Weekend Bites: A Nobel Laureates Commute, Blake Butler & NY Tyrant on Franzen, Márquez Used and More

At The New York Times:  Peruvian Nobel laureate, Mario Vargas Llosa, discusses teaching Borges at an Ivy, investing his money, and the killer commute from Jersey to Manhattan: ““It’s very nice. But not if you take the train at 5 or 6 o’clock. It can be a Kafkaesque commute.” At Vice:  Blake Butler and NY Tyrant take HTML GIANT’S “Mean Week” on the road, and trash Jonathan Franzen over at Vice. Hilarity ensues. At Boing Boing: Star Trak characters reading […]

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Bites: Taylor on Sampsell, Jersey Shore Vs. Joshua Ferris, Iggy Pop Writes a Letter, and More

Justin Taylor pens a “peer review” of Kevin Sampsell’s wonderful book, A Common Pornography. “Some of it’s funny, and some of it’s touching, and some of it’s sad–and a lot of it is two or more of these things at once–but I think what it really succeeds at doing is creating an atmosphere that encompasses all of those states without forcing the reader to choose one” Boston Globe reviews a new Gabriel García Márquez biography. Jersey Shore vs. Joshua Ferris: […]

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Bites: Poe and Balloon Boy, Roth Interviewed, Fitzgerald’s taxes, Kim Gordon’s art, and more

Did you ever think there was a Balloon Boy and Edgar Allan Poe link?  Did you care? Philip Roth gives an interview over on The Daily Beast.  Holy shite. Apparently hipsters hate trivia night, but we proved that nerds don’t, and the good folks as  L Magazine filmed it. Lit. The Mexican government kept an eye on Gabriel García Márquez, thinking he was a Colombian spy. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s taxes. I’m interested. How to survive as a writer in the […]

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