Bites: Buster Keaton, Warhol’s Blue-Collar Roots, Grrrl’s From the 90’s, Brooklyn’s Poet Laureate, and More

New York Review of Books talks Buster Keaton. Deep down, Andy Warhol was just a blue-collar eccentric. Remember N + 1 talking about the “neuronovel”?  Here’s co-founder Marco Roth talking about his essay on the subject on Aussie radio. Photos of Russian explorers at the North Pole in the 50’s and 60’s. The Breeders, Kim Gordon, Bikini Kill, and other essential female artists of the 90’s. Tina Chang: Brooklyn’s poet laureate.

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Bites: Ames and Haspiel Have a Talk, N+1 on Avatar, the Sucking of the Last Decade, Blue Moons, and More

Jonathan Ames and buddy Dean Haspiel have a conversation. At N+1, Caleb Crain comes right out and says Avatar gave him a “four-hour headache” in the first sentence. Fictionaut talks to Nicki Pombier Berger from Underwater New York. Slate takes a look at A Separate Peace at 50 years old. 3:AM Magazine talked to quite a few folks in 2009. The Millions calls Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories, “a book for years end”. Dangerous Minds sums up why the last […]

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Bites: Bolaño’s French Tastes, Panorama Makes a Missed Connection, Clooney Saving Novels, Tao Lin at Urban Outfitters, and More

Just wanted to start your day off with this photo titled “Journalists at a Microsoft press conference”. (Via Clusterflock) Lit. Cristina Nehring wasn’t too happy with Emily Gould’s review of her book,  A Vindication of Love. (thanks HTMLGiant) The ongoing series exploring what the late Roberto Bolaño read over at MobyLives has made for good reading.  Discussed today is Bolaño’s love of French lit. Newsrooms as training grounds for fiction writers? Mashable gives us their thoughts on Barnes and Nobles […]

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A Kaddish for Jewish Zines

By Jason Diamond Gawker’s proclamation of the “Heeb Magazine Deathwatch” got me thinking again about “radical Jewish culture”, but this time in terms of it’s short life, possible death, and whether the tag really means anything other than getting donors to contribute to off-kilter non-profits. Of course, I find that there have been valiant attempts to get the old gears of Jewish thought turning again. From what I can gather, John Zorn coined the phrase with his marvelous Tzadik label, […]

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Bites: Gentrification Lit, Adam Langer, Dustin Hoffman Loves Libraries, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin host the Oscars, and more

N+1 discuss “gentrification novels”. Discussed are Jonathan Lethem, Prospect Park West, etc.  As a Park Slope resident, I feel a little bit shitty right now. Lit. Rare books for the “cultured traveler” Adam Langer, one of the great Chicago writers, tells us some music he likes. HTML Giant tells us about Warm Milk Press. The American zeitgeist implodes upon itself as James Franco, following his quirky stint on daytime television, is slated to guest star on 30 Rock. Dustin Hoffman: […]

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Bites: Fargo Rock City on the big screen, the neuronovel, The Low Anthem, and more

Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City is getting turned into a movie, and Craig Finn of The Hold Steady is helping to write it. Lit. N+1 puts up their essay “The Rise of the Neuronovel“.  It’s available in their most recent issue. Has On the Road aged well? Unpublished Vonnegut finally gets published. Philip Roth is popping up everywhere.  Today in the Wall Street Journal. Music The Low Anthem pay tribute to Charles Darwin. Carrie Brownstein picks some of her favorite […]

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