Kim Gordon Reminding You That She’s The Greatest

  Kim Gordon, Courtney Love, Marilyn Manson, and Ariel Pink (Ariel Pink?) all star in Hedi Slimane’s great new Saint Laurent rock fashion ads. We only posted the Gordon one because our server could only take so much awesome, but in the event that you’d like to see the rest (and you should…), you should just go here. Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Twitter, Facebook, Google +, our Tumblr, and sign up for our mailing list.

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William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Medals With a Side of Adultery

There’s a treasure trove of William Faulkner’s old stuff that Sotheby’s will be putting up for auction, including an unpublished 12-page short story entitled “The Trapper’s Story,”and an original book of poetry called “Vision in Spring.” But the big prize of the auction is undoubtedly Faulkner’s Nobel Prize medal, the diploma, and the hand-written draft of his 1950 Nobel acceptance speech. Faulkner’s trip to Oslo yielded the award that could fetch up to $2 million dollars when it goes up on the […]

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The Old Oxford: Remembrance of Scents Past and Writing About What You Smell

“Life begins somewhere with the scent of lavender,” André Aciman starts off the first essay in his collection, Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere.  “Lavender” is Aciman’s Proustian meditation on how a particular scent that his father used made him feel “sheltered, happy, beloved,” and it ushered in “good thoughts–about life.”

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Bernard Malamud’s Shooter Inspiration is Dead

A real life inspiration behind Bernard Malamud’s novel (and total meh movie), The Natural, has passed away at the age of 83. You might not be too familiar with Ruth Ann Steinhagen, but she’s the lady behind the minor character of Harriet Bird, who plays a major part in the story of Roy Hobbes:

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Poetry and Punks on The Bowery: Richard Hell’s “I Dreamed I was a Very Clean Tramp” Reviewed

I Dreamed I was a Very Clean Tramp By Richard Hell Ecco; 304 p. “Broadway had two shadow companions,” Luc Sante wrote in his book Low Life. “Starchy, upper-class Fifth Avenue on the one hand, and on the other the Bowery, the proverbial den of all vices.” Sante was writing about the Bowery as the street and neighborhood of mid-1800s to the early 20th century, but prior to the Civil War, farmland, estates, and theatres populated the area we recognize today […]

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J. Crew Catalog Murder Mystery

It ain’t exactly Agatha Christie, but Meghan O’Neill has figured out that all the models in the J. Crew catalogs that arrive at your house are actually solving murders while trying to sell you cable knit sweaters. J. Crew catalog murder mystery fan fiction? I think this might beat Your Carhartt Boyfriend. 

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The Old Oxford: Steven Alan and All That Jazz

I can’t really argue much with anything “Loosely inspired by the effortless style of post bop musicians,” and that’s probably why Steven Alan’s Fall 2013 collection was without a doubt one of the biggest highlights for me as I ran around from Fashion Week events, to meetings, then to coffee shops to write up whatever deadline I was up against. Between the overall presentation and the inspiration behind the collection, I couldn’t really stop thinking about it.

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East India Company’s “Smoakey” Tea From 1785

If you pay enough attention to rare book collection blogs, you sometimes learn things like how the East India Company logged all the tea they brought in from China: “Quality ranges from “musty and mouldy” to “superfine”. Additional symbols noted the leaf size, smells and other conditions such as “woody” or “smoakey.” The Rare Book Division at Princeton recently acquired the catalog from 1785. Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Twitter, Facebook, Google + our Tumblr, and sign up for our mailing list.

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