An abstract from Dread and Superficiality: Woody Allen as Comic Strip, a new book to be published next month, is available at the Guardian. Arcade Fire’s a lucky band. Spike Jonze was “thinking of them almost every step of the way” in making his famous film. Rather than insular, is American Literature “borderless”? From the NYRB, a podcast on Herta Müller, the 2009 Nobel laureate in literature. Vol. 1 touched on Müller and her recent win last week. “Is there […]
Chinua Achebe: Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is ‘Seductive’
An excerpt from NPR’s All Things Considered
Bites: So Many Wild Things, Gigantic Interviewed, Mr. Rochester is Dreamy, Nobels for the Small Press, 1989, Dirty Projectors at NYer Fest, and more
Wild Things: It’s Released! Did you know?? Pitchfork interviews Spike Jonze. We’ve All Been Wondering Lately about “What Makes a Children’s Classic.”(NYT Arts Beat) Ohmahgawd–Wild Things, Wild Things, Wild Things. Lit. This essay on the importance of the humanities is outstanding.(Harper’s) Gigantic is interviewed by Fictionaut. “But, reader, I loved him.” On Charlotte Brontë’s Mr. Rochester as the most romantic character in literature. Oh, yes. Reading!: the demand of literature From last week, The Millions on Lit’s Nobel Prize and […]
Does the Nobel Committee Put Politics Before Literature? Should We Care?
Whether or not it’s true that her political background is more illuminating than her literary one (I don’t think it is), after last year’s debacle we should all come to expect from the Nobel committee a fickle attitude toward art for art’s sake as well as a literary anti-Americanism. Hey, it’s their prize, not ours.
Bites: Book Review Highlights, Kakutani Two-Step, Required Reading, the Millennials, and Why Our Media is Getting Scolded
Celebrated artist of the female form, Peter Paul Rubens, was “a man of controlled appetites, with a modest disposition and a reputation for tact and discretion.” He was also a diplomat, spy, and peace-maker, according to Mark Lamster’s new book “Master of Shadows.” Other Book Review Highlights: A history, slightly obsessive, of Strunk & White’s little style book.(NYT) Michael Chabon’s new essays: “First Person Masculine”?(NYT) Has anyone else noticed that James Joyce has been tryin’ to change a lot of […]
Tao Lin and Kendra Malone Write E-fiction, Music is Made
A new ebook, Conor Oberst Sex, a story by Tao Lin and Kendra Grant Malone, was published yesterday from Happy Cobra Books. Additionally, there’s an EP by Michael Sanchez (or, The Way It Is) that was inspired by the fiction. It’s called “Music Is My Boyfriend.”
Bites: Chabon Interviewed, Granta Changes, Literary Doppelgangers, Grand Theft Auto & Inherent Similarities, Anderson to adapt Dahl, Real Chocolate, and more
Michael Chabon is interviewed at Jacket Copy on fatherhood and the writing process: “I think in a way, that’s sort of what you’re engaged in doing as a writer, too. You come into this inheritance of things that have been done and the ways in which they have been done, and people who influence you sort of pass along what they think is important, and what they think you need to know how to do. But over time you begin […]
Emily Blunt in The Young Victoria
Emily Blunt was much too quick an actress to play the flat-charactered fashion ditz in The Devil Wears Prada, and her grandiose new period piece, The Young Victoria, has the potential to allow her a part she deserves.