(Via)
Is Gary Shteyngart Okay?
I’m not allowed to quote my advanced copy of Gary Shteyngart’s forthcoming book, Super Sad True Love Story, but I can tell you this: it’s about a middle-aged, overweight Jewish man in a dystopian future where everybody is too occupied with social media to realize that their living through Shteyngart’s version of 1984. What I can do, is link you to this thing Shteyngart wrote for Publishers Weekly about “Book Expo America 2024“, and after you’re done reading it, you […]
Weekend Bites: Cocteau Cult, The Salinger Plan, Intellectual War, Shteyngart’s Free Food, Playboy Cartoons, and More
The cult of Cocteau Want to try being like J.D. Salinger? Don’t pay taxes, tweet, or keep the same e-mail address. If that doesn’t work, just freak out about tiny things. A Ticket to the Circus, Norris Church Mailer’s memoirs about seeing Norman Mailer in the nude, is reviewed. I think I’ve already made up my mind on this one. Good book people on Twitter. On Gary Shteyngart and food. Gahn Wilson’s Playboy cartoons get the book treatment. Intellectual feud: […]
Gary Shteyngart’s Tears
Actually, I’m pretty sure Shteyngart doesn’t give a shit about the title of this book. The Boing Boing thing on Obamistan! makes me think it might be pretty funny.
Weekend Bites: Buddy Holly Negotiates, Boozy Writers, Shteyngart Gets Questioned, Patti Smith Podcast, A Bunch of Salinger, and More
Buddy Holly negotiates a contract. Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Anne Sexton, and other famous literary drunks and addicts. I interviewed Gary Shteyngart over at Jewcy. He calls Isaac Bashevis Singer “nuts”. Cassettes From My Ex does Largehearted Boy’s Book Notes. Trying to get lucky? Try Goethe. Patti Smith and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein on the Book Review podcast. Remembering Salinger Dave Eggers Felicia Sullivan Salinger and the butcher. Andy Borowitz says “Hollywood Eager to Finally Fuck Up Catcher in the Rye“ […]
Bites: New American Stories, New Nabokov is “Not a Novel”, Literary Journals as News Sources, Air Waves at Daytrotter, and More
Maud Newton talked about it in early November, but this recently posted review on Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigration (Library of America), had a quote I liked. Gary Shteyngart falls in love with cereal for the “unprecedented miracle” of toy prizes: “It tastes the way America feels. . . . . Something for nothing.” Lit. “The first thing you need to know about this new Nabokov thing is that it is not a novel.” — Ward Six. “In an ongoing effort to […]
Gigantic gets a pretty new website
They hipped us on Gary Shteyngart’s love of smoked meats, featured an in-depth conversation between Tao Lin and Malcolm Gladwell, and pretty much just blew our minds with their first issue. Now, the folks at Gigantic are staking their claim on the interweb with a pretty new website that has art from New York Times Magazine featured artist Thomas Doyle, Shya Scanlon’s latest installment of his internet-serialized novel Forecast and new fiction from J.A. Tyler. Go check it out here.
Weekend Bites: Dave Eggers is like John Wayne with a pen, Raymond Carver, Jon Ronson, Bjork and Barney kaput?, Hornby hearts LHB, and more.
Three Guys One Book: “Where have all the cowboys gone? Has literature isolated itself from a bigger cultural context?” Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith, Dennis Johnson, Gary Shteyngart, and the New York Times bestsellers of 1943 all make cameos. Jacket Copy asks: “How much of (Raymond) Carver’s “minimalist” style was a byproduct of (Gordon) Lish’s editing?” This 1997 New Yorker article provided as reference, and this review of the Library of America release of “Raymond Carter: Collected Stories” might shed sufficient […]