“Its blending of the real and the fantastic is so silken it can almost pass unnoticed…” Luc Sante on Jean Vigo’s film L’Atalante.

• In Saratoga, Elisabeth Donnelly takes in a day at the races.

• Steve Brezenoff provides a playlist for his novel Brooklyn, Burning.

• Chuck Pahlaniuk talks YA, the afterlife, Amy Hempel, and more.

• Geoff Dyer on the art of finding tennis partners.

• The folks at WORD interview Joe Donnelly, editor of the fine Los Angeles-based literary magazine Slake.

• At Dusted, Nate Knaebel looks at recent Band Booking interviewees Jacuzzi Boys: “Whatever lo-fi tendencies lurked on earlier records…are tempered here in favor of what is, if not a mature sound then certainly one conscientious of how pop smarts can be elevated by a solid recording.”