In our morning reading: Kazuo Ishiguro wins the Nobel, thoughts on Carmen Maria Machado’s debut collection, and much more.
Afternoon Bites: Chiara Barzini Interviewed, Lidia Yuknavitch, Joe Meno Fiction, Laura Jane Grace, and More
In our afternoon reading: Chiara Barzini and Annie DeWitt in conversation, new writing from Lidia Yuknavitch and Nathan Englander, and more.
Afternoon Bites: Charlie Jane Anders on Karaoke, Joe Meno, Algiers’s Latest, and More
In our afternoon reading: nonfiction by Charlie Jane Anders, a discussion of race and literature, a new Joe Meno novella, and more.
Conversation: Talking “Office Girl,” Chicago, and Art Movements with Joe Meno
Is Joe Meno known for his range as a writer? Because if he isn’t, he ought to be; his books have covered everything from politically-charged dissections of family (The Great Perhaps) to brutally honest coming-0f-age novels (Tender as Hellfire) to surreal and emotionally honest breakdowns of pulp archetypes (The Boy Detective Fails). Meno’s latest, Office Girl, is a seemingly straightforward narrative, following the intersecting lives of two art-obsessed Chicagoans in their early 20s. And yet, there are subtle complexities present, […]
Morning Bites: LCD Jonathan Franzen, Joe Meno, Cro-Mags Poetry, Lost Gatsby Endings and More
Franklin Foer’s New York Times Magazine piece on Washington D.C. killer fabulist, Albrecht Muth, is definitely not the Gatsby story you might be expecting. Speaking of Gatsby: The “lost” endings to Fitzgerald’s famous novel. Did you hear that Harley Flanagan of the Cro-Mags has been arrested for stabbing people at a venue in New York? Do you know about the book of poetry he wrote that Allen Ginsberg wrote the forward for? The sad and scary story of 3:AM Magazine’s servers just vanishing at […]
Afternoon Bites: Nouvella Books, ABC No Rio, Norman Juster, and more
Nouvella Books has made their first title, Matthew Salesses’s The Last Repatriate, available to order. At NPR, Norman Juster looks back on The Phantom Tollbooth. Spencer Ackerman on the legacy of ABC No Rio. Antonia Crane on the anthology Warmed & Bound, at The Rumpus. The first issue of Unstuck will be out in Decemeber (and can be pre-ordered now), and features the likes of Aimee Bender, Joe Meno, J. Robert Lennon, and Amelia Gray.
Dusting Off: “Demons in the Spring” by Joe Meno
Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno Akashic Books; 272 p. Posted by Tobias Carroll Joe Meno’s coming-of-age/coming-to-punk-rock novel Hairstyles of the Damned met the world in 2004. With a collection of resonant themes and defiant first-person narration — not to mention Meno’s outspoken sentiment in favor of independent publishing — it found an unlikely audience in a cross-section of punk rockers, independent media advocates, and literary aficionados. Of Meno’s four novels, though, Hairstyles is in some ways atypical: his […]