glass range hoods in the kitchens and floor-to-ceiling limestone master bathrooms.

Located in East Chelsea, the project is being developed by The Brauser Group. Construction management is being provided by HRH Construction, Structural Engineering by DeSimone Consulting Engineers and MEP Engineering by MGJ Associates. The sales office opens in January 2007 and the anticipated date of occupancy is January 2008.