Afternoon Bites: Blake Butler on Dennis Cooper, John Cage, Avid Bookshop, and more

“From the very first sentence, we still find the familiar wicked slant of Cooper’s perennial knack for penetrative dialogue (in more than one sense, and  with a degree of simultaneous awe and terror that I believe is unmatched in fiction), though the trajectory of it has been bent again.” Blake Butler reviews Dennis Cooper’s new novel The Marbled Swarm. (We’ll be hosting Cooper in conversation with Brandon Stosuy in two weeks.) At Tin House’s blog: the first installment of Rob Spillman’s culture […]

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Morning Bites: Stacks of books, Jennifer Gilmore talks to Elissa Schappell, Franzen and P.J. O’Rourke on Bill Maher, and more

Slate on the new Jeffrey Eugenides novel, The Marriage Plot.  Vol. 1 on Jeffrey Eugenides: the dude really knows how to rock a vest. If you like pictures of stacks of books from the offices of various media companies, BuzzFeed has got the post for you. Jonathan Franzen, P.J. O’Rourke, and others discussed Occupy Wall Street with Bill Maher this past weekend. Jennifer Gilmore interviews Elissa Schappell over at The Rumpus. Thanks to WFMU for leading us to Hans Richter’s […]

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Weekend Bites: John Cage Bio, Jen Gilmore’s Year, Pynchon on the Screen, Holiday Roads and More

The New Republic reviews Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage Something Red author, Jennifer Gilmore, talks about her year in reading at The Millions. Somewhere in heaven, John Hughes is smiling while listening to this cover of “Holiday Roads” by The Walkmen. Paul Thomas Anderson to adapt Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice into a film. Ernest Hemingway wants a Big Papa t-shirt for the holidays. Taking the plunge into Freedom.

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