Thoughts on the latest from Lee Ranaldo (and the legacy of Sonic Youth); a review of Vijay Iyer’s Teju Cole-inspired composition; Pitchfork begins a look back at a golden era of hip-hop; Wayne Koestenbaum’s new essay collection is reviewed; and more.
“My whole trajectory as a novelist is maybe about finding the form and through line of a constructed world that can hold in it what I really think about . . . everything.” Hari Kunzru interviewed Rachel Kushner for BOMB. At The Talkhouse, Amy Rebecca Klein wrote about Spring Breakers. Zach Baron reviewed Richard Hell’s memoir for Bookforum. Jerry Saltz ponders the fate of gallery shows. Stephen Soderbergh might be adapting John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor. Douglas Wolk on Don Giovanni Records. The Los Angeles Times […]
A roundup of things consumed by our contributors.
“For a villain to be effective in literature, there must exist for readers the potential for a complex combination of recognition and repulsion. An ability for us both to see ourselves within them and also a desire not to see ourselves in them, to resist this identification.” Brian Evenson on the role of evil in his own work, and that of Cormac McCarthy. Robert Silvers, interviewed at The Paris Review about said magazine’s early days. Michael Czyzniejewski, interviewed at The Collagist. Edward Champion […]
This map of the literary United States makes our inner literary cartographers very, very happy. Scott Brown has good things to say about the new production of Death of a Salesman. Warren Ellis assembles perspectives on the state of magazine publishing, including that of Vol.1 contributor Abraham Riesman. Edward Champion interviews Hari Kunzru, who will be at McNally Jackson on Tuesday and WORD on Thursday. Small Demons puts us on the trail of Hunger Games-themed recipes. Nick Harkaway’s Angelmaker is out […]
“As inspiration, Kunzru cited David Lynch’s movies, which “refuse a certain kind of sense,” and Roberto Bolaño’s magnum opus, 2666. Gaps, möbius strips of logic, parallel plots, unanswerable questions—Kunzru’s remarks recalled, for me, an essay he wrote for The Guardian in September 2011 about a postmodernism exhibit at the Victoria & Albert Museum.” Jacob Silverman chats with Hari Kunzru for Capital New York. Retronaut has posted a selection of famous writers’ letterheads. (via MobyLives) Mark Leyner tells The Believer about his influences. Chad Prevost on […]