Morning Bites: Joshua Cohen, The Corrections on HBO, new Atlas Sound, comedy albums, and more

“Describing Joshua Cohen’s wonderful and elliptical novel A Heaven of Others is a bit like attempting to rehash an acid trip—no analysis can quite do justice to the feel of the experience.” – Adam Wilson reviews Joshua Cohen’s A Heaven of Others at Bookforum. Somewhere in the world there is a collaboration between Blur and poet Michael Horovitz. Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections is officially a thing on HBO. The new Atlas Sound album Parallax is streaming at the New York Times.  It is very much […]

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HBO is one step closer to looking like your bookshelf

Posted by Jason Diamond The title of this post is the answer to the question, “What do Jonathan Franzen, Jennifer Egan, Sam Lipsyte, George R. R. Martin, Jonathan Ames, Michael Chabon, Malcolm Gladwell, and now Karen Russell all have in common?” From The Hollywood Reporter: HBO is going to Florida with Scott Rudin. The premium cable network has picked up Swamplandia, a half-hour comedy project from Rudin based on Karen Russell’s book of the same name.

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Morning Bites: Junot Díaz’s next steps, Mailer’s apartment, the “violent left,” Emily Gould on having a side business, and more

Animating Albert Camus. “Even if you’re a big fan of capitalism, you’ll at least concede that its greatest strength is probably not its capacity to reward artistic virtue fairly.” – Emily Gould on writers and other artists branching out, and trying to find other avenues to make money. More Jonathan Franzen essays on the way. Junot Díaz gives some insight as to what his next novel will be about. They’re having quite the hard time selling Norman Mailer’s Brooklyn Heights […]

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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: A Nobel Laureates Commute, Blake Butler & NY Tyrant on Franzen, Márquez Used and More

At The New York Times:  Peruvian Nobel laureate, Mario Vargas Llosa, discusses teaching Borges at an Ivy, investing his money, and the killer commute from Jersey to Manhattan: ““It’s very nice. But not if you take the train at 5 or 6 o’clock. It can be a Kafkaesque commute.” At Vice:  Blake Butler and NY Tyrant take HTML GIANT’S “Mean Week” on the road, and trash Jonathan Franzen over at Vice. Hilarity ensues. At Boing Boing: Star Trak characters reading […]

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