A roundup of things consumed by our contributors. Tobias Carroll “She was looking at a record called Anarchy in the U.K. by a group called the Sex Pistols. It was a very ugly cover, but I am quite interested in anarchism because of The Dispossessed.” That’s from Jo Walton’s Among Others, a novel set in 1979 about a young woman named Morwenna attending an English boarding school. She reads voraciously; she expounds at length on the science fiction and fantasy that she’s encountering, and this […]
Morning Bites: Slaughterhouse-Five is banned, Eggers on Sendak, Andrew Bird does Kermit, and more
Today: writers tell the Daily Beast their favorite summer reads, Kurt Vonnegut is banned in a Missouri school, Andrew Bird covers “It’s Not Easy Being Green,” and a bunch more.
Johnny Depp: Man of Other Letters
Something learned while reading the Vanity Fair interview between Johnny Depp and Patti Smith, is that Depp is the owner of letters and manuscripts written by people like Dylan Thomas, Jack Kerouac and Arthur Rimbaud.
Random Thanksgiving Bites: Punk Photographers, Victorian Veggies, Leftovers, Thankful for Kerouac, and More
On this Thanksgiving, Glen E. Friedman tells you to celebrate the holiday with a little reality check. We will oblige. Long before Jonathan Safran Foer wrote a book about it, “vegetarianism was a Victorian ‘lifestyle’ with several vegetarian restaurants in London in the late century“. The Faster Times review Safran Foer’s latest book, and call it “a real downer.” For all you carnivores out there, The Young and Hungry have their turkey, and Felicia Sullivan has a chocolate caramel cheesecake […]
Bites: Kerouac “Misunderstood”, Fictionaut, Gore Vidal Sitting, Xiu Xiu Returns, Ghosts, and more.
The Rumpus says of Jack Kerouac that “you’d be pressed to find a more quoted, misunderstood, revered, and culturally significant icon of the latter half of the 20th century.” Yeh. Lit. Fictionaut founder Juumlrgen Fauth is interviewed over at AgencySpy. Celebrity memoirs: Good for the publishing industry, useless otherwise. Jonathan Safran Foer is going after the big meatheads. Gore Vidal just sits there. Happy birthday Terry Southern. (Thanks Arthur) Bellevue Literary Review’s Fall issue is out. Music Xiu Xiu is […]
Bites: Harry Potter parties, they just can’t let old Jackie rest, Thomas Pynchon at the stroke of twelve, and more
So what if a certain boy wizard and his mates like to toss back a pint or two? I’m pretty sure I can name five other classic children stories that involve drinking, drug taking, and other unsuitable behavior. Don’t people have better things to kvetch about? The battle over Jack Kerouac’s estate is still going on. Maurice Sendak is totally into the film version of Where the Wild Things Are. Really. Jessica Hopper interviews Marissa Paternoster from the band Screaming […]
Bites: The homosexual undertones of Harry Potter, Atlas Sound and Panda Bear destroy indie, Salman Rushdie and Thomas Pynchon eating dinner together
Gawker on “The Homosexual Undertones of Harry Potter“. Worth it just for the picture, and the line “Alan Rickman looks like a New Wave lesbian in a cape.” There should be a law against Atlas Sound and Panda Bear (of Animal Collective) colaborating on this song, it’s really not fair to everybody else (except maybe Woods). The new Atlas Sound album, Logos, in October on Kranky. On the flipside of that, not so sure how I feel about Death Cab […]