Bites: Paperbacks, N+1 Editor Scores Big, Ai Poems, Lipsytemania, Baseball Secrets, and More

“How the Paperback Novel Changed Literature” (Thanks Boing Boing) Taking a road trip with David Foster Wallace. N+1 editor scores big. 5 poems by the late Ai. All the Lipsyte you can handle. Everybody is happy about the forthcoming Band of Horses album. The best baseball books. All the dirty little things about baseball players you didn’t know as a kid.

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Bites: Bolaño and Borges, Nin on LSD, Nick Cave Photoshopped, the Greatest Metal Tour EVER, and More

  I’ve loved just about every installment of “What Bolaño Read” over at MobyLives.  Today, the late Chilean writers fondness for Jorge Luis Borges. Lit. Anais Nin on LSD’s value at Arthur. I only wished people had had time to study drugs as they studied religion or philosophy and to adapt to this chemical alteration of our bodies. Token magical realism “seems not just forced, but fashionable” says Alastair Harper of the Guardian. Go on over to My Old Kentucky […]

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Bites: Polish Crime Covers, Lit in the 00’s, David Foster Wallace, Pacino as Shylock, and More

  Over at The Rumpus, we learn that Poland just knows how to do sweet cover art for their crime novels. At New York Magazine, Sam Anderson rips into the 00’s.  Appearances by David Foster Wallace, Junot Díaz. Bolaño, Eggers, P.G. Wodehouse, Borges, and Wilde.   A nod to N+1, a short drive into Kindle territory, and then ends by again talking about the same book that started him on the whole conversation: Infinite Jest. Most of the book’s action […]

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Bites: The Shining pt. 2, Lethem in Manhattan, Rimbaud, Turkey Holocaust Poetry, Grass Widow on WFMU, and More

Danny, he said, was certain to have been left “with a lifetime’s worth of emotional scars” after his experiences at the Overlook, where his father was possessed by the hotel, tried to kill him and his mother and eventually died. I’m going to guess two things.  The first being Stephen King isn’t going to name the sequel to The Shining, The Shining 2: Danny Torrance Boogaloo.   Secondly, I’m guessing he’s not going to get Stanley Kubrick to do the film […]

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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 […]

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