Bites: “Essential” postmodernism, Bruni was bulimic, Daniel Radcliffe’s heartbeat, and more

The LA Times’ book blog Jacket Copy has brazenly compiled the dorkiest list ever of “essential postmodern reading.” Levi Asher received three copies of the New York Times Magazine this weekend. I, sadly, received none. It’s all well and good though, because I have very little interest in Frank Bruni’s binge-eating, possibly bulimic early years. Shudder. On the same topic, here’s what Gawker had to say about the famed food writer’s “romanticized glorification of a disturbed kiddie psychosis.” EmDashes links […]

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Gregor Samsa Was No Hungarian Butcher

By Laura Macomber Everyone loves a good antihero. He or she is our disgraceful, literary doppelganger, a picaro so ignoble that, in simultaneously condemning and vicariously delighting in their exploits, readers are spiritually elevated. In The Convalescent (McSweeney’s), first-time novelist Jessica Anthony has generated her own modern-day picaro. She treats him with such heavy handedness, though, that instead of exacting derisive social commentary, Anthony creates a character so utterly lonely, so physically despicable and self-pitying, that his wry observations and […]

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