Permutations, Mutations, and New Ballads: Thoughts on Three Literary Remixes

Ubiquity is a hell of a thing. No two people will have the same narratives, pop culture references, or cultural mythologies dwelling in the back of their heads–but there are certain stories that are familiar enough to enough people that they’re ripe for retelling. Or, in some cases, they’re ripe for modification, for translation into another narrative, playing with readers’ expectations and knowledge of the source material. To cite a few examples, John Darnielle’s short novel Master of Reality used […]

Continue Reading

Morning Bites: Rum Diary preview, The Recipe Project, John Minichillo, Springsteen Suicide, and more

We’re pretty excited to see Johnny Depp (who never seems to age) in another Hunter S. Thompson role.  So the preview for the The Rum Diary obviously makes us very happy. The Recipe Project, the cookbook put together by One Ring Zero, which features uber-chefs like Mario Batali, David Chang, and Isa Chandra Moskowitz, gets a writeup at Huff. Po. About five seconds after reading it, we got really hungry.  Too bad we’re probably only going to be eating beans […]

Continue Reading