Books, Conversations, Featured, Interviews

The Same Vines Twice: An Interview with Donald Breckenridge, Fiction Editor of The Brooklyn Rail

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Donald Breckenridge has served as the fiction editor of The Brooklyn Rail since 2001. In addition he is the author of several novels, including You Are Here, 6/2/95, This Young Girl Passing, and Rockaway Wherein. His latest  invention is the second volume of The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology. This second helping of the Rail‘s fiction section is that rare collection that is joyfully archival: a work which genuinely spans the globe. It is a dusty-fingered, crypt-cracking dossier of stories that conjure laughter, […]

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Bites

Afternoon Bites: PANK Invasion, Brooklyn High Schools, Morrissey Smiling, and More

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Tonight is the PANK Invasion at WORD.  So many capital letters, so many great readers. The hidden treasures of Erasmus Hall High School. From the department of Too Good To Be True: Zach Galifianakis as Ignatius J. Reilly would be basically perfect. Did someone say “lots of pictures of Morrissey smiling“? Flavorwire is on it. Also included in that photo set: a picture of Morrissey with a cat on his head, presumably taken in a spirit similar to this one. If […]

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Bites

Bites: Stephen Elliott in Williamsburg, McSweeney’s Broadsheet, the Original Gossip Girl, Lethem Recommends Poe, Balloon boy FAQ, and more

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Stephen Elliott hung out  in Williamsburg (went hard, if you will) and wrote about it on The Rumpus. Lit. Largehearted Boy reviews Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked. McSweeney’s to publish an old-fashioned, Sunday edition-sized broadsheet: San Francisco Panorama Jonathan Lethem  recommends on Daily Beast Edgar Allen Poe’s only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and describes it as “the missing link between Mary Shelley and Herman Melville.” My kind of narrative. On Willa Cather’s development as a novelist. […]

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Bites

Bites: Is New York Bad for Writers?, Should Bookstores Rethink Shelving?, East of Eden as Performance, the Death of the Man of Letters, How to Get Rid of Hipsters, and more

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HTMLGiant asks if New York for writers is The Place to Be, or whether it’s just too damn expensive. Lit. Should bookstores shelve by publisher rather than author? (Thanks, The Rumpus) How East of Eden became a performance piece. A surprisingly interesting picture essay of the last 10 years of Nobel Prize winners in literature. The “slow death of the man of letters”? Hm. Shakespeare’s endless Answers: Why it’s smart to be a Shakespearean fool. Books as art. Very cool. […]

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