Bookslut reviews Shoplifting From American Apparel. Tao Lin calls this review ‘damning’ via his Twitter. Everything is totally cool between the heirs of J.R.R. Tolkien and HarperCollins. (Thanks Vulture) New Yorker weighs in on Times Square vs. The High Line Sarkozy had more in common with Napoleon than you thought. (Thanks The Awl) Chicago Subtext asks: “What book would Oprah never, ever pick as a book club selection? Why?” I sat long and hard on this one, and came […]
Bites: Herzog’s La Bohème, Why Blog?, New Maugham Bio, Prometheus’ Authorship, more
Werner Herzog’s characteristically bizarre short film The Millions thinks the New Yorker’s been exceptional lately. We cosign, wholeheartedly. Emdashes proposes a panel called “Why Keep Blogging?” for next March’s South by Southwest interactive festival. Help her out by showing your support. There’s a new biography of Somerset Maugham: The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selena Hastings. Revisiting the question of authorship in Frankenstein. How much carbon dioxide are you helping emit RIGHT NOW?
Absurdities of War, Inglourious Reviews
No, Basterds is not a Schindler’s List, a Thin Red Line, or a Casablanca. But we don’t need any more war movies like that. The emotional core, more tangible than in any of Tarantino’s other films, builds from and questions every single war movie that’s ever been made.
Bites: Typewriters, “The Man,” Infinite Summer has some competition, Julia Childs is on top, Dinosaur Jr. rock Cape Cod, GreenPunk, and more
Boing Boing appreciates an old, forgotten typewriter. McSweeney’s shakes things up by interviewing “The Man”. Infinite Summer make way for Finite Summer. I wish they would have stopped at “The world certainly doesn’t need another comedy starring Michael Cera as a hapless teenager blundering his way into improbable sexual encounters“. Julia Childs has finally made it. According to The Millions, Quentin Tarantino, “thinks like a writer.” The New Yorker on Quentin’s pal (and one of the stars of “Inglourious Basterds”), Eli […]
Bites: Typewriters, “The Man”, Infinite Summer has some competition, Julia Childs is on top, Dinosaur Jr. rock Cape Cod, GreenPunk, and more
Boing Boing appreciates an old, forgotten typewriter. McSweeney’s shakes things up by interviewing “The Man”. Infinite Summer make way for Finite Summer. I wish they would have stopped at “The world certainly doesn’t need another comedy starring Michael Cera as a hapless teenager blundering his way into improbable sexual encounters“. Julia Childs has finally made it. According to The Millions, Quentin Tarantino, “thinks like a writer.” The New Yorker on Quentin’s pal (and one of the stars of “Inglourious Basterds”) […]
Bites: Decent thoughts on today’s fiction (I know!), Bruni is replaced, Gladwell’s Mockingbird, Kubrick’s unmade work, middle-class “slave labor”
By Willa A. Cmiel Lee Seigel for the Washington Post on the End of the Episode. It’s a greatly informed, well-put essay on changes in American fiction. (Finally a good essay on contemporary fiction. Seigel is critical but not raging, constructive but unassuming): “Are you a Narrative or Episodic personality?… Or do you think that you live, like Huck Finn and every other picaresque hero, from isolated minute to isolated minute – episode to episode – and that far from adding […]
Dusting Off: Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
By Willa A. Cmiel This Tuesday marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Malcolm Lowry. His novel Under the Volcano, which pops up on all kinds of read-before-you-die lists, was the first book in years that I just couldn’t get through. In desperate rationalization, I labeled it “man lit” and argued that the only people I ever knew who loooved the book (and people really love it) were middle-aged men. And while the book is certainly Joyce-ean in its […]
Slack Motherfucker #2
.Dirty Work. I am, admittedly and proudly, the go-to music nerd among my friends. Whether I am glowing over Billy Joel’s foray into heavy metal in the early 1970’s via his band Attila (or Billy Joel’s entire catalog for that matter) or my collection off 60’s bubblegum pop, I have always been able to make a case for music that my peers might otherwise find annoying, silly, or just plain bad. However, I am led to believe there might be […]